Giving Compass' Take:

• United Nations Foundation highlights the work of Felisa Hilbert in its Protectors of Progress series and explores her advocacy work for better global health. 

• Hilbert is an advocate for a United Nations Campaign called Shot@Life, which mobilizes funding for vaccine shots around the world. How can donors become a part of this movement toward SDG achievement? 

• Read more about the Protectors of Progress series. 

Felisa Hilbert was a young nurse when she first held a dying child in her arms.

She was working at a small rural health clinic in Mexico, her native country, when a young woman arrived carrying her sick son. It had taken three hours on a bus for this mother to reach the clinic. By the time they arrived, the boy was fatally ill and beyond saving.

For Felisa, it was a life-changing moment. She knew this child could have been saved. He had died of rotavirus, the most common cause of fatal diarrheal disease in infants and children worldwide — and one that can be prevented with a simple vaccine. Since then, she has dedicated her life — as a nurse, as a teacher, as a mother, as an advocate — to raising her voice and sharing her own firsthand experience that vaccines save lives.

We interviewed Felisa as part of our Protectors of Progress series, which highlights the stories of everyday individuals across the globe who are stepping up in their communities to help realize the promise of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a global roadmap for the future adopted by all UN member states in 2015. While there is a lot of work to be done to achieve the SDGs, advocates like Felisa show that it’s possible to protect — and advance — progress when we take action.

How does your work as an advocate for vaccines connect to your background?

Felisa Hilbert: I was born and raised in Mexico, then trained to work in health care as a registered nurse. I was also a teacher. So I am very passionate about global health and preventive medicine. When you’re talking about the global development goals, I have two things that are very strong to me — education and global health.

Read the full article about Protectors of Progress by Chandler Green and MJ Altman at United Nations Foundation