Due to dramatic advances in transportation, a viral outbreak that began halfway around the world now assaults our entire country. It is sickening and killing even people in small towns like Odon, Indiana. That’s where my 91-year-old brother is confined to a small room in an assisted living facility. He’s recuperating from hip surgery and isolated to hopefully avoid contracting the deadly virus.
As governments around the world rightly focus on the growing COVID-19 outbreak, we need to be mindful of a variety of other existential threats that will not disappear with a cure or a vaccine. The most evident threat is climate change; throughout the next decades, it will severely impact every aspect of life, including human health. In this article, one of our young writers shares her passionate concern, and her words remind us that her generation faces huge challenges even after the COVID-19 issue resolves.
“The coronavirus has crushed healthcare systems around the world. And it’s especially cruel in the poorest regions, where there are fewer than one doctor for 20,000 people. In these places, officials are calling on community health workers to help the sick and teach people how to avoid contracting the virus…”
These opening words of WiRED International’s just released video go on to tell the story of WiRED’S Community Health Worker (CHW) Training Program. The program includes health communication, community health instruction, health surveillance and continuing education. This video showcases photos taken all over the world in the low-resource communities where WiRED has distributed its free health training material for almost 25 years.
Letter from Sr. Bernadette in Kenya: Effects of the Coronavirus How One Community WiRED Serves Is Coping with the Global Crisis By: Allison Kozicharow; Edited by Jessie Crowdy WiRED International has worked with Sister Bernadette Nealon at the Pandipieri and Obunga health centers in Kisumu, Kenya, for almost 20 years. WiRED Executive Director Gary Selnow, […]
WiRED International’s Coronavirus Module is now available in Mandarin and Spanish. How did these translations come about? Maryam Othman, M.D., M.P.H., is a WiRED board member who coordinates our Health Learning Center of 400+ modules. She is also director of the Global and Community Center at Western University of Health Sciences (WesternU) in California.
Thanks to its dedicated translators, WiRED International now offers 19 health education modules in the Armenian language on topics of pressing concern in Armenia such as diabetes, dental hygiene and quitting tobacco. Dozens more modules are in the works or planned for the near future, many related to WiRED’s large community health worker training project.
Note: This remembrance was posted several years after Mr. D’Angelo’s death. The prolific television producer, director and writer William P. D’Angelo (Billy), who was one of WiRED International’s first board members, died on June 8, 2002, at the age of 70, from pancreatic cancer. D’Angelo, born in 1932 and raised in New York, graduated from […]