Management Sciences for Health (MSH) has published the International Drug Price Indicator Guide since 1986 and updates it annually. The guide contains a spectrum of prices from pharmaceutical suppliers, international development organisations and government agencies. It aims to make price information more widely available in order to improve procurement of medicines of assured quality for the lowest possible price. Comparative price information is important for getting the best price, and this is an essential reference for anyone involved in the procurement of pharmaceuticals. This 2008 version is their latest update and has just been released.
Useful Resources
International Drug Price Indicator Guide, 2008
Management Sciences for Health, 2009
New website: African Food Security Urban Network (AFSUN)
AFSUN was established in 2008 as a network of African and international universities, non-governmental and community organizations, and municipal governance networks. It aims to improve the knowledge base on urban food security in Africa; to build African human resource capacity and expertise in food security policy and management; to develop and advocate policy options to improve the environment within which households make decisions about food security; and to grow the capacity of community change agents to plan, implement and evaluate food security projects and programmes. AFSUN also recognises the critical importance of the global food system and the links between town and countryside in affecting the food security of urban populations in Africa.
Nutrition, Food Security and HIV: A Compendium of Promising Practices
FANTA: 2009
Increasingly, countries in east, central, and southern Africa are integrating nutrition and food security interventions into HIV services. As the number, variety and reach of these programmes expand, identification and documentation of promising practices become valuable in order to help understand what works, to replicate successful approaches and to incorporate lessons into programmes. The Regional Centre for Quality of Health Care (RCQHC) in Uganda and the FANTA Project organised extensive in-country reviews by local teams of nutrition, food security and HIV programmes in Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. Nutrition, Food Security and HIV: A Compendium of Promising Practices compiles, analyses and describes the promising practices identified through the reviews.
Working with young women: Empowerment, rights and health
Ricardo C: Instituto PROMUNDO, 2009
Although there has been a significant amount of work done to promote women’s empowerment, most of it has been geared towards the experiences of adult women. This manual, part of an initiative called Program M, includes a series of group educational activities to promote young women’s awareness about gender inequities, rights and health. It also seeks to develop their skills to feel more capable of acting in empowered ways in different spheres of their lives. All the activities draw on an experiential learning model in which young women are encouraged to question and analyse their own experiences and lives, in order to understand how gender can perpetuate unequal power in relationships, making young women and men vulnerable to sexual and reproductive health problems, including HIV/AIDS.
Directory of Grants and Fellowships in the Global Health Sciences
Fogarty International Center for Advanced Study in Health Sciences
This resource guide contains a comprehensive compilation of international funding opportunities in biomedical and behavioral research, separated by category.
Regional Capacity Building Partners: Short courses for 2009
Regional Capacity Building Partners (RECABIP)
The Regional Capacity Building Partners (RECABIP) is a network of professional organisations and individuals who have combined their skills and experience to explore cost-effective ways of strengthening the response to HIV and AIDS, Climate Change, Governance and Leadership issues, among other development concerns. It does this through tailored capacity building workshops, seminars, symposia, conferences and consultancy services. Their professionals have an average of 15 years experience in designing, implementing, monitoring and evaluating HIV and AIDS, Climate Change, Governance and Leadership programmes. For a programme of short courses offered by the network in 2009, visit their website. You also can register online on their website.
Development of a quality assurance handbook to improve educational courses in Africa
Nabwera HM, Purnell S and Bates I: Human Resources for Health 6(28), 18 December 2008
The attainment of the Millennium Development Goals has been hampered by the lack of skilled and well-informed health care workers in many developing countries. The departure of health care workers from developing countries is one of the most important causes. This handbook is intended to enable institutions to adapt quality assurance principles in accordance with their local resource capacity. The handbook addresses six minimum requirements that a higher education course should incorporate to ensure that it meets internationally recognised standards: recruitment and admissions, course design and delivery, student assessments, approval and review processes, support for students and staff training and welfare. It is hoped that the handbook will contribute to providing a skilled and sustainable health care workforce that would reduce the need for health care workers to travel overseas in search of good higher-education courses. The principles outlined in the handbook should provide a sound regulatory framework for establishing local, quality higher education courses.
Turning rhetoric into action: Building effective partnerships to combat extreme poverty and exclusion
Welford S, Nelson J and Viard T: CIVICUS World Alliance for Citizen Participation, January 2009
This toolkit looks at elements necessary when creating conditions for the participation of people living in extreme poverty. These include: a lack of expectation of the contribution of people living in extreme poverty (the position of individuals and families living in extreme poverty is affected by the way society views them), reaching out, time and flexibility (people living in extreme poverty are often difficult to include in participatory projects), respecting and ensuring everyone's freedom by acknowledging that the very nature of such a project means that the different participants are from the beginning in a situation of inequality, a will to create equal partnerships and involvement at every stage - to succeed in achieving a truly participative approach, the participation of people living in poverty should be an integral part of the process rather than an add-on at any given stage.
Participatory Impact Assessment: A guide for practitioners
Catley A, Burns J, Abebe D and Suji O: 2008
The ability to define and measure humanitarian impact is essential to providing operational agencies with the tools to systematically evaluate the relative efficacy of various types of interventions. This guide aims to provide practitioners with a broad framework for carrying out project-level Participatory Impact Assessments (PIA) of livelihoods interventions in the humanitarian sector. The PIA approach consists of a flexible methodology that can be adapted to local conditions. It also acknowledges local people, or project clients, as experts by emphasising the involvement of project participants and community members from the outset. The proposed framework provides an eight stage approach, and presents examples of tools which may be adapted to different contexts.
STAR: Special Terms for African Researchers
Free and reduced-rate online journal access
STAR is a scheme which makes scholarly publications more widely available to those who have difficulty affording them. It is aimed at Individual academics in sub-Saharan Africa who would like to gain access to cutting-edge research in a wide variety of subject areas. Benefits include FREE access to over 300 Taylor & Francis Group journals online, including all physical science and technology titles, reduced rate personal print subscriptions to over 100 Taylor & Francis journals, covering subjects from archaeology to women's studies, and ongoing special offers. If you register at the address above, you’ll also receive regular news updates on the benefits available.