Thanks to Not My Year Off for tagging me :)

Quite simply if it wasn’t for healthworkers both myself and Oscar would be dead and buried by now. I don’t make a big thing out of our birth story, it’s much easier to focus on the positives but february 14th 2011 could have been the day we both died if it wasn’t for healthworkers.

From the emergency paramedics who arrived within 5 minutes of us phoning 999, the ambulance crew which arrived 5 minutes later, the midwives, nurses, operating team, the surgeon who managed to finally get Oscar breathing after 5 minutes, the theatre team who pumped back 9 units of blood into my body after I lost almost 3.5 litres of it. The neonatal team who cared for Oscar for the 16 days before I could bring him home. Needless to say I am very lucky and extremely thankful that I live in the UK today and have access to so many healthworkers to care for me.

Oscar

Sadly we were one of the lucky ones, doctors, nurses and midwives are vital to saving children’s lives. But there’s a massive shortfall of health workers in the world’s poorest countries. As ever, the poorest and most vulnerable are hardest hit. Half of the 8 million children who die each year are in Africa, yet Africa has only 3% of the world’s doctors, nurses and midwives.

On Tuesday Christine Mosler from Thinly Spread will attend the UN General Assembly in New York. She’s going to pressure David Cameron to play his full part in solving the health worker crisis. She’s done it before and she can do it again. We can help her.

This e-petition from Save The Children aims to have 60,000 signatures by that time. Please sign here.

Michelle from Mummy From The Heart and Gemma from Hello, It’s Gemma have a blog-hop to help raise awareness of the need for healthcare workers. “Write your 100 words about a great health professional you have encountered in your life.”

How can you help?

1) Sign the petition above.
2) Join the blog hop and spread the word!
3) Tweet and get social using #healthworkers

Let’s get those signatures and show how much we care!