The Health Systems Global Africa Region webinar on “how to submit a successful organised session abstract” will be to offer tips on how participants can increase their chances of having their abstracts successfully accepted for an organised session at the Fifth Global Symposium on Health Systems Research in Liverpool, October 2018 (HSR2018). The webinar will give an overview of the importance of raising the profile of African health policy and systems research at HSR2018, and how organised sessions can be a powerful way of achieving this. Perspectives from the Programme Working Group on the symposium theme and what the Scientific Committee will be looking for in strong abstracts will be shared, as will the experiences of those who have successfully had their organised session abstracts accepted at previous global symposia.
Useful Resources
This guide includes case studies, tips, photographs, training materials and an accompanying video on implementing community-based HIV-prevention services. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of implementation, from engaging with stakeholders and communities to how to set up teams and conduct HIV testing services that integrate important other services including screening for TB, sexually transmitted infections and non-communicable diseases.
This manual provides an accessible, practical reference to encourage and strengthen the practice of health inequality monitoring. It aims to foster regular reporting of inequalities across diverse health topics, and promote greater integration of health inequality considerations in policies, programmes and practices. It is organised according to a flow chart, showing the steps and sub-steps of the health inequality monitoring cycle, with key questions and itemised checklists of data requirements, analysis/reporting activities and/or decision points. The steps include firstly, determining the scope of monitoring, obtaining data, then analysing and reporting results before implementing changes. Relevant examples and resources, including sample table templates and recommended readings, are provided for further exploration. While the manual focuses on health at the national level, the step-by-step approach may be applied to monitor inequalities within any defined population, ranging from a community context to a multi-country context.
In June 2017 the United Nations Development Programme in collaboration with other United Nations agencies launched a new, open-access Global Abortion Policies Database. The online database contains comprehensive information on the abortion laws, policies, health standards and guidelines for WHO and United Nations (UN) Member States. It is intended for use by policy-makers, human rights bodies, nongovernmental organisations, public health researchers and civil society. The database is designed to further strengthen global and national efforts to eliminate unsafe abortion by facilitating comparative and country-specific analyses of abortion laws and policies, placing them in the context of information and recommendations from WHO technical and policy guidance on safe abortion. The main objectives of the database are to promote greater transparency of abortion laws and policies and state accountability for the protection of women and girls’ health and human rights.
Titled “The Land of No Men: Inside Kenya’s Women-Only Village” the 30-minute documentary report takes audiences to northern Kenya, “where the foothills of Mount Kenya merge into the desert,” home to the people of Samburu, which is also where Rebecca Lolosoli founded Umoja village as a safe haven for women from a society long-maintained as a strict patriarchy for over 500 years. “Umoja, which means “unity” in Swahili, is quite literally a no man’s land, and the matriarchal refuge is now home to the Samburu women who no longer want to suffer abuses, like genital mutilation and forced marriages, at the hands of men. Throughout the years, it has also empowered other women in the districts surrounding Samburu to start their own men-excluding villages. Broadly visited Umoja and the villages it inspired to meet with the women who were fed up with living in a violent patriarchy.”
This website is a space for community activists living near mines in southern Africa to share information, resources and experiences.
The countries currently participating in this project are: Lesotho, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Mozambique and Tanzania. Activists in each country document problems they experience and events they participate in and share this on a WhatsApp group. These posts are then shared on this site in the respective country blogs. Each country, in addition, maintains their own country blog. Additionally, Activists can view the posts on a mobile app called “Action Voices” which can be downloaded on an Android phone from the Google Play store. This website and the activities are a joint project of several organisations in southern Africa. These include:The Bench Marks Foundation – South Africa; Southern Africa Resource Watch (SARW) – Southern Africa; Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association (ZELA) – Zimbabwe; Centre for Environment Justice (CEJ) – Zambia; Associação de Apoio e Assistência Jurídica às Comunidades (AAAJC) – Mozambique; Norwegian Church Aid (NCA), Tanzania and Maluti Community Development Forum – Lesotho.
Experience African literature in a totally new way through an intimate re-imagining of five acclaimed novels, performed for the stage. Reimagined and retold by five women the stories grapple with questions of race, sexuality, patriarchy, friendship, love, loneliness and much more. Drawing from the historical novel ‘The Orchard of Lost Souls’ by the young award-winning Somali-British writer Nadia Mohamed, Raya Wambui bears witness to the painful experience of three Somali women. Patricia Kihoro’s presents a performance of Zukiswa Wanner’s painfully funny and profoundly perceptive ‘Maid in SA: 30 ways to leave your madam’.
Publishing is an important part of sharing the outcomes of research, but the publication process and requirements may sometimes feel like a closed book. HSG and BioMed Central, publisher of BMC Health Services Research which is affiliated with HSG, have partnered to deliver a series of five webinars to open up the peer review and publication processes. Aimed at researchers at a variety of career stages, the series covered: how to prepare an article and choose the right journal, what happens during peer review, publishing models and open access, research and publication ethics and how to be a peer reviewer. This series is now finished, but information on the full series of webinars is provided, including the recordings and slides of all of the webinars.
In 2016, more refugees arrived in Uganda–including nearly half a million people from South Sudan alone–than crossed the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. While the numbers in Africa are increasing, the situation isn’t new: As the world continues to focus on the European refugee crisis, an equally large crisis has been unfolding in Africa. A new visualization shows the flow of refugees around the world from 2000 to 2015, and makes the lesser-known story in Africa–and in places like Sri Lanka in 2006 or Colombia in 2007–as obvious as what has been happening more recently in Syria. Each yellow dot represents 17 refugees leaving a country, and each red dot represents refugees arriving somewhere else.
Docubox was launched in 2012 as a documentary film fund that “supports intimate, character-driven storytelling and encourages new forms of ownership and authorship in East Africa because we believe that true stories well told make the world a better place to live”. Docubox exists to enable talented, driven, focused and accountable East African artists to produce unique films that unearth new realities and cross trans-national boundaries. Through training, development and production grants, screenings for people who love documentary films, it promotes East African filmmakers to share their stories with the world through creative documentary. Docubox believe good documentaries are intimate observations of the world’s identities and people captured by talented, driven, creative filmmakers –films able to uncover new realities because they are authored by authentic local voices, films that offer viewers new perspectives of society. Docubox want to create an authentic body of work that provides personalised glimpses into world, issues and lives that would ordinarily remain undocumented. They want to create a movement that will challenge ideas and assumptions about the world as it is known and provoke healthy, democratic dialogue and debate between our fellow citizens. Docubox believe that to change and inspire society, there is a need to support films that can spark off debate, films that get talked about, films that contribute to the formation of a vibrant documentary film movement across eastern Africa. Docubox want to do this because they believe that stories well told can make the world a better place to live.