Tag: global health
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Apr 8, 2011
Global Health and American Moral Power
This blog entry was originally published at ONE Blog . My parents survived the Holocaust; they were Jewish children who spent the war in hiding in France. After the war, they received CARE packages from America. The Marshall Plan helped rebuild France. I once asked my mother what this meant to her. She said, “After all we had been through, it reminded me that there were still good people in the world.” At its best, our country is the most powerful force for good the world has ever known. The force of our values has shaped the world since my parents were children. Military might and economic preeminence rest upon the foundation of our values. Budgets are moral documents. They say what is important and unimportant to us as a people and as a nation. Some believe America can no longer afford to be a force for good in the world. I disagree. I’m old enough to have lived through multiple cycles of economic distress. American ingenuity and resilience have revived our country every time. That will happen again. We must keep our moral compass on the road to economic vitality. Because the American moral compass is unwavering during... Read More » -
Jan 28, 2011
Exploring the Siriraj Hospital at the Second Global Forum on HRH
This post was originally published on the Capacity Plus blog . Despite the 6:30 a.m. reporting time, the field trip to Siriraj Hospital in Bangkok—part of the Second Global Forum on Human Resources for Health —turned out to be one of the best events of the week. Siriraj Hospital, part of Mahidol University, is the oldest and largest hospital in Thailand. We were told that the attached medical school produces about a quarter of all Thai medical graduates. Besides its numerical strength, the school also pays great attention to a number of issues relevant to the transformative scale-up of health worker education . Changing the urban/rural maldistribution Acknowledging the gross disparity in health worker density between urban and rural areas, the medical school has introduced two initiatives that encourage rural practice among medical school graduates. First, it mandates that all medical school graduates complete a three-year rotation in a rural area. Second, the Faculty of Medicine started a rural-track medical degree that enrolls students from rural areas. These students then undergo their practical education in rural... Read More » -
Aug 27, 2010
Caught Our Eye
News & Views From the Guttmacher Policy Review , “ 'I Am Who I Serve'—Community Health Workers In Family Planning Programs ” From The New Vision , “ Community involvement key to the HIV/AIDS fight ” From the New York Times , “ German Court Finds HIV Singer Guilty ” and “ Technology: Light and Cheap, Student’s Microscope Holds Promise for Tuberculosis Tests ” From The Herald Sun , “ Training lay health workers envisioned ” From the Jamaica Information Service, “ Government Strengthening Capacity of Health Workforce ” From VoiceofAmerica.com, “ US Will Give Mozambique $1 Billion to Fight HIV ” From Reuters, “ Developing nations to bear cancer brunt ” From the Global Health Magazine , “ From the Front Lines of the Global AIDS Fight ” From UNC’s Institute for Global Health and Infectious Disease, “ Study shows AIDS virus different in semen versus blood ” From DFID, “ World Mosquito Day 2010 ” From PLOS Medicine, “ Using Touchscreen Electronic Medical Record Systems to Support and Monitor... Read More » -
Aug 20, 2010
Caught Our Eye
News & Views From Human Resources for Health , “ Health workforce responses to global health initiatives funding: a comparison of Malawi and Zambia ” From UNICEF.org, “ Health workers build a network of support for new mothers in Uzbekistan ” From ICTWorks.org, “ Gordon Brown Says Africa's Best Hope is ICT ” From Scientific American , “ Are global disease campaigns worsening basic medical care in poor countries? ” From IRIN News, “ Africa: A teabag that could save millions ,” “ Ethiopia: Empowering women to fight FGM/C ,” “ Ethiopia: Tackling the perils of pregnancy ” From the Center for Global Development, “ Secretary Clinton on the Global Health Initiative: More on the WHAT and the WHO, but Not the HOW ” From PoliticsDaily.com, “ Hillary Clinton Touts Global Health Initiative as Key Foreign Policy Tool ” From RHRealityCheck.com, “ The Live & Living MDG5 Shadow Report in Asia! ” From allAfrica.com, “ Mozambique: Government and NGO's Take Over HIV/Aids Management Programs ” From The Times of India , “... Read More » -
Aug 6, 2010
Caught Our Eye
Articles in the news and from journals that grabbed our attention this week. In the Washington Post , “ The Big Money: Maybe it's job retraining that needs to be retooled ” From CNN, “ Cell phones save lives in Rwandan villages ” and “ Why women are economic backbone of Rwanda ” In the Lancet , “ ART in low-resource settings: how to do more with less ” From NPR, ” A Broader Way of Measuring Poverty Proves Controversial ” In the American Journal of Public Health , “ The POTENT LEVER of TOIL Nursing Development and Exportation in the Postcolonial Philippines ” In New York Times , “ Drama! Intrigue! A Mystery? No, Malaria’s Story ,” a book review The Open Society Institute launches What Works for Women & Girls, Evidence for HIV/AIDS Interventions , a new website [ return to main blog page ] Read More » -
