"With their distinctive blue saris, 52,000 female community-health volunteers are at the front lines of medical care in Nepal. Since 1988, they’ve provided maternal and child health information and health services throughout the Himalayan kingdom, treating diarrhea and pneumonia, the primary causes of childhood mortality, as well as other diseases that crop up among Nepal’s rural-dwelling citizens... Other countries have launched similar programs, but Nepal has “one of the biggest, longest running successful programs in the world,” said Claire Glenton, senior scientist at the Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services."