At Uptake Strategies, we are supporting the efforts of today’s Comic Relief 2019.
Founded in the UK in 1985, Comic Relief has aided the mission of providing enhanced levels of healthcare, vaccinations and improved quality of life to many worldwide, as well as their more recent focus on raising awareness of the impact of mental health on everyday life. You might know it as the day to raise money for charity through wearing a ‘Red Nose’ but Comic Relief has had an undeniable impact on the advancement of bringing improved health to all…
IMMUNISATION
Almost half of all child deaths across the world are due to preventable, infectious diseases. Most countries have now introduced immunisation programmes but many children are still not vaccinated adequately. This is where Comic Relief comes in.
Through the efforts of Comic Relief, children across the globe have received life-saving vaccines. In 2016, Comic Relief partnered with the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation to give £4 million to supply three crucial vaccines – Pentavalent, Pneumococcal and Rotavirus – to over 100,000 children across several African countries, changing the lives of many families who are now able to immunise their children from birth.
MALARIA
Malaria, a disease caused by the Plasmodium parasite, is another key focus at the heart of Comic Relief. This life-altering disease, whose symptoms include fever, headaches, muscle pains and vomiting, can cause anaemia, permanent learning disabilities and even death if it is not diagnosed and treated quickly.
Even more unsettling, Malaria has killed more people than all wars, throughout human history, combined and despite the advancement of pharmaceutical solutions, it still kills over 250,000 children under the age of five each year throughout Africa alone.
However, Comic Relief are working to change this. Through educating communities, training health workers, providing access to testing kits, mosquito nets and anti-malarial drugs they have had an undeniable impact on the survival and prevention rates across Africa. So much so that since 2000 child malaria death rates in Africa have dropped by 71%.
MENTAL HEALTH
In the UK alone, one in four adults will experience a mental health problem over the course of a year, yet because of the stigma surrounding it, many people don’t seek help. Comic Relief is working towards changing this through raising awareness about mental health, how common it is and where people can get help.
Mental health can affect anyone, with 5,821 suicides recorded in the UK in 2017 alone, it is something that Comic Relief is working tirelessly to address. A donation to Comic Relief will aid the provision of outreach work in hospital wards, weekly community sessions and one-to-one support for young people to move into volunteering and training opportunities, in addition to supporting the Red Nose Day project, which focuses on helping young people feel less isolated and gain practical life-skills; all contributing to longer-term recovery.
We hope that you can join the Uptake Strategies team in supporting this amazing cause and put on your Red Noses like those who have been doing so since 1988. Have a look at our ‘Chronology of noses’ and see how many you can remember…
References:
https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/statistics/mental-health-statistics-suicide
