Tag: africa
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Feb 23, 2011
An Imperative to Act: Family Planning in West Africa
This blog was cross-posted on the Maternal Health Taskforce blog . Cliquez ici pour lire le blog en français. Earlier this month, I was in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso with delegates from eight French-speaking West African countries* for the conference, “ Family Planning in the context of Population and Development: the Urgency to Act .” What I heard was a lot of talk: conversations I have heard before about the need to convince people of “the importance of family planning,” and the desire to focus on family planning only as a means of birth spacing rather than as a critical tool that people need to exercise their rights to make informed choices about pregnancy and childbearing. Although millions of dollars have poured into West Africa to support family planning, it is clear that progress is slow. The World Health Organization’s recent publication “ Family planning in sub-Saharan Africa: progress or stagnation? ” shows that approval for family planning remains low in West Africa as does demand, particularly for limiting births. Although many people in West Africa report being unwilling or unready... Read More » -
Jan 6, 2010
Global Health and Open Source in Africa—Why Is It Important?
The term open source refers to software source materials or source codes made freely and openly available with permission to be redistributed, customized, repurposed and rebuilt, legally and most often without fees—as opposed to proprietary software where the codes are kept private, must be bought, and usually cannot be significantly modified by the user. Here’s a good definition from the Open Source Initiative http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd IntraHealth is an avid supporter of open source systems because we have found that they encourage collaboration, transparency and efficiency, while investing money into local capacity-building instead of software licenses. Open source allows for collaborative creativity as well as localized customization, and adaptation, while promoting independence and local enterprise. Even better, when significant contributions are made they can be shared openly and easily with others. According to independent market research , more than half of the world’s largest companies have implemented, are piloting, or are expanding their use of open source computing other studies put the number at 85% with continued... Read More »
