Gender-Based Violence (GBV) is one of the most widespread human rights abuses and public health problems in the world today, affecting as many as one out of every three women. It is also an extreme manifestation of gender inequity, targeting women and girls because of their subordinate social status in society. The consequences of GBV are often devastating and long-term, affecting women's and girls' physical health and mental well-being. At the same time, its ripple effects compromise the social development of other children in the household, the family as a unit, the communities where the individuals live, and society as a whole. Violence against Women: The Health Sector Responds provides a strategy for addressing this complex problem and concrete approaches for carrying it out, not only for those on the front lines attending to the women who live with violence, but also for the decision-makers who may incorporate the lessons in the development of policies and resources.
Useful Resources
The new WHO Macroeconomics and Health website was launched in May 2003. The website will provide detailed information on WHO macro-economics and health work, the latest action in countries, news and links with related sites, and links to the CMH Report and its Working Group Reports. Published documents and reports can be downloaded from the site. To ensure that the website becomes a forum for sharing ideas, information and news, readers are encouraged to submit their views and work on macroeconomic and health issues.
The Directory of Open Access Journals service covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals.
The Centre for HIV Information (CHI) at the University of California, San Francisco has launched an internationally oriented, HIV/AIDS Internet resource. The pages feature detailed global and regional overviews of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, as well as 194 individual country profiles containing key documents and links. This information is complemented by the Database of Country and Regional Indicators, which allows users to create customized, comparative tables of epidemiological and socio-economic data. Through this continuously updated, "one-stop" resource, visitors can access the best online information on the international AIDS pandemic.
For an overview of what ejournals are accessible in developing and transitional countries, go to the Fulltext Journals page of INASP Health. The page contains numerous annotated links. Of particular interest are: BMJ Journals: Countries with Free Access; FreeMedicalJournals.com; Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative (HINARI); Highwire: Free Access to Developing Countries sites; and INASP: Programme for the Enhancement of Research Information (PERI).
The World Bank has launched a website containing technical notes on quantitative techniques for health equity analysis. The site will eventually contain 20 notes covering: The measurement of key variables in health equity analysis; Generic tools in health equity analysis; and Applications to the health sector.
'HIV & AIDS Treatment in Practice' is an email newsletter for doctors, nurses, health care workers and community treatment advocates working in limited-resource settings. It is published twice every month by NAM, the UK-based HIV information charity behind www.aidsmap.com. The newsletter is edited by Julian Meldrum, NAM's international editor.
The International AIDS Economics Network (IAEN /
http://www.iaen.org) recently polled its members in 130 countries about the best information resources available to AIDS professionals worldwide. The polling returned 85 completed surveys from 32 countries listing over 700 information resources. Approximately half of the returned surveys were from developed countries, half from developing countries.
Malaria Journal is a peer-reviewed open access journal that publishes original research papers on all aspects of malaria. The journal is edited by Marcel Hommel and a broad-based international editorial board. Malaria Journal has now published 24 articles, all of which you can freely access over the internet. Take a moment to browse the latest articles and consider sending your next manuscript to them.
Pathologies of Power uses harrowing stories of life--and death--in extreme situations to interrogate our understanding of human rights. Paul Farmer, a physician and anthropologist with twenty years of experience working in Haiti, Peru, and Russia, argues that promoting the social and economic rights of the world's poor is the most important human rights struggle of our times. With passionate eyewitness accounts from the prisons of Russia and the beleaguered villages of Haiti and Chiapas, this book links the lived experiences of individual victims to a broader analysis of structural violence. Farmer challenges conventional thinking within human rights circles and exposes the relationships between political and economic injustice, on one hand, and the suffering and illness of the powerless, on the other.