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All posts tagged Africa

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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The power of mobile technology in global health

By Patricia Mechael, Executive Director, mHealth Alliance

The earliest insight I gained while studying the use of mobile technology to support global health efforts is that a mobile phone is only as good as the people and services that it connects. While this insight dates back to my PhD research…

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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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What’s next after a successful ITN mass campaign to achieve universal coverage?

By Albert Kilian, Technical Director, Tropical Health LLP

In a recently published article, Zöllner and colleagues provide a very interesting assessment of ownership and equity of insecticide treated nets (ITN) following a mass distribution campaign in Burkina Faso. They report results from two representative household surveys in the Nouna…

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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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Why are women at higher risk of HIV than men in sub-Saharan Africa?

By Shelley Lees

HIV is the leading cause of death amongst women of reproductive age worldwide. In sub-Saharan Africa, the HIV epidemic is disproportionally affecting women – they make up 60% of those living with HIV in the region. These inequalities are driven by gender norms related to masculinity and…

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Physician salaries: one ingredient in the cake of retention

By Kate Tulenko

With the global migration of health workers increasing and population growth outstripping the training of new health workers in more and more countries, there is increasing emphasis on finding effective ways to retain health workers in country. In an effort to add light to this issue Edward…

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The road to universal health coverage in Kenya

By Adam Koon

Successful health finance reforms in several upper and lower middle-income countries have helped drive universal health coverage (UHC) to the top of the global health agenda. Unfortunately, low-income countries have few examples to guide them towards UHC. Instead they will largely be weighing the positive…

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