Aug 3, 2010
Preventing AIDS Deaths Need Not Be a Fight: A Health Systems Approach
This post was originally published on the CapacityPlus blog (August 2, 2010). In the Washington Post article “Rage, panic in AIDS fight” , David Brown alleges that the goal of health systems strengthening is “hard-to-define.” In fact, it is not. Whatever the disease or health sector of priority—be it HIV/AIDS, malaria, family planning, labor and delivery, or pneumonia—six components of the health system must be functioning and integrated in order for health impacts to be maximized. These components are: Service delivery Medical products, vaccines, and technology Financing Health information systems Leadership and governance The health workforce—arguably most important of all. The challenge has not been that health systems are hard to define, but rather that advocates for funding for specific diseases are generating parallel health systems that are not integrated, not sustainable, and not cost-effective. While HIV/AIDS activists lobby for funding in the face of 2.5 million people who die each year from HIV/AIDS, Ezekiel J. Emanuel , President Obama’s special adviser for health policy,... Read More » -
Jul 26, 2010
The Evolving Global Health Landscape: GHI Can Spearhead a New Era of Partnership
As I shared in an earlier blog posting , IntraHealth continues to reflect on the evolving role of international organizations in the rapidly changing global health landscape. As more information is announced about the US Global Health Initiative (GHI), we continue to be encouraged by the thoughtful and comprehensive approach that our government is taking in designing and rolling out this Initiative. We are also pleased by the level of transparency the government is exhibiting in keeping the public aware of its evolving plans. This is evidenced both by the selection of the “GHI Plus” countries and the establishment of a “whole of government” approach to GHI governance and implementation. USAID and its development partners have had productive, decades-long relationships with the governments and civil society actors in the eight selected GHI Plus countries: Bangladesh , Ethiopia , Guatemala , Kenya , Malawi , Mali , Nepal and Rwanda . IntraHealth is proud to have worked in partnership with each of these countries, in some cases for up to 30 years. Over that time span, the global health community has witnessed great progress in the... Read More » -
Jun 11, 2010
Introducing Zulfiya Chariyeva, Intern at IntraHealth
Zulfiya Chariyeva recently joined IntraHealth International as an intern. Last week Zulfiya and I discussed what brought her to IntraHealth and the global health field. —Heather Valli, IntraHealth Web Editor Q: Zulfiya, Can you tell me a little bit about yourself? A: I’m originally from Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. I studied Economics and Sociology at St. Petersburg State University in St. Petersburg, Russia. I received my MA in Economics from the Institute of Management, Economics, and Strategic Research in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and my MPH from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I’m currently working toward a PhD in Health Behavior and Health Education at UNC-Chapel Hill. Q: When did you first hear about public health? A: When I was in Turkmenistan I worked for ZdravPlus (note: a USAID-funded project led by Abt) for two years as a “health marketing specialist”. My goal was to promote health to mothers of children who had diarrhea and acute respiratory conditions. Women in these rural areas didn’t have a lot of training in how to take care of their kids’ medical needs. After women in the program became more... Read More » -
May 26, 2010
Nyakubawa Ambasaderi, mwarakoze cyane kudusura!*
Left to right: Laura Hoemeke, Director of Strategic Communications; Bogdan Leja, International Liaison Officer for UNC Chapel Hill; Carol Rugege, Education Officer for the Rwandan Embassy; Pape Gaye, CEO and President of IntraHealth; James Kimonyo, Rwandan Ambassador to the US; Michel Bezy What a pleasure for IntraHealth to be able to host Rwanda’s Ambassador to the US, His Excellency James Kimonyo, at our headquarters offices here in North Carolina last week! I felt particularly honored to participate in the visit, having spent the past five years living in Kigali and overseeing the USAID-funded Twubakane Decentralization and Health Program. I felt like I was back in Kigali when the Ambassador reminded us of how important family planning and population issues are to Rwanda’s future social and economic development, and asked some wonderful questions about the best approaches to meet the country’s ambitious targets and the Millennium Development Goals. We discussed Rwanda’s overall successes in the health sector in recent years, including dramatic increases in the use of modern family planning methods and decreases... Read More » -
Apr 13, 2010
The IntraHealth Timeline
As we look forward to IntraHealth’s 30th Anniversary Event on April 22nd, we invite you to take a walk with us through IntraHealth’s last 30 years on our new interactive timeline. Take a look at this earlier post to learn more about the development of the timeline, and use the comments to share additional events and perspectives on IntraHealth’s history or key moments in global health.
—Corinne Farrell
