Watch Behind The Mask and Support Health Workers Around The World

Behind the Mask highlights the unique challenges of four healthcare workers from around the world, resulting from the political decisions that have exacerbated the COVID-19 crises. Told through the eyes of on-the-ground workers, the series also shows the similarities and shared struggles workers have faced as they’ve shouldered the burden of this global crisis.

The four episodes feature health workers from Zimbabwe, Brazil, Pakistan, and Tunisia:

• Trish (Zimbabwe): Trish is a nurse from Zimbabwe who organizes a protest pushing for higher wages, where she is arrested. Her story explores how underemployment, political corruption and lack of health funding have made working conditions impossible.

• Graciete (Brazil): Graciete is a nurse from Brazil who collects worker testimonies to build the legal case against Bolsonaro’s Government over the mishandling of COVID, which has gone all the way to the ICC. Her story explores government complicity and corruption, as well as international accountability.

• Hassena (Pakistan): Hassena is a Community Health Worker (CHW) in Pakistan who helps form a union and is now supporting other CHWs across Asia do the same. Her story explores the crucial role CHWs play in the global health system and fight for formal recognition, wages, and safe working conditions.

• Nawfel (Tunisia): Nawfel is a hospital administrator in Tunisia who is an active member of his union that won a Nobel Prize after helping lead a peaceful revolution. He helps his union plan a strike for more health employment and participates in a protest for hazard pay.

Throughout the series, audiences will get a close-up view of the day-to-day lives of healthcare workers, the struggles they face, the political decisions that have had negative consequences, and the ways they’re fighting for a better future for workers.

Impact Campaign

The series powerfully demonstrates how governments and international institutions have failed to invest in quality public health systems, undermining frontline workers across the world. The global impact campaign raises the voices of health workers to call on our leaders and the international community to implement measures to ensure that we are better equipped to respond to future crises.

This is centered around PSI’s call for a binding Global Pandemic Treaty, inclusive of these five key health worker demands:

1. Universal public healthcare

2. Better staffing, better conditions

3. Stronger health stockpiles and supply chains

4. Suspending patents on lifesaving supplies and medications

5. Reshaping the global economy to serve health outcomes

Each region featured in the series has its own impact goals to further support the work of unions and health workers.

Donations

As part of the local efforts in each of the four regions featured in the series, the campaign is supporting PSI’s call for donations to support Pakistan after devastating floods.

To learn more, visit the Pakistan Relief Fund Campaign page and please donate to the fund.