2012-15 Challenge: Citizens, Parents and Children
The HIFA 2012 Challenge addresses the information and learning needs of Citizens, Parents and Children. (We use the term citizens here inclusively to refer to all people and communities. We are all global citizens with equal rights. And we emphasise children, because children are all too often responsible for the health care of their own parents and siblings.) Our goal: By 2015, Citizens, Parents and Children will have access to the information and knowledge they need to prevent illness and injury, to recognise serious illness, to provide basic care, to seek timely help for medical and surgical care, and to save lives. From 2012-2015 we are convening more than 8000 professionals from 2000 organisations in 167 countries, to focus on these issues on the HIFA2015, CHILD2015, HIFA2015-Portuguese, HIFA-EVIPNet-French and HIFA-Zambia email forums. The 2012 Challenge is an extension of the 2011 Challenge, in recognition of the vital importance of addressing the needs of all citizens, mothers and families
Parents, children and other family caregivers
The health knowledge of parents and family caregivers can often mean the difference between life and death, especially for children. For example:
- In Africa, up to 80% of child deaths occur at home. [1]
- A study in India found that four in ten mothers believed they should withhold fluids if their child develops diarrhoea – potentially and tragically contributing to the death of their own child. Almost 1000 children die every day in India alone. Most of their lives would have been saved if their mothers and carers had known to give more fluids with the correct amount of added sugar (6 level teaspoons in 1 litre water) and salt (half teaspoon in 1 litre). [2,3]
- 8 in 10 caregivers in developing countries do not know the two key symptoms of childhood pneumonia – fast and difficult breathing – which indicate the need for urgent treatment (only 20% of children with pneumonia receive antibiotics despite wide availability, and 2 million die each year). [4]
Further information will be available here shortly. To participate, join HIFA2015 today!.
[1] Oluwole D, Mason E, Costello A. Management of childhood illness in Africa. BMJ 2000;320:594-5
[3] UNICEF, WHO, UNESCO, UNFPA, UNDP, UNAIDS, WFP and the World Bank. Facts for Life, 4th edition, 2010.
[4] Wardlaw T et al. Pneumonia: the leading killer of children. Lancet 2006;368:1048-50
HIFA 2012 Challenge Team
The coordinator of the HIFA 2012 Challenge Team is Oluwatosin (Tosin) Ogunmoyero. She is a Nigerian trained medical doctor currently studying for a MSc in global health science at the University of Oxford, UK. She has strong interests in maternal and child health particularly seeking to improve the welfare in terms of health of mothers and their children especially in resource poor environments. As a young doctor in Nigeria she quickly realized that the health of mothers and children went beyond just having trained doctors but had a lot to do with women and caregivers recognizing early danger signs, knowing the right thing to do and the right place to seek help, also the ability of health care workers including doctors and nurses but most importantly community health workers (especially in resource poor settings). Her email address is oreogunmoyero AT-SIGN-HERE yahoo.co.uk
The team has two members who are looking especially at the promotion of information and education for child health:
Nand Wadhwani is a Founding Trustee of The Mother and Child Health and Education Trust (MCHET) http://motherchildtrust.org/ . Over the past 15 years he has launched several programmes to address the challenge of improving health education in underdeveloped countries. MCHET works primarily in the areas of mother and child nutrition, water, hygiene, sanitation and diarrhoea prevention and management. Nand firmly believes that the most effective and efficient way to advance health education is by employing a mix of established and newer communication technologies to deliver contextually-appropriate messages directly to the people who need it most. He is presently working on the development of HealthPhone, an illiterate-friendly mobile phone app. with preloaded, reliable, relevant health and nutrition material in various formats and that will initially be offered in English and several other languages. Using rich multimedia, HealthPhone will put life-saving and life-changing content directly in the hands of those who can use it in an accessible format and with 24×7 availability, everywhere. He is a HIFA2015 Steering Group member. nand AT motherchildtrust.org
Clare Hanbury qualified as a teacher in the UK and then worked in schools in Kenya and Hong Kong. After an MA in Education in Developing Countries and for many years, Clare worked for The Child-to-Child Trust based at the University of London’s Institute of Education where, alongside Hugh Hawes and Professor David Morley she worked to help embed the Child-to-Child ideas of childrens participation in health – into government and non-government child health and education programmes in numerous countries. Clare has worked with these ideas alongside vulnerable groups of children such as refugees and street children. Since her MSc in International Maternal and Child Health, Clare has worked freelance and focuses on helping government and non-government programmes to design and deliver child-centered health and education programmes where children are active participants. Clare has worked in many countries in East and Southern Africa and in Pakistan, Cambodia and the Yemen. Her current passion is for distilling health information for teachers, health workers and others – into simple practical health messages actionable by children.
Vasumathi Sriganesh is assisting the team with advice on searching and identification of full-text papers. Vasumathi Sriganesh has been a medical librarian from 1992 to 1997. She then ran a consulting organization, “QMed Services”, for ten years. In December 2007, she set up a Not-for-profit Trust, which she has named QMed Knowledge Foundation. Through the Foundation, she is working at making a change in the medical schools in India, by conducting training programs for students, librarians and faculty, in searching medical literature effectively. She has conducted over 50 training programs and delivered an equal number of short lectures on the topic. She hopes that the Foundation’s activity will help the current generation of students value the need for an effective search as a component of the practice of Evidence Based Medicine. She has trained at CASP UK, and hopes to set up CASP India sometime with the help of doctors in India. She currently works closely with INFORMER (an association of undergraduate medical students interested in research) and the South Asian Cochrane Network to collaborate for mutual benefit. The Foundation also helps medical libraries harness the power of Internet resources for their user and maintains a Directory of Indian Medical Sites at www.indianmedicalsites.in. vasu AT qmedkf.org.in
The HIFA2015 coordinator, Neil Pakenham-Walsh, is also a team member, with interests across the whole spectrum of the HIFA 2012-15 Challenge.
We are looking for new team members in the following subject areas:
- Reproductive and maternal health
- Newborn health
- HIV/AIDS
- Malaria
- Tuberculosis
- Communicable diseases (excl HIV-TB-Malaria)
- Non-communicable diseases
- Trauma, surgical care and anaesthesia
- Rehabilitation
- Mental health
“My experience with HIFA has been totally amazing. I have had the opportunity to lead a dynamic multinational and multidisciplinary team of about 30 to stimulate discussions that identify the health information needs of mothers, citizens and families especially in low resource settings. Ranging from breastfeeding options for mothers with HIV, hand hygiene practices and myths about contraceptive use to diarrhoea management and irrational use of antibiotics, the discussions have been eye opening, undiluted and have provided an opportunity to learn. I look forward to continuing to lead this team as we explore options to further encourage participation and possibly extract useful lumps of information for analysis.”
Tosin Ogunmoyero, HIFA 2012 Coordinator
