Good health is something that’s easy to take for granted.

But when you consider that 6,000 children die of diarrhoea each day, or that 2.2 million people die every year from diseases caught from contaminated water, or that 40 million people in the world are infected with HIV, you start to realise that for many people in the world, illness is extremely serious.

For all the time poor people are denied clean water, medicine and adequate health care, lives will continue to be lost unnecessarily. Good public health is also vital to economic development: if too many of the workforce are ill, the economy will suffer, and the poverty cycle will continue.

Oxfam’s health programme addresses four main themes: access to basic health services; access to essential medicines; access to water and sanitation; and HIV/AIDS response.

Oxfam works on health projects with some of the most marginalised and impoverished groups, and works with others to change policies and practices that affect people’s health. Oxfam is also renowned for its emergency humanitarian relief for those communities affected by conflict or natural disasters.

In this regard, Oxfam has particular expertise in the rapid supply of clean water to people displaced from their homes. Health forms an important component of Oxfam’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) campaign, which aims to cut the maternal mortality rate by 75 per cent, and reduce the number of child deaths by two-thirds, by 2015.