Health and care activities in the IFRC include first aid and emergency response as well as epidemic control, programmes in health promotion and prevention, addressing stigma, providing psychosocial care and enabling community empowerment.
Health and care activities in the IFRC include first aid and emergency response as well as epidemic control, programmes in health promotion and prevention, addressing stigma, providing psychosocial care and enabling community empowerment.
Around the world, hundreds of thousands of volunteers work in communities to promote health, prevent diseases and demonstrate positive values through their actions. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and its National Societies actively support communities through their network of volunteers, their community-based approach, their expertise and experience.
The past decade has seen major gains towards improving global health. Today, less people die of measles or malaria and the number of new HIV-infections has been stabilized in some countries.
At the same time, implementing primary health care at the community level remains a challenge:
- Worldwide, an estimated 14 million people continue to die each year from infectious diseases. Many more suffer from malnutrition and disruption of livelihood
- More than 1 billion people don’t have access to safe water
- 2.6 billion people lack access to basic sanitation.
- More than 500,000 women die each year in pregnancy or childbirth and still too many children die before their fifth birthday.
This situation will get worse because of global trends such as climate change, population growth and ageing, urbanisation, migration, food and water shortages, poverty, emergent diseases and the lack of access to health services.
Recent additions to the resources library
One month after the worst disaster in Mozambique’s recent history, signs of recovery are beginning to emerge as people return home and as the deadly cholera outbreak appears to be starting to abate. Since Cyclone Idai made landfall, Mozambique Red Cros …
Venezuela has faced several challenges in recent years. In 2019 there is an urgent need for immediate humanitarian action to strengthen the provision of health care and other vital sectors such as water, sanitation and hygiene promotion, food safety an …
An outbreak of measles was declared on 6 February in the National Capital and Central Luzon Regions. By 2 March, nearly 16,350 people had been infected, 261 people had died, and the disease had spread to several other regions. Babies and children are p …
Health in Action
World First Aid Day
The IFRC is the largest first aid educator and provider in the world. In 2014, over 15 million people were trained, and for more than 150 years, first aid has provided by our volunteers.
In focus: Ebola
During the 2014-15 Ebola outbreak, Red Cross teams worked with community leaders to ensure families knew about how the virus is spread, what the symptoms are, and the importance of early treatment.
World Water Day
Water, sanitation and good hygiene practices are fundamental to healthy life. Our collective aim is to ensure every family has affordable and sustainable access to safe water and adequate sanitation.
Health news
Last year, Marietta Laneslao celebrated 20 years as a Philippine Red Cross volunteer. Along the way she has also recruited plenty of people starting with her own family: her husband, children, nieces, nephews… altogether she has organized new volunteers for 18 barangays or communities.
There was a unique category this year as the Trinidad and Tobago Red Cross Society sought to use culture to disseminate information.
For the past several weeks, the Philippine Red Cross emergency healthcare unit in the Philippines have been tending to the youngest of patients, children and babies coughing with fever, and whose bodies and faces are covered in red rashes. In early February, the local authorities declared a measles outbreak and since then 355 people have died, most of them children under 5 years of age.
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