Tag: global health initiative
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Feb 9, 2011
New Kaiser Family Foundation Report : A Country Analysis of the US Global Health Initiative
A new report from the Kaiser Family Foundation examines funding and demographic data for countries receiving support under the Global Health Initiative (GHI), the Obama Administration’s six-year effort aimed at improving the health and lives of people in the developing world. Read the report here.
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Oct 4, 2010
Ensuring a Legacy: The Health Workforce Component of the Global Health Initiative
Maurice I. Middleberg When we talk about the “health workforce crisis” or “human resources for health,” this abstract language can obscure the suffering of people in need. A woman dies in labor because she can’t reach a properly trained and supported health worker. A child succumbs to pneumonia. A farmer is felled by malaria. A minor injury at work becomes a badly infected wound. The cost in death, pain, disrupted families, and lost productivity mounts. All of this can be prevented or treated by introducing a skilled health worker. The US Government’s Global Health Initiative has commendable goals and targets , including “Increased numbers of trained health workers and community workers appropriately deployed in the country.” And Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently spoke eloquently of our national commitment to global health, saying that “Few investments are more consistent with all of our values and few are more sound.” But our goals and values will not be realized where there is no health worker. The GHI can be achieved only if health workers are present. The basic tenets of a health... Read More » -
Sep 28, 2010
Key Elements of a Health Workforce Strategy for the Global Health Initiative
In sub-Saharan Africa, a woman is likely to deliver her baby without a skilled birth attendant. That makes her chance of dying unacceptably high. Skilled attendants are present at only 47% of deliveries, and there is one maternal death for every 100 live births. Contrast this with Southeast Asia, where 73% of deliveries take place with a skilled birth attendant and there is one maternal death for every 300 live births. The maternal mortality ratio is one third of that in sub-Saharan Africa. Skilled health workers save lives We know we need more skilled health workers. Fortunately, the Obama Administration’s Global Health Initiative focuses attention on the need for more health workers with the skills and training to help their communities, as I commended in my previous post . One of the GHI’s targets is “Increased numbers of trained health workers and community workers appropriately deployed in the country.” This is laudable. However, the GHI needs a strategy for the health workforce component. This absence stands in marked contrast to the so-called vertical programs, such as family planning, HIV/AIDS, malaria, and maternal and child... Read More » -
Aug 18, 2010
From Polio to PEPFAR and Beyond: Can the GHI Reform the Way We Do Global Health?
For many in the blogopshere [ 1 ], [ 2 ] and the Twitter world Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s speech on Monday reenergized our commitment to the Global Health Initiative (GHI) and the promise of transforming the way we practice global health work. Like many, I was left with questions of how exactly this initiative will work, but Clinton’s passing reference to the polio outbreak in northern Nigeria also reminded me of the imperative that GHI succeed. In 1999, Nigeria saw a spike of 981 polio cases but by 2001, only two years later, the country had made steady progress towards eradicating this preventable disease, reporting only 56 cases. Soon after, however, rumors that the polio vaccine could sterilize children began to circulate and were interpreted in the predominantly Muslim northern Nigeria as a ploy to curb population growth in Muslim communities. The United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) were all working in the country at the time. Yet, as Clinton noted in her speech, “We had our... Read More »
