The Initiative to Strengthen Health Research Capacity in Africa (ISHReCA) is an African-led initiative aimed at building a strong foundation for health research in Africa. ISHReCA was born out of consultative meetings between African researchers and research funders and aims to serve as a forum for African scientist to collate ideas about capacity building and to speak to funders collectively. It emphasises a comprehensive approach to capacity building that leads to sustained increase recruitment, training and retention of African scientists. This website serves three key purposes. First, it provides a forum for African health researchers to discuss capacity building needs and approaches. These discussions will be used to negotiate with funders' innovative initiatives for capacity building and to give feedback to funders on current capacity building initiatives. Second, it is a resource tool for providing up-to-date information on capacity building to African health researchers. Third, it is a tool for collecting information for an African health researchers’ database, which will hopefully be used to facilitate the development of collaboration networks.
Useful Resources
The World Health Organization (WHO) has launched the Global Network of Age-friendly Cities as part of a broader response to the rapid ageing of populations. WHO notes that populations in almost every corner of the world are growing older. The greatest changes are occurring in less-developed countries. By 2050, it is estimated that 80% of the expected 2 billion people aged 60 years or over will live in low- or middle-income countries. The Network aims to help cities create urban environments that allow older people to remain active and healthy participants in society. While the response to population ageing has often focussed on the implications for governments of increasing demand for pensions and health care, WHO tries to place more emphasis on the positive contributions older people make to society. It underlines the importance for older people of access to public transport, outdoor spaces and buildings, as well as the need for appropriate housing, community support and health services. But it also highlights the need to foster the connections that allow older people to be active participants in society, to overcome ageism and to provide greater opportunities for civic participation and employment. Cities that are interested in joining the Network, should contact Dr John Beard at the email address given.
This new film, Youth Zones, Voices from Emergencies documents the lives of young people affected by conflict and natural disaster in five countries, including Uganda. It show how, in conflicts and natural disasters around the world, young people, at a crucial stage of their development, are faced with profound challenges. Emergencies often steal their adolescence and force them to undertake adult responsibilities. The structures and institutions that should guarantee their secure, peaceful development – schools, family, community and health centres – have often broken down, leaving them with little, if any, support. Access to basic sexual and reproductive health services, including information on sexually transmitted infections and HIV, is often impossible. Yet in the midst of hardship and deprivation, this film show how young people exhibit tremendous resilience. They raise their younger siblings, form youth groups and organisations, put food on the table for their families, conduct peer education activities, contribute to peace movements, galvanise their communities and contribute in numerous other ways to positive change. The film is available in English, Spanish, Arabic, and Luo with English subtitles.
The updated 2010 healthcare workers handbook on influenza provides detailed guidelines on the diagnosis and management of influenza, both seasonal and pandemic, for healthcare workers in South Africa. It gives historical background to the disease in southern Africa, symptoms, case descriptions, information on laboratory testing and clinical management guidelines. The guide concludes with a section on infection management and control.
Results for Development has launched its new Centre for Health Market Innovations (CHMI), a new initiative that works to improve health markets in developing countries to deliver better results for the poor. CHMI is a publicly accessible global knowledge platform that collects, analyses and disseminates information about health market innovations and facilitates the creation of strategic links among key stakeholders. It provides access to interactive, comparable and filterable information on health market programmes. You can use CHMI for research, to allow you to promote your ideas, publications and programmes, and enable you to make better connections with people in the field. The website contains a programmes database and funder database. It also contains information about health market innovations, which are programmes and policies that harness market incentives and mitigate the negative effects of unregulated markets to provide better health and financial protection for the poor. You can join the conversation on the blog, as well as provide feedback on the site.
This is the first Model Formulary for Children released by the World Health Organization (WHO), which provides information on how to use over 240 essential medicines for treating illness and disease in children from 0 to 12 years of age. A number of individual countries have developed their own formularies over the years, but until now there was no single comprehensive guide to using medicines in children for all countries. The Model Formulary is the first resource for medical practitioners worldwide that provides standardised information on the recommended use, dosage, adverse effects and contraindications of medicines for use in children. The new Formulary is based on the best global evidence available as to which medicines should be used to treat specific conditions, how they should be administered and in what dose. The Formulary also identifies a number of areas where more research is needed to provide better treatment for children, such as child appropriate antibiotics to treat pneumonia and specific medicines for neonatal care.
Tobacco control is an area where the translation of evidence into policy would seem to be straightforward, given the wealth of epidemiological, behavioural and other types of research available. Yet, even here challenges exist. These include information overload, concealment of key (industry-funded) evidence, contextualisation, assessment of population impact and the changing nature of the threat. This article describes the steps that may be taken to develop a comprehensive tobacco control strategy: compilation of a list of potential interventions; modification of that list based on local needs and political constraints; streamlining the list by categorising interventions into broad groupings of related interventions to form the basis of a comprehensive plan; and refinement of the plan by comparing it to existing comprehensive plans. The proposed framework for adapting existing approaches to the local social and political climate may assist others planning for smoke-free societies. Additionally, this experience has implications for development of evidence-based health plans addressing other risk factors.
The East African Community (EAC) statistics database contains indices for a range of social sectors of countries in the region, including education, labour, culture, housing, environment and health. Population indices include life expectancy, mortality rates and demographic indicators. Health indices include public health expenditure per capita, expenditure on health to gross domestic product and public health expenditure to total budget. Statistics for immunisation rates and HIV prevalence are also supplied.
This tool, entitled 'Climate Change and Environmental Degradation Risk and Adaptation Assessment' (CEDRA), helps non-governmental organisations (NGOs) access and understand climate change and environmental degradation, and the science behind it, and compare this with local experience of environmental change. The tool was developed through NGO experience of problems as a result of changing weather patterns in countries like Afghanistan. CEDRA involves six steps: identifying environmental hazards, prioritising hazards that need to be addressed, selecting adaptation options, addressing unmanageable risks, considering new project locations, and a process of continual review, which should take place every year. It provides a check-list for each of the steps, with samples of questions that need to be asked, and underlines the involvement of beneficiary communities at every stage.
Funds for NGOs.org is an online initiative working for the sustainability of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) by increasing their access to external funders, resources and skills. It uses online technologies to spread knowledge about organisational sustainability, promote creative ideas for long-term generation of institutional funds for development interventions, improve professional efforts in resource mobilisation and advocate for increased allocation of donor resources for building the skills and capacities of NGOs.