Monday 19 September 2011

Children worlds apart

Christmas 2003 I’m in a well equipped hospital, comfy, clean bed attached to drips.

Along the corridor was our son, born too soon, surrounded by doctors, tubes & breathing equipment.

6 weeks later we took our tiny but well baby home.

A mother in Africa who wakes at 2am hemorrhaging would not have the luxury of an ambulance within 6 minutes, a crash team, fast acting doctors to deliver her baby, or resuscitation equipment ready for when her baby is not breathing.

Instead the mother would bleed unable to do anything to save her baby, quite possibly herself.

I was asked to write this post in support of Save The Children's campaign to increase the number of health workers in poorer parts of the world, especially East Africa where the lives of thousands of children are once again under threat from drought conditions. They are likely to die from simple preventable childhood illnesses, just from being born.

Without the healthcare system provided by the NHS in the UK, I would not be looking at a healthy, happy 7 year old today. I probably would not be here to see my 4 year old reach the same mile stones as my 7 year old, after emergency surgery to save my life following Mini Man's birth.

Everyday I thank the NHS, the doctors and the nurses.

Why shouldn't the rest of the world be able to experience the same?

Save The Children has enlisted the help of the Mummy Blogger community to get as many people as possible to sign this petition before Tuesday when it is due to be presented at the UN General Assembly to pressure David Cameron to play his full part in solving the health worker crisis.  There is a target of 60,000 signatures on the petition by Tuesday. At the moment that petition sits at 41,673, we want to change that.

So please to get involved, its easy, just follow the simple steps below:
Then the challenge set by @HelloItsGemma and @michelletwinmum is to see 100 posts of 100 words linked up at micehlletwinmum by Tuesday.
If 100 bloggers each write a post about a healthcare experience and encourage more signatures that could make a massive dent in the 20,000 signature shortfall. Please help.
Link to a number of other bloggers and ask them to do the same. Anyone reading this post, please consider themselves tagged and join in.

4 comments:

Natasha said...

Such a brilliantly hard hitting post xx

1978rebecca said...

It is amazing what good care we receive. We're all so busy moaning about how the NHS could be better we forget what an amazing job they do.

helloitsgemma said...

A post that makes you sit up, absolutely hits the spot - it's desperate to think about isn't it - thank you.

Chris said...

Thank you so much for telling your story, absolutely spot on.