All posts in low-income countries

Door-to-door vaccinators: risking their lives to help stop the spread of polio in Pakistan

By Svea Closser, Middlebury College

In the last two years, more than 60 people have been murdered delivering polio vaccine door-to-door to children in Pakistan. These workers are part of a global effort to eradicate polio; they’re working to create a firewall of vaccinated children that would…

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After Ebola: supporting frontline health workers

by Sophie Witter and Haja Wurie

The Ebola epidemic is taking a terrible toll on communities in West Africa. In Sierra Leone alone, as of the 2nd of November 2014, 1070 people have died since the outbreak started in May. CDC projections suggest that by January 2015, if nothing is…

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Divided we fall: how community organisation is key to beating HIV/AIDS

By Solenn Honorine, Médecins Sans Frontières

HIV still kills 1.6 million people every year, most of them in the poor countries of sub-Saharan Africa. In order to bring life-saving antiretroviral therapy (ART) to the 16 million who still need it worldwide, it is crucial to…

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3rd Global Symposium on Health Systems Research

The Health Policy and Planning team were busy at the Third Global Symposium on Health Systems Research in Cape Town last week.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A number of our editors were involved in organising and presenting at…

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Missing: confidence in Liberia’s health system

by Margaret E. Kruk, Associate Professor, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health

“Fear of Ebola breeds a terror of physicians” proclaimed an article in the New York Times recently, observing that sick people in rural areas were more comfortable with seeking help from traditional healers than health system workers…

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Applying behavioural economics to public policy

by Saugato Datta, Vice President, ideas42

Behavioural economics studies human behaviour in all its messy complexity. Its practitioners pay attention to all manner of things that standard neoclassical economics ignores (or waves away as unimportant: the context in which decisions are made, visual, aural or social cues, salience, social or…

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La suppression du paiement direct : en savons nous (vraiment) assez?

Valéry Ridde et Emilie Robert

«Je pense que la Banque était idéologique». Dans un entretien au Guardian début avril 2014 [i], le président de la Banque Mondiale surprit tout le monde en affirmant que son institution avait promu pendant des années le paiement direct au…

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Abolition of user fees: do we (really) know enough?

By Valéry Ridde and Emilie Robert, University of Montreal

“I think the bank was ideological”, in an interview with The Guardian last month the President of the World Bank surprised everyone by acknowledging that his institution had for years promoted user fees on the basis of an ideology.
Remember…

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Muddling through the jungle of hospital priority setting

By Lydia Kapiriri, Associate Professor, Department of Health, Aging and Society, McMaster University

Have you ever wondered why patient X goes to a hospital and gets all the treatment they need, yet, patient Y goes to the same hospital and somehow fails to get the treatment they need? I will…

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How much more evidence on community case management of pneumonia in sub-Saharan Africa?

By Joan Kalyango

Pneumonia is the leading cause of death among children under five years old worldwide, despite being preventable and treatable, mostly due to poor access to care. Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) contributes more than half of the total deaths due to pneumonia. Community case management of pneumonia (CCMp…

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