Global Health | Commons

The HRH Global Resource Center has a plethora of useful tools and resources for improving human resources for health. Three recent additions are:

• Support Tools for Evidence-Informed Health Policymaking
• Promising Practices to Build Human Resources Capacity in HIV Strategic Information
• Global Experience of Community Health Workers for Delivery of Health Related Millennium Development Goals: A Systematic Review, Country Case Studies, and Recommendations for Integration into National Health Systems 

Posted by at 02:30 PM 0 Comments

Dr Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization, spoke at the 60 th Session of the WHO’s Regional Committee for Africa in Equatorial Guinea yesterday.  (Monday, August 30)  Her message encouraged African leaders that the health-related MDGs can be met by the 2015 deadline. Citing a recent report by the World Economic Forum, she noted that African economies have fared relatively well in the world financial crisis, and show potential for growth. Despite the real impact of the global crisis, climate change, and other problems, Chan noted that the first decade of this century “saw the creation of numerous global health initiatives, new funding mechanisms, and new financial instruments.” Chan added that “investment in health development is working,” citing increased access to anti retroviral therapy for AIDS, reductions in fertility as well as maternal and child mortality rates, and improvements in malaria prevention and treatment.  She noted the importance of good governance and democracy in supporting achievement of the health-related MDGs which, she said, “are within the reach of African nations.” A... » Read more

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In “Chinese doctors are under threat” The Lancet gives a quick glance at some of the pressures of practicing medicine in China, including financial strain and personal safety concerns, and the need for reform in the Chinese health system.

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Models and Tools for Health Workforce Planning and Projections, © WHO, 2010.

The objective of this paper is to take stock of the available methods and tools for health workforce planning and projections, and to describe the processes and resources needed to undertake such an exercise. The paper presents an overview of workforce projection models and their application, describes the perationalization of selected models, and discusses the pathways by which projection results can be optimized to inform decision-making for policies and programs. This paper can be downloaded from the HRH Global Resource Center

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The Center for Global Development’s August 2010 working paper analyzing country MDG performance—Who Are the MDG Trailblazers?—includes a great overview, and a few surprises.  Some of the MDG stars, for example, are not the stars of economic development.  Some of the high-MDG-performing countries with pervasive high rates of poverty include Honduras, Laos, Ethiopia, Uganda, Burkina Faso, Nepal, Cambodia, and Ghana.  Less surprising, many of the poorest performance countries are those still effected by conflict situations.  As we approach the upcoming MDG Summit, which will be held September 20-22 in New York, it is fascinating to look at the figures behind the fanfare.  This report provides the most up-to-date data available. 

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The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting looks at the rise of tuberculosis that has paralleled the crumbling of health systems in Moldova in, “As Health System Declined, TB Increased.”

In Human Resources for Health, “Health workforce responses to global health initiatives funding: a comparison of Malawi and Zambia,” shows that a large increase in international funds to support global health resulted in more lower-level health workers and modest growth in clinical staff in Malawi. In Zambia, however, the number of clinical staff stagnated despite increased  international funding.

 

Posted by IntraHealth at 11:25 AM 0 Comments

CARE and the International Center for Research on Women recently released Challenge and Change: Integrating the Challenge of Gender Norms and Sexuality in a Maternal Health Program. This report documents some of the processes undertaken to integrate gender and sexuality factors into a maternal health project in Uttar Pradesh, India, from 2007-2009. It's available through the HRH Global Resource Center.

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“Are global disease campaigns worsening basic medical care in poor countries?” asks Scientific American’s Katherine Harmon in her analysis of a recently published study, which suggests that efforts to ramp up curative care for certain diseases can also detract from health workers’ (and systems’) overall capacity to attend to other critical health conditions, or to provide basic preventative care, in understaffed and low resource regions of the world. One anecdote drawn from the study describes how, at a health center in Mali, where there was an influx of supplies and training to treat five common tropical diseases, researches noticed that although “training for the disease-centered programs helped staff improve delivery of the specific drugs,” there were “many ‘missed opportunities for curative care,’ such as sick or injured children who lined up for the targeted drug distribution but who were not given the care they needed for other conditions.” Read: Are global disease campaigns worsening basic medical care in poor countries? , Scientific American , August 18, 2010 Reference: Interactions... » Read more

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On Monday, August 15, 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton talked about the Obama administration's Global Health Initiative. A video and transcript of her speech is available on the US State Department website . Sarah Wildman provides an overview of Secretary Clinton's speech on Politics Daily . On Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton talked about the Obama administration’s Global Health Initiative, and its goal “to save the greatest possible number of lives, both by increasing our existing health programs and by building upon them to help countries develop their own capacity to improve the health of their own people.”  Clinton proposed six key elements:  1) working with countries to create and implement strategies for health based on their own needs and existing strengths, and helping them build capacity manage, oversee, coordinate, and operate health programs; 2) focusing on the needs and contributions of women and girls; 3) improving measurement and evaluation; 4) investing in innovation, especially tools that will help diagnose, prevent, and cure disease in communities that are often remote and poor in resources; 5) improving... » Read more

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Last week The Lancet published,  “Health workers lost to international bodies in poor countries,”* a commentary and a set of six recommendations from authors in The Gambia and the UK on how international organizations can strengthen the national health system in The Gambia rather than deplete its workforce.

*You will need to complete a free registration on The Lancet website in order to access the full text.

Posted by at 08:35 AM 0 Comments