25 April 2002 | Geneva | To meet the 2010 target of cutting malaria deaths in half - agreed in Abuja by African leaders on this day two years ago - community mobilization is essential in controlling the disease and providing prompt access to treatment. Powerful new combination therapies, including the Chinese herb derivative artemisinin, are highly effective against malaria and the parasite does not easily develop resistance to them. New financial arrangements are needed so that developing countries can make use of these medicines, which are much more expensive than conventional, increasingly ineffective ones.
Governance and participation in health
Africa Malaria Day: Mobilized communities and use of effective new drug combinations vital
Further details: /newsletter/id/29152
Cities and Towns: Women, Poverty and HIV/AIDS
The Third Forum of the World Alliance of Cities against Poverty (WACAP) held in Huy, Belgium, from 10-12 April, provided an opportunity for representatives to develop partnerships. Participants from 96 countries shared experiences on how they are becoming increasingly involved in addressing the impact of HIV/AIDS, particularly on women. The Alliance of Mayors Initiative for Community Action on AIDS (AMICAALL), set up with support from UNAIDS to help translate the goals of the IPAA into concrete actions, is multisectoral and emphasises partnerships between local government, civil society, including the private sector and communities, mayors and municipal leaders in Africa. Through their strategy they are working through exiting cities' networks as well as with other partners and networks to ensure that HIV/AIDS is integrated into municipal agendas. For more information please contact Mina Mauerstein-Bail.
Contact: mina.mauerstein-bail@undp.org
Manuscripts for HSR Special Issue on Social Determinants of Health
With the support of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Health Services Research (HSR) is planning a special issue focusing on the social determinants of health, to provide a forum for presenting the latest research and policy analysis to a broad audience of researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. There is ample evidence that most health policymakers, both at state and federal levels, do not understand how policy relating to non-medical determinants of health can be incorporated into health policy. Conversely, policymakers in such fields as education, transportation, or housing rarely see that there are major health implications to the choices that they make. Education is needed in both directions. Topics of interest include but are not limited to social inequalities in health by socioeconomic position, race/ethnicity, gender, etc.; the role of a broad range of psychosocial factors in health at the level of individuals, neighborhoods, and communities, and broader sociopolitical units; the interconnections and interactions between and among social and biological-chemical-physical determinants of health; and implications of social determinants of health for health care or health services research, practice, and policy. Jim House, Nicole Lurie, and Catherine McLaughlin will serve as co-editors of the special HSR issue. September 1, 2002 is the deadline for submission. The planned publication date is July 2003.
THE PEOPLE'S HEALTH MOVEMENT (PHM):
TIME TO TAKE STOCK
Claudio Schuftan
The People's Charter for Health (PCH), The PHM's manifesto, is one and a half years old. It has been disseminated quite widely world-wide.
2. The world has moved on since. But, clearly, for the worse in almost all fronts the PHM has strong feelings about. Most worrisome is the fact that most of the world's shifts for the worse have become so depressingly predictable, and nobody seems to be succeeding in doing much about them.
3. The PCH's 'Call for Action' predicted much of what we are witnessing; we were "on the dot". So, to continue to be "on the dot", we simply have to reassess where we are and what we have, and have not, achieved. Just to make yet further predictions of doom would be to utterly fail all that and those we stand for.
Further details: /newsletter/id/29145
Assessing Participation in Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers:
A Desk-Based Synthesis of Experience in Sub-Saharan Africa
This desk review provides an update on practice and experiences of civil society participation in the development of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs). It was commissioned by Department for International Development (DFID) and conducted from August–October 2001 by the Participation Group at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) in the UK.
Voices of the Poor: Crying Out for Change
Deepa Narayan, Robert Chambers, Meera K. Shah and Patti Petesch - 2001
This book is based on the realities of poor people. It draws upon research conducted in 1999 involving 20,000 poor women and men from 23 countries. Despite very different political, social and economic contexts, there are striking similarities in poor people's experiences. The common theme underlying poor people's experiences is one of powerlessness. Powerlessness consists of multiple and interlocking dimensions of illbeing or poverty. The organisation of this book roughly follows the 10 dimensions of powerlessness and illbeing that emerge from the study. The remainder of the book presents methodology and the challenges faced in conducting the study.
