Community health heroes

Raj Panjabi has a bold idea: to recruit and train an army of community health workers to bring medical care to the billion people around the world who lack access to it. See how technology is transforming things for health workers like Serena and Prince -- and how TED's just-launched initiative, the Audacious Project, is amplifying their impact. Learn more at AudaciousProject.org.

(Music)

Raj Panjabi: Illness is universal,

access to care is not,

and realizing this lit a fire in my soul.

No one should die because
they live too far from a doctor or clinic.

I wish that you would help us

recruit the largest army
of community health workers

the world has ever known

by creating the Community Health Academy,

a global platform
to train, connect and empower.

[Great Big Story
in partnership with TED]

Narrator: They had a big idea
to change the world.

But they couldn't do it alone.

(Voices overlapping)
So, my wish ... My wish ... I wish ...

And now, here's my wish ...

[Torchbearers]

[Ideas in action]

RP: Epidemic diseases
like Ebola, HIV, Zika,

emerge from remote, rural communities

including the rain forests
of West and Central Africa.

These are the hotspots of disease.

They're the hotspots of infections.

They're the hotspots of death

that are located in the blindspots
of the global health system.

The idea that disease anywhere
can be a threat to people everywhere

is very real.

So how do we stop this?

Well, it's to enable
community health workers

to prevent, detect and respond
to outbreaks at their very source.

(Music)

There are a billion people

who live in the world's
most remote communities.

And while we've made great advances
in medicine and in technology,

our innovations
are not reaching the last mile.

They're not reaching
these remote communities.

We launched a nonprofit
called Last Mile Health,

and Last Mile Health's mission

is to bring a health care worker
within reach of everyone everywhere.

Woman: Hello. How are you?

RP: A community health worker

is someone who lives
in one of these communities

that's cut off, several days
away from the nearest clinic,

and they may not have had a chance
to finish even high school.

Woman: I'm just listening to her lungs.

RP: They're trained to perform
medical skills that can save lives.

Their job is to go door to door
to provide health care.

Serrena Kun: When I was little,
I had a passion of becoming a nurse.

I loved taking care of children.

So when the community
came here to find people,

I put my hand up.

I said I wanted to help little children.

RP: What these community health workers
like Serrena are doing

is trying to bring the kind of health care
your family doctor may provide

but in places your
family doctor may never go.

Prince Pailey: When I wake up
in the morning,

I put my bag on my bike.

The distances that I work

is sometimes two hours,
three hours in a forest.

Some areas, some creeks,

they drown with the ocean,

so that every crossing
you find it so difficult.

RP: Community health workers
are trained to address

the health problems
of their own community.

In a country like Liberia,

it could mean helping a mother
get treatment for her child

suffering from malaria.

Man: This is paracetamol.

This is ACT.

So the only time you're going to give it
is in the evening time.

PP: In Liberia, the children
die more than the adults,

because we have
some people in the villages,

they don't sleep under a mosquito net.

RP: We already know
community health workers

can help health care systems
save more lives.

Their ability to do that is strengthened

when they're enabled
with modern technology.

Woman: Now, she's saying
that the child has improved

and went to school today.

RP: If community health workers
were equipped with smartphones,

this would increase their ability

to prevent, detect and respond
to outbreaks and epidemics.

It's time for technology
to help reinvent health care

on a game-changing scale.

We are building the world's first
education platform

for community health workers

that allows them to see the condition.

There's instruction on the phone

to help the worker decide
what treatment to give.

But equipping 50,000
community health workers with smartphones

is an extraordinarily ambitious effort,

larger than what our organization
alone could take on.

It required collaboration.

We realized that working together
with other partners like Living Goods

would help us truly solve that problem.

(Child crying)

And then we learned
about The Audacious Project,

a new opportunity that TED
and a group of visionary philanthropists

had been working on
to fund some of the boldest,

most audacious ideas in the world.

So that's all very exciting,

because many, many more
millions of children and families

are now going to have
a chance of getting it,

and they're going to get it
from their own neighbors.

Man: They say a health worker
for everyone, everywhere, every day.

Thank you.

RP: Community health workers

become the very people
who can make a difference.

SK: I love children, I love my community,
and my community loves me.

PP: I have love and passion for the job,
so I will continue to work for my people.

RP: We could by 2030 save 30 million lives

by training these workers
to do 30 services.

We as people are not defined
by the conditions we face,

no matter how hopeless they seem.

We're defined by how we respond to them.

And our response has to demand

a health worker for everyone everywhere.

[Support the big ideas of
the Audacious Project]

[AudaciousProject.org]