Community Health Workers Are Vital; Governments Should Be Paying Them

Illness is universal, health care is not. Over half of the world's 7.3 billion people, including 1 billion in rural communities, lack access to health care. Approximately 13 million children still go without a single dose of any vaccine. Nearly 9 million newborns, children and mothers still die each year from preventable or treatable conditions.Compounding this crisis is a massive health-worker shortage, forecast to grow to 18 million by 2030. Training more doctors is necessary, but because doctors are concentrated in cities, they alone are insufficient to close this gap. What if the residents of rural communities even those without a high school degree could become a vital part of our health care team?