CONCLUSIONS OF THE 1ST INTERNATIONAL FORUM FOR THE DEFENSE OF THE HEALTH OF PEOPLE
HEALTH AS AN ESSENTIAL HUMAN NEED, A RIGHT OF CITIZENS AND A PUBLIC GOOD
‘HEALTH FOR ALL IS POSSIBLE AND NECESSARY’
The participants of this Forum held in Porto Alegre – Brazil, January 29th and 30th, 2002, call on all the people of the world, who feel the imperative to build a fairer and more equitable societies to rally around this declaration to publicize it and to engage on sustained actions along its lines. We understand that this 2nd World Social Forum starts a new step on the fight for the universal respect of social rights, particularly the right to health since we understand health as the expression of the overall quality of life, and not only the issue of access to health services. We denounce to the world the devastating effects the macroeconomic adjustment policies and now the militarization of international relationships are having over the quality of people’s life. We affirm that these effects are not the neoliberal economic policies’ exceptional, accidental outcome, but the real essence of its logic that aims at maximizing profits, regardless of states’ aim at social welfare measures; these policies are dividing the world into a huge social apartheid where countries and regions are relegated to the condition of spectators of the immense accumulation of international capital; they invariably result in deep inequalities and a perpetuating social injustice. The rich ARE getting richer and the desperately poor poorer, more so women, children and the elderly. The poor of the world are left looking at the rich as ‘from the other side of the shopping mall windows’, searching for an elusive paradise which is denied to them by the economic order that socially segregates the world and ecologically disregards it.
Further details: /newsletter/id/29018
JOINT CALL FOR EC GOVERNMENT TO PROVIDE NEVIRAPINE IN PUBLIC HEALTH FACILITIES
The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and the Public Service Accountability Monitor (PSAM) call on the Eastern Cape Premier to follow the example of his Kwa-Zulu Natal counterpart and provide the anti-retroviral drug, nevirapine, to HIV-positive pregnant mothers in the province. This joint call is made after careful consideration of the resources available to the Department of Health in the province. Research published by the Eastern Cape Department of Health, in the journal Epidemiological Notes, recognises that over 20% of women attending antenatal clinics in the province tested HIV positive in 2000. As a result it is estimated that in excess of 10 500 babies are born HIV positive in the Eastern Cape each year. TAC/PSAM believe that on the strength of the pilot studies conducted in Kwa-Zulu Natal, which delivered a 100% success rate, the lives of these infants could have been saved through the provision of nevirapine to pregnant mothers in the Eastern Cape.
Further details: /newsletter/id/29043
Zimbabwe: Global Campaign to End Catholic Bishops' Ban on Condoms Launched
The first global campaign to end the Catholic bishops' ban on condoms has been launched in Zimbabwe with a billboard in Harare and ad in The Herald carrying the message "Banning Condoms Kills" and "Catholic People Care-Do Our Bishops?" The prominently placed advertisements are part of an unprecedented worldwide public education effort aimed at Catholics and non-Catholics alike to raise public awareness about the devastating effect of the Catholic bishops' ban on condoms in preventing new HIV/AIDS infections. The campaign is being sponsored by Catholics for a Free Choice (CFFC).
Communities Organising for Health
Community Working Group on Health and TARSC. Editors: M. McCartney and R. Loewenson. November 2001
The story of the first years of the Community Working Group on Health in Zimbabwe, describing how the CWGH surveyed and met with over 20 membership-based community groups across Zimbabwe in 1997, to identify the major community concerns about health, and to devise effective strategies for dealing with them. Providing a concise and comprehensive overview of the issues facing the health sector in Zimbabwe, problems associated with community participation, and a discussion of the best strategies for community based advocacy and action.
Contact: tarsc@mweb.co.zw