Opening up about your struggles with someone you trust can help you feel better. UNICEF switches it up, it starts with one moment, one conversation, one question: What’s on your mind?

Latest data shared by the UN World Health Organization (WHO) indicates that one in two frontline health workers suffered burnout during COVID-19.

To help protect these key staff in the event of another pandemic, the WHO has convened its Fifth Global Forum on Human Resources for Health, in Geneva.

Participants include Dr Emma O’Brien from The Royal Melbourne Hospital, whose celebrated music therapy ensemble known as the Scrub Choir, most recently provided comfort to 1,000 under-pressure health workers, as she tells UN News’s Daniel Johnson.

First, though, we’ll hear from the WHO’s Workforce Director Jim Campbell, who explains why an action plan is needed so urgently to strengthen the global health workforce.

Photo: © J. Campbell

Smiling is contagious and these happy children from around the world are sure to put a smile on your face! UNICEF procures and distributes vaccines and other essential supplies, including solar-powered refrigerators, and helps train health workers to prevent future outbreaks of diseases. Babies are also screened for malnourishment and mothers taught about nutrition at their funded health centres. In addition, UNICEF has established more than 200 temporary learning centres, to look after the protection and psychosocial well-being of children caught up in the climate change-related crisis.

An estimated 12 billion workdays are lost annually due to depression and anxiety costing the global economy nearly US$ 1 trillion. WHO and ILO have called for concrete actions in 2 new publications: WHO's Guidelines on mental health at work, and WHO/ILO's policy brief with practical strategies for governments. The guidelines recommend actions to tackle risks to mental health such as heavy workloads, negative behaviours, and other factors creating distress at work. For the first time, WHO recommends manager training to build their capacity to prevent stressful work environments and respond to workers in distress.

In 2022 the world is experiencing one of the largest backslides of global immunization rates in history. Now is the only chance we have to work together, to pull resources and invest in vaccinating humanity against all diseases and illnesses. And we must do it together! Read about vaccine equity.

In the 2000s millions died waiting for the first ARVs until knowledge was shared, intellectual property barriers were overcome, and production was globalized. Yet for COVID-19 vaccines and many new HIV technologies that path is being blocked—and we are repeating mistakes of the past. The world will remain unprepared to end AIDS, unprepared to fight COVID-19, unprepared for pandemics of the future, as long as monopolies prevent global access to the best science, from COVID vaccines to new HIV technologies. This is a call on the world to join a movement to ensure pandemic-science for HIV and COVID-19 reaches not just the rich, but all who need it.

Goal 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

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