In global health,
it’s important to look at who's done it
well.
Our goal is to save all these lives,
but we don't always understand
why some countries do so much better than
others.
And that's why I put together
the Exemplars in Global Health project,
to go in and find the countries that are doing
well.
We call these countries, exemplars.
And we want to document what they've done
so that others can learn from them.
A key issue we're looking at is stunting.
Stunting means that a child is not getting
the right nutrition
during their first three years of life.
They’re not just short,
their entire physical strength and brain development
is far below what it should be.
Nepal’s done a better job on reducing stunting
than other countries.
In 2001, 57% of their kids were stunted,
but by 2016, it was down to 36%.
These positive results were driven by a few
key actions.
They invested in their health system
and drove up births in health facilities.
They also changed their sanitation practices.
They discouraged open defecation
and so the exposure in the environment to
human waste
that causes diarrheal diseases was greatly
reduced.
Nepal also increased school attendance.
They had growing incomes and that led to a
richer diet
including milk, eggs, and meat.
And so, that had the effect of reducing the
stunting.
Not all of the tactics will apply to all of
the countries,
but the goal is quite simple.
It's to have everyone learn to improve things.
That’s why we’re sharing what’s been
learned.
We want to enable exceptional progress everywhere.
Everyone wants health,
but we’re pretty far away from the equity
we want.
We created Exemplars to accelerate reducing
that inequity.
