Notes on nursing: nurses making a difference in global health.

We celebrate, in 2010, the centenary of the death of Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) and to commemorate this historical fact, the United Nations have proposed the “International Year of the Nurse”, as an initiative to “give credit to the voices, values and knowledge of these professionals”, past and present, who have demonstrated how individual and collective actions can make the “world more healthy and dignified”(1-2).