Bill Gates: My Plan to Fix The World’s Biggest Problems

The health workers provide most services at the posts, though they also visit the homes of pregnant women and sick people. They ensure that each home has access to a bed net to protect the family from malaria, a pit toilet, first-aid training and other basic health and safety practices. All these interventions are quite simple, yet they’ve dramatically improved the lives of people in this country.

Consider the story of one young mother in Dalocha. Sebsebila Nassir was born in 1990, when about 20% of all children in Ethiopia did not survive to see their fifth birthdays. Two of Sebsebila’s six siblings died as infants. But when a health post opened its doors in Dalocha, life started to change. Last year when Sebsebila became pregnant, she received regular checkups. On Nov. 28, Sebsebila traveled to a health center where a midwife was at her bedside during her seven-hour labor. Shortly after her daughter was born, a health worker gave the baby vaccines against polio and tuberculosis.

According to Ethiopian custom, parents wait to name a baby because children often die in the first weeks of life. When Sebsebila’s first daughter was born three years ago, she followed tradition and waited a month to bestow a name. This time, with more confidence in her new baby’s chances of survival, Sebsebila put “Amira”—”princess” in Arabic—in the blank at the top of her daughter’s immunization card on the day she was born. Sebsebila isn’t alone: Many parents in Ethiopia now have the confidence to do the same.

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