"We - the nurses and concerned citizens of the global community - hereby dedicate ourselves to achieve a healthy world.
We declare our willingness to unite in a program of action, to share information and solutions and improve health conditions for all humanity - locally, nationally and globally.
We further resolve to adopt personal practices and to implement public policies in our communities and nations - making this goal achievable and inevitable - beginning today in our own lives, in the lives of our nations and in the world at large."
We declare our willingness to unite in a program of action, to share information and solutions and improve health conditions for all humanity - locally, nationally and globally.
We further resolve to adopt personal practices and to implement public policies in our communities and nations - making this goal achievable and inevitable - beginning today in our own lives, in the lives of our nations and in the world at large."
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The first words of the Nightingale Declaration are modelled after the Preamble to the founding Charter of the United Nations (1945) with the words, "We the people of the United Nations..."
The Declaration also reflects the deep and wide legacy of Florence Nightingale— the famous nurse who worked for 50 years to achieve the health of all peoples and for the health of the world. We believe she would have been quite pleased to sign this Declaration! 
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More than 300 Nursing & Midwifery leaders from across the world recited this 'Nightingale Declaration for a Health World' together during the 2020 Conference of the Commonwealth Nurses & Midwives Federation on March 7, 2020 at the Royal College of Physicians in London, UK.
Crafted at an international nursing conference in Toronto in 2003—during a global SARS epidemic, where patients and nurses were dying at hospitals nearby—this Declaration has become the foundational credo for all activities of the Nightingale Initiative for Global Health. It clarifies and commits to our shared goals and shared purposes—to work together to build a better world for everyone.
Now also available:
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Image Credits: Candles accessed for non-profit use from the clipart-library.com. Nightingale signature from Wikimedia—in the public domain. / Many candles held by nurses, from NIGH's archives.