How are hospitals in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) coping with the large number of children infected with HIV? Can hospital staff deal with the increasing workload? What can hospitals in the developed world do to help?
Human Resources
Helping hand - easing the burden of HIV on child health services in Africa
How are African hospitals coping with the rising burden of HIV?
How is the HIV/AIDS epidemic affecting healthcare systems in developing countries? Can existing services cope? Two-thirds of people infected with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa. Research by the UK Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine has examined the effect of high HIV prevalence on healthcare services in Kenya and South Africa.
Seeing red: training healthworkers to screen for anaemia in pregnancy
Anaemia affects around two billion people worldwide. Pregnant women and children are the major groups at risk. The World Health Organisation (WHO)recommends anaemia screening for all pregnant women and has developed a simple Haemoglobin Colour Scale test. Can this test be used reliably in regions with limited resources? How effective is the WHO-recommended training programme?
Zambia paralysed by by workers' strike
Some 80000 striking state workers in Zambia vowed yesterday to pursue a work stoppage which has paralysed operations in ministries and hospitals if their pay demands were not met, a trade union leader said. Zambia Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) deputy president Japhet Moonde said union leaders presented their demands for a 100 percent pay hike to Vice President Enos Kavindele yesterday, as the strike entered its second week.
Maternity Issues a National Obligation
This week, Nairobi hosted an important workshop to discuss the International Labour Organisation's Maternity Protection Convention.
A striking feature of the meeting was the low-level of involvement by both the Government and the Central Organisation of Trade Unions (Cotu).
As one speaker reminded the participants, women - biologically the only ones equipped to carry and bear children - should not be penalised for this vital role. Thus the campaign to provide better maternity protection is not a women's issue. It is a social responsibility that should be borne by all. ILO Convention 183 aims to provide better working conditions and terms for expectant and nursing mothers, including adequate paid leave and protection from discrimination, and a working environment that may harm the health of mother and child.
Patients' Distress Deepens As Lagos Doctors Join Strike
As expected, the traditional toll on human lives and welfare that usually attends doctors' strike has set in nationwide with patients and their
relations running hither and you for succour but getting none-except in private hospitals. Yet, the gladiators - the federal government and the Nigerian Medical Association - are showing no signs of calling a truce.
Public sector bosses could face super union
PUBLIC sector management should brace itself to face a much stronger union if the merger plans by affiliates of the Congress of SA Trade Unions organising in this sector succeed. All Cosatu public service unions will meet in the middle of June to discuss forming a single public sector union. This development is in line with Cosatu's resolution, adopted by the federation's 1991 and 1997 congresses, which called for the establishment of super unions or cartels by way of mergers. Two other Cosatu affiliates, the National Education, Health and Allied Workers' Union (Nehawu) and the SA Municipal Workers' Union (Samwu), are already involved in a merger plan.
Social Capital and Civil Society
Fukuyama, Francis; IMF Institute International Monetary Fund - Working Paper WP/00/74, 2000
Social capital is important to the efficient functioning of modern economies and is the sine qua non of stable liberal democracy. It constitutes the cultural component of modern societies, which in other respects have been organized since the Enlightenment on the basis of formal institutions, the rule of law, and rationality. Building social capital has typically been seen as a task for "second generation" economic reform; but unlike economic policies or even economic institutions, social capital can not be so easily created or shaped by public policy. This paper define social capital, explore its economic and political functions, as well as its origins and make some suggestions for can it be cultivated.