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(Music)
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Raj Panjabi: Illness is universal,
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access to care is not,
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and realizing this lit a fire in my soul.
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No one should die because
they live too far from a doctor or clinic.
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I wish that you would help us
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recruit the largest army
of community health workers
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the world has ever known
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by creating the Community Health Academy,
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a global platform
to train, connect and empower.
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[Great Big Story
in partnership with TED]
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Narrator: They had a big idea
to change the world.
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But they couldn't do it alone.
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(Voices overlapping)
So, my wish ... My wish ... I wish ...
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And now, here is my wish ...
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[Torchbearers]
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[Ideas in action]
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RP: Epidemic diseases
like Ebola, HIV, Zika,
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emerge from remote, rural communities
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including the rain forests
of West and Central Africa.
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These are the hotspots of disease.
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They're the hotspots of infections.
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They're the hotspots of death
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that are located in the blindspots
of the global health system.
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The idea that disease anywhere
can be a threat to people everywhere
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is very real.
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So how do we stop this?
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Well, it's to enable
community health workers
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to prevent, detect and respond
to outbreaks at their very source.
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(Music)
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There are a billion people
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who live in the world's
most remote communities.
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And while we've made great advances
in medicine and in technology,
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our innovations
are not reaching the last mile.
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They're not reaching
these remote communities.
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We launched a nonprofit
called Last Mile Health,
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and Last Mile Health's mission
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is to bring a health care worker
within reach of everyone everywhere.
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Woman: Hello. How are you?
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RP: A community health worker
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is someone who lives
in one of these communities
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that's cut off, several days
away from the nearest clinic,
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and they may not have had a chance
to finish even high school.
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Woman: I'm just listening to her lungs.
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RP: They're trained to perform
medical skills that can save lives.
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Their job is to go door to door
to provide health care.
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Serrena Kun: When I was little,
I had a passion of becoming a nurse.
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I loved taking care of children.
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So when the community
came here to find people,
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I put my hand up.
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I said I wanted to help little children.
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RP: What these community health workers
like Serrena are doing
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is trying to bring the kind of health care
your family doctor may provide
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but in places your
family doctor may never go.
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Prince Pailey: When I wake up
in the morning,
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I put my bag on my bike.
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The distances that I work
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is sometimes two hours,
three hours in a forest.
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Some areas, some creeks,
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they drown with the ocean,
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so that every crossing
you find it so difficult.
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RP: Community health workers
are trained to address
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the health problems
of their own community.
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In a country like Liberia,
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it could mean helping a mother
get treatment for her child
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suffering from malaria.
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Man: This is paracetamol.
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This is ACT.
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So the only time you're going to give it
is in the evening time.
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PP: In Liberia, the children
die more than the adults,
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because we have
some people in the villages,
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they don't sleep under a mosquito net.
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RP: We already know
community health workers
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can help health care systems
save more lives.
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Their ability to do that is strengthened
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when they're enabled
with modern technology.
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Woman: Now, she's saying
that the child has improved
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and went to school today.
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RP: If community health workers
were equipped with smartphones,
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this would increase their ability
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to prevent, detect and respond
to outbreaks and epidemics.
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It's time for technology
to help reinvent health care
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on a game-changing scale.
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We are building the world's first
education platform
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for community health workers
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that allows them to see the condition.
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There's instruction on the phone
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to help the worker decide
what treatment to give.
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But equipping 50,000
community health workers with smartphones
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is an extraordinarily ambitious effort,
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larger than what our organization
alone could take on.
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It required collaboration.
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We realized that working together
with other partners like Living Goods
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would help us truly solve that problem.
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(Child crying)
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And then we learned
about The Audacious Project,
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a new opportunity that TED
and a group of visionary philanthropists
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had been working on
to fund some of the boldest,
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most audacious ideas in the world.
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So that's all very exciting,
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because many, many more
millions of children and families
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are now going to have
a chance of getting it,
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and they're going to get it
from their own neighbors.
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Man: They say a health worker
for everyone, everywhere, every day.
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Thank you.
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RP: Community health workers
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become the very people
who can make a difference.
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SK: I love children, I love my community,
and my community loves me.
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PP: I have love and passion for the job,
so I will continue to work for my people.
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RP: We could by 2030 save 30 million lives
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by training these workers
to do 30 services.
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We as people are not defined
by the conditions we face,
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no matter how hopeless they seem.
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We're defined by how we respond to them.
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And our response has to demand
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a health worker for everyone everywhere.
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[Support the big ideas of
the Audacious Project]
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[audaciousproject.org]
Maricene Crus
Just to recommend a correction of the name Serrena (not Serena) at the description of the talk.
Thank you!