A new kind of protectionism is argued by the author to be haunting the world: the spectre of ebola protectionism. As ebola ravages the societies of the Mano River Union (MRU) states of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the author notes that there are increasing calls from conservative politicians, right-wing groups, and sections of the media to prevent people from these states from interacting with the rest of the world. The protectionist measures range from exit and entry controls, such as temperature checks and mandatory monitoring and quarantining of travellers from MRU states, to flight bans and denial of visas to holders of MRU passports. The virus poses less of a threat to rich countries with sound public health systems than poor West African countries that have extensive links with the MRU states. The author argues that exit and non-intrusive entry controls, not flight bans and visa restrictions that Australia and Canada have imposed, may be enough to manage the few cases that are likely to pop up in rich countries.
Values, Policies and Rights
The United Nations (UN) Millennium Declaration and eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have been hailed as a unique achievement in international development. Although the MDGs have raised the profile of global health, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, progress has been uneven both between and within countries. A key reason suggested for this lack of progress is that the MDGs fall far short in terms of addressing the broader concept of development encapsulated in the Millennium Declaration, which includes human rights, equity, democracy, and governance. To strengthen the likelihood of realizing the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly with regard to “planet and population” health and well-being , UN and other decision-makers are urged to consider the adoption of an integrated SDG framework that is based on (i) a vision of global justice – underpinned by peace, security and basic human rights; (ii) the development of interdependent and interconnected strategies for each of the eleven thematic indicators identified in the UN document The World We Want; and (iii) the application of guiding principles to measure the impact of SDG strategies in terms of holism, equity, sustainability, ownership, and global obligation. While current discussions on the SDGs are making progress in a number of areas, the need for integration of these around a common global vision and purpose seems especially crucial to avoid MDG shortcomings.
This article systematically reviews a set of health policy papers on agenda setting and tests them against a specific priority-setting framework. The article applies the Shiffman and Smith framework in extracting and synthesizing data from an existing set of papers, purposively identified for their relevance and systematically reviewed. Its primary aim is to assess how far the component parts of the framework help to identify the factors that influence the agenda setting stage of the policy process at global and national levels. It seeks to advance the field and inform the development of theory in health policy by examining the extent to which the framework offers a useful approach for organizing and analysing data. Applying the framework retrospectively to the selected set of papers, it aims to explore influences on priority setting and to assess how far the framework might gain from further refinement or adaptation, if used prospectively. The article also demonstrates how framework synthesis can be used in health policy analysis research.
As competition for land intensifies in Africa’s rapidly growing towns and cities, planning laws assume a fundamental importance. They determine how urban growth is managed and directed. In most countries outdated, inappropriate and unintegrated laws are exacerbating urban dysfunction. The reform of planning law is frequently advocated as a necessary step for better management of urbanisation in Africa. But reform initiatives consistently founder. This is inevitable, given the approaches adopted. The promotion of “one-size-fits-all” and “model” planning laws from outside the continent has not served Africa well. Invariably it has created further legal uncertainty and a series of unanticipated, often pernicious consequences. This paper argues that more progressive, realistic urban planning in Africa will require a radically different approach to planning law reform, essential for sustainable and equitable urban development in Africa.
In 2006, statistics showed that there were about three million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the five Eastern provinces of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC): The oriental Province, North Kivu, South Kivu, Maniema and Katanga. Lately, due to relative peace in the region, the number of IDPs dropped to around two million by 2013. While the number has decreased, however, this article highlights how the people still need assistance for their precarious vulnerability. The majority are elderly, children, women who were victims of sexual violence and teenage mothers affected with all sort of predicaments such famine, AIDS and other disabilities. MSF built a clinic in Bulengo to provide free health care to more than 40,000 people. MSF has conducted more than 25,000 consultations in this camp, mainly for diarrhea and respiratory infections. People are mainly sick due to poor living conditions accentuated by poor nourishment. The author argues that the UN and aid agencies should start planning longer-term assistance, and other governments should respond with the necessary funding. They should join their effort to support Doctors without Borders in providing the necessary services attached to their mandate such food, water supply, shelter distribution and hygienic installations.
Getting sick represents a risk of falling into poverty for millions of people around the world. The cost of health care put millions of people in the position to choose between buying food, sending children to school or paying to get healthcare. Yet the author argues that this is not inevitable because solutions exist: Universal Health Coverage (UHC) makes it possible for people to access health care without sacrificing other basic needs.
The recent proliferation of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and independent media across Africa is argued by the author to be an important positive development. They are said to play an essential role by investigating government policy, exposing corruption and human rights violations, advocating for the rights of minorities and vulner-able communities, and providing social services. However the continent’s leaders reject what they see as an imposition of ‘Western’ ideas of human rights. This policy briefing highlights the shift in human rights discourse among African leaders towards more anti-imperialist rhetoric and the placing of African traditions above human rights. It provides examples of how local civil society organisations (CSOs) are challenging this view in the face of increasing government attacks. CSOs are argued to be crucial to positive transformation and the universal protection and promotion of human rights, and the author proposes that more needs to be done to protect human rights and create an enabling environment for CSOs.
A problem peasant women face is invisibility in the feminist and women’s movements. A second problem is the weakness with which the food sovereignty concept has dealt with the challenges of feminism. Latin America has assumed the struggle for food sovereignty as an alternative to the neoliberal economic model. Food sovereignty is based on the conviction that each people has the right to make decisions about its own food systems: about its own eating habits; about its production, marketing, distribution, exchange, and sharing; and about keeping food and seeds in the public sphere. This interview report presents the views from a feminist point of view on how people make decisions, who decides how power is organised and how to turn food sovereignty into a tool to strengthen and empower peasant women.
The Open University and Southampton University, South African SAIIA FLACSO-Argentina and UNU-CRIS are currently involved in the Poverty Reduction and Regional Integration (PRARI) project, a two year project studying what regional institutional practices and methods of regional policy formation are conducive to the emergence of embedded pro-poor health strategies, and what can national, regional and international actors do to promote these, particularly in South America and Southern Africa.
The drive for Universal Health Coverage is currently very intense. Everybody seems to agree on this objective. However, the term is argued to be ambiguous term and in Latin America two different notions
are used. One refers to forms of health insurance, be they voluntary or compulsory and public or private, and in variable combinations. The other refers to a single public health system—ie, a unified tax-funded health system as an obligation of the state. The authors argue that it is critical to distinguish between these two notions and to set uniform criteria of analysis to compare their achievements. In this context, these are: population and medical coverage in their categories of universal or segmented access and use of service and possible barriers; origin and management of health funds; type of providers; health expenditure, public and private; distribution of costs and amount of out-of-pocket expenditure; impact on public health actions and health conditions; and equity, popular participation, and transparency. Taken together, these reveal the extent to which the right to health, a widely held social value, is attained. The authors analyse the largely pluralist health insurance in Latin America and argue that it does not grant the right to health, understood as equal access to the necessary services for equal need. By contrast with the intrinsic restrictions of universal health insurance, the problems of the single public health system are identified as operational. Where implemented in Latin America, while they have problems to resolve, these unified publicly funded systems are argued to be 'on their way to grant the right to health'.