Global Health Matters

Limited access to healthcare and health workers excludes men, women and children from basic educational and professional opportunities and debilitates communities: without good health, people cannot move themselves and their families out of poverty.

Every day, more than 1,000 women die from complications in pregnancy and childbirth. 99 percent of these deaths occur in developing countries.
Approximately 15 percent of the world’s population is disabled in some way. Disability rates are noticeably higher in poverty-stricken areas, with more than 80 percent of debilitating conditions occurring in developing region.
Each year, more children die from burn injuries caused by fires than tuberculosis or malaria. In fact, in developing countries, someone suffers from a burn injury every five seconds. Of these victims, 40 percent are under the age of 15.

Behind each of these statistics is a human face. Picture a two-year-old playing around a flame in rural Nicaragua, where open fire cooking is common. Imagine a young man studying in his kitchen, moments before a devastating earthquake destroys his neighborhood in Haiti. Think of a first-time mother, alone and miles from care in the Nigerian countryside. When the toddler trips and falls into the fire…after the young man is pulled from the rubble…once the young mother starts to hemorrhage, their needs are clear. The question is: who will be there to help them?

Through our work, Physicians for Peace seeks to remove the burdens of disease and disabilities of patients and to ensure that local healthcare teams are trained and ready to support them throughout their recovery.