we estimate there are 140 million alumni of brac over 85% female and all of them unite to end poverty of their families and communities by knowing more about maternal and infant health than poorest people anywhere else
we rank sir fazle as greatest living servant leader of all of health, banking and education - he also attracts the most exciting partnerships in technology leapfroging - see eg btrac's www.bkash.com - now village girls can join in being paid a few cents an observation auditing vilage cleanliness etc
in last mile health sir fazle has helped jim kim and paul farmer redouble their efforts; all three of them have attracted the support of george soros and made him the most daring of all billanthoropists outreaching to countries others find to difficult to try to help
historically sir fazle's parnership in the late 1970s with James Grant of Unicef demonstarted that the whole of a rural nation culd be trained to end death of infants by diarrhea (a quarter of all infant deaths in bangaldesh of 1970s) by turing vilage nothers into an oral rehydration network;
sir fazle had tried to experiment with developing a barefoot doctirs network parallel to that which restored the capaity of chinese villagers but there werent enoughh trained emdical people in the whole of bangaldesh- instead one of the first 100000 person microfranchsies built by brac assembled para helath workers - some of their lifestories are collated here
back in the 1970s china and brac partnered in rice science - critical to ending death by famine in both nations which had both lost up to 10% of their population to famine
we especially value sir fazle for developing a health service from next to nothing - in other words bangladesh rural health srvice is the least costly per vital outcomes in the world; it has brought life expectancies up to levels emulating or exceeding most developing nations goals; in particular it changed the haelth of women empowering them to have the energy to run vilage businesses
one of the main lessons is that health service has many diferent segments:
many life critical village diseases require urgent but low cost intervention; much involves prevention; others like tb require daily treatment which can most safety and efefctivey be done by villagers who have already survived the diseases
for infants oral rehydration and first 1000 days nutrition are critical - an underfed infant isnt only stunted physically but the brain is at risk of never fully developing
all health services could gain from realising that the majority of local health can be delivered by not requiring all medica workers to have expensive qualifications on every nursing or doctoral skill- the more so as many apps and teleheath can deploy the powerof computers to be efficient at diagnosis
there is also positive spirit- as muhammad yunus says when you fighting extreme povert alleviation, the chance to earn a livelihood is the best health service of all
brac was started by living and learning with the poorest; today about 90% of bracs 100000+ staff work in the field; and many times more people earn a living by serving local helath , or food security s well as community safety
2018 sees brac's 47th year in massively colloaborating in empowering women to lift up half the sky starting with poorst communities- here is a souvenir from brac at year 7
we interpret china's xi jinping as wanting to help all of china's poorest neigbors in their race to end poverty - in this regard we believe that nothing will be more important to india's race to endf poverty than understanding which of brac's solutons can quickly be replicated- the more so that china, ikndia and bnagladesh multiply around mobile apps of girls empowrment
