Eighty-five countries last month signed a statement reaffirming commitment to reproductive health- and HIV/AIDS-related population and health goals agreed to 10 years ago at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt, the AP/Philadelphia Inquirer reports. More than 250 world leaders - including presidents, prime ministers and Nobel Prize winners - endorsed the goals of ensuring a woman's right to education, health care and reproductive choices. Despite endorsement by the entire European Union, China, Japan, Indonesia, Pakistan and more than 12 African nations, the Bush administration refused to support the statement because it mentioned upholding "sexual rights" - a term that the administration says has no "agreed definition" in the international community.
Equity in Health
The U.S. Agency for International Development plans to give Zambia $24 million to combat AIDS and malaria and improve the quality of drinking water, the U.S. embassy in Lusaka, Zambia, said last Tuesday in a statement, the Associated Press reports. The money will be used to fund health education programs - coordinated by the government and the Society for Family Health - over the next six years. Zambia on Tuesday banned free condom distribution in schools just as USAID announced its funding for HIV/AIDS programs, with condom distribution a "key part of the strategy," Reuters reports.
This Lancet article calls on the WHO to take the lead in championing the goal of “Universal access to essential health-care information by 2015” or “Health Information for All”. Published to coincide with the launch of the Global Review of Access to Health Information in Developing Countries, the paper argues that access to information is key to meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). While many initiatives have improved access over the past ten years, there is still much to be done.
As a rising number of HIV/AIDS patients turn to already over-stretched public sector facilities, the ongoing humanitarian crisis is undermining the quality of care in Southern Africa's health system. Two years after committing themselves to respond to the humanitarian emergency, health ministers from the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) are now faced with "vicious and destructive spirals" of rising HIV/AIDS deaths and deepening poverty, the World Health Organisation (WHO) Regional Office for Africa said in a statement.
Improved measures to tackle acute malnutrition in Mozambique are expected to save the lives of thousands of children and adults. During a five-day workshop supported by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) last week, about 100 health workers in the capital, Maputo, adopted a protocol outlining step-by-step guidelines for the management of acute malnutrition in children.
Developed countries are failing to live up to their commitments to fund sexual and reproductive health care leaving poorer countries to pick up the bill, says a new UN report. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) report titled 'The Cairo Consensus at Ten: Population, Reproductive Health and the Global Effort to End Poverty' says poor countries themselves are providing around 40 percent of the money spent on reproductive health programmes and HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment.
Global efforts to control rising levels of tuberculosis are not working and more needs to be done to reduce infections from the deadly airborne disease, public health experts said on Tuesday. The World Health Organization (WHO) introduced a strategy in 1993 aimed at halving deaths over the next decade from the contagious illness that kills about 2 million people each year. But researchers at Harvard University in the United States said a decade after the DOTS (Directly Observed Treatment, Short-course) plan was introduced, the global burden of TB continues to rise.
Dr Luis Gomes Sambo was nominated by the WHO Regional Committee for Africa for the post of WHO Regional Director for Africa. Dr Sambo, 52, of Angolan nationality, is currently the Director of Programme Management at the WHO Regional Office for Africa (AFRO), where he is responsible for the management and operation of the programmes of WHO in the African region.
What does equity in health and health care mean? Equality? A basic minimum standard of service? A system of entitlements?Global health professionals have struggled with a definition for some time. Dr Rene Loewenson, a Zimbabwean epidemiologist, presents a Southern African view: equity in health implies addressing differences in health status that are unnecessary, avoidable, and unfair, she says. This also means understanding and influencing, not only the way society allocates health resources, but the power relations involved.
This article, published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), focuses on health as central to the achievement of all the millennium development goals (MDGs). Key challenges for health improvement include reversing the global HIV/AIDS epidemic and reducing child and maternal mortality. The authors acknowledge the need for more aid but argue that this is only part of the picture. To effectively absorb increases in aid, poor countries need strong, equitable health systems and institutions. They also need the capacity to deliver services, which includes having enough skilled staff.