Ramatu Jalloh, 38, from Sierra Leone, has put frontline health workers front and centre on the world stage during the COVID-19 pandemic.

‘I’m ready for the fight,’ says Ramatu Jalloh, an inspirational Community Health Worker (CHW) from Sierra Leone. ‘People are scared, but we are there on the front line, making sure they have the right information to prevent (COVID-19).’

Ramatu has 12 years of experience as a frontline health worker in Sierra Leone and Nigeria. She and the 10 CHWs whom she supervises are committed to reaching the unreachable. ‘No matter how high a mountain,’ she says, ‘it will never stop our CHWs from reaching the sick. But what we need is PPE. What we need is support from around the world’.

Ramatu has won that support. In 2020 at the Skoll World Forum, she described her own battle with HIV and called for protection for all frontline health workers, especially those who are immunocompromised.  ‘When you protect a CHW, you are protecting the nation,’ she said, because ‘we are the link between the community and the health facility’. Her passionate advocacy led to the COVID-19 Action Fund for Africa which has so far raised nearly $USD 20 million to provide over 100 million pieces of PPE to hundreds of thousands of frontline health workers worldwide.

Ramatu has inspired a growing network of CHW advocates from around the globe who watch her speeches and see how advocacy by CHWs for CHWs can be a true catalyst for change.