Important Facts For Prelims
2020 as Year of the Nurse and Midwife: WHO
- 02 Jan 2020
- 2 min read
Why in News
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has designated the year 2020 as the “Year of the Nurse and midwife”, in honour of the 200th birth anniversary of Florence Nightingale. 
- The declaration of “Year of the Nurse and midwife” will help to strengthen nursing and midwifery for Universal Health Coverage.
- Strengthening nursing will help to achieve Sustainable Development Goals, in particular the (SDG) 3 - ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages, SDG 5-promoting gender equity and SDG 8- contributing to economic development.
- Nurses and midwives constitute more than 50% of the health workforce in many countries.
- The declaration will also help to endorse “The NursingNow!” a three-year campaign (2018-2020) to improve health globally by raising the status of nursing.
- Moreover, WHO is also leading the development of the first-ever State of the World’s Nursing report which will be launched in 2020.
Florence Nightingale
- Florence Nightingale was a British nurse, statistician, and social reformer who is also considered as a foundational philosopher of modern nursing.
- She was born in Florence, Italy, on May 12, 1820. The year 2020 marks a bicentenary year of her birth.
- During the Crimean War, she and a team of nurses improved the unsanitary conditions at a British base hospital, greatly reducing the death count. Her writings sparked worldwide health care reform.
- She was known for her night rounds to aid the wounded, establishing her image as the 'Lady with the Lamp’.
