The use of insecticide-treated bed nets (ITNs) to protect children from malaria has risen six-fold in the past seven years, but 90 million children still do not have access to this simple protective tool, and remain at risk from the life-threatening disease. When African heads of state met in 2000, the Abuja Declaration stated that they would work towards protecting 60% of their vulnerable populations with insecticide treated nets. This study examines what has been achieved since. Data from 40 African countries which shows that at the time of the Abuja meeting in 2000 just over 3% of Africa’s young children were protected by a treated mosquito net. Seven years later this increased to only 18.5%. The authors report that bed net use increases faster in countries that distribute them free of charge by an average of 25% compared to 4% when people have to pay for them.
Equitable health services
Zimbabwe's cholera epidemic has crossed into South Africa, with four confirmed diagnoses in a total of 68 suspected cases in the border town of Musina, according to aid workers as of 19 November 2008. The cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe has flared up in several parts of the country, including the capital, Harare, and its satellite town of Chitungwiza, as a result of the collapse of water and sewerage services, worsened by uncollected refuse and the start of the rainy season. Humanitarian officials have reported that a total of 2,893 people were infected by the waterborne disease between the beginning of August and mid-November, with at least 115 deaths. The UN children's agency, UNICEF, and the World Health Organisation (WHO) have also been assisting in the provision of drinking water.
The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) on prescribing behaviours, assess prescribers' and patients' perceptions, and identify operational issues during implementation. Baseline data was collected at six Tanzanian public dispensaries. RDTs were implemented for eight weeks and data collected on frequency of RDT use, results, malaria diagnoses and the prescription of antimalarials. The study found that overprescriptions decreased over the study period. There was a high degree of patient/caregiver and provider acceptance and satisfaction with RDTs. Implementation should include community education, sufficient levels of training and supervision and consideration of the need for additional staff.
Health workers of Parirenyatwa and Harare Central Hospital have issued a petition for urgent action to address the prevailing crisis in Zimbabwe’s public health system. Problems within public health institutions include a serious lack of medical supplies, functional equipment and drugs. Since all hospitals and clinics are closed, Zimbabweans that fall ill have no access to health care, given the high cost of private health care. Problems facing health workers include poor salaries (which should be paid in foreign currency, not Zim dollars), rising transport costs and bad working conditions. The continued failure to address the above issues has resulted in lack of services in public health institutions and health workers failing to come to work. The workers call upon the responsible authorities to take urgent steps to remedy the situation above in consultation with the health workers concerned.
Access to improved sanitation is a matter of human rights, says the UN. There is compelling evidence that sanitation brings the single greatest return on investment of any development intervention (roughly $9 for every $1 spent). Yet it remains the most neglected and most off-track of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets. Sanitation has been considered as the most important medical advance since 1840 – beating antibiotics, vaccines and anaesthesia. Access to sanitation is essential for people to live in dignity, yet 40% of the world still does not have basic sanitation. The scale of the crisis is enormous, according to the United Nations, which reports that 2.5 billion people do not have access to proper sanitation.
The CWGH made a number of resolutions after the 15th National Conference in Harare, including a demand that the right to health be included in the National Constitution. It committed itself to strengthening primary health care and district systems by lobbying for incentives and resources for community health workers from government, getting health institutions to remove high charge barriers and lobbying government for policies to retain health workers. It will also lobby the government to provide free access to safe water as a human right, as well as lobby the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on health for increased health funding and government for the fair allocation of resources at national level. Community participation should also be promoted. That CWGH will develop a proactive agenda on health issues and forge and strengthen strategic partnership locally and regionally to take this forward, capacitate its districts to enable them to advance and monitor the implementation of these resolutions and ensure that the health delivery system is not used for partisan politics.
Zimbabwe’s overall health service has been steadily declining for the last five years. The Zimbabwean health service today is wracked by critical shortages of essential drugs and skilled and experienced personnel. Another challenge is there has been no comprehensive assessment of Zimbabwe’s health system since 2006, making it difficult to assess its true state. Also, its disease surveillance and early warning system, which depends on a weekly epidemiological system, has been compromised in terms of timeliness and completeness of data, which is only around 30%. Universal access to basic health services is compromised due to deteriorating infrastructure, staffing and financial resources. Reactivating primary health care services should keep being addressed as a matter of emergency. Zimbabwean health facilities face a massive gap – estimated this year at 70% – in required medicines due to reduced local manufacturing capacity, which has been weakened by a lack of foreign currency. This is despite support received from different partners through UNICEF’s procurement systems. A large cholera outbreak is affecting most regions of the country, with more than 11 700 cases and 473 deaths recorded between August and 30 November. This represents a case fatality rate (CFR) of 4.0% nationally, but reached 50% in some areas during the early stages of the outbreak. The CFR benchmark should be below 1%. Cholera outbreaks in Zimbabwe have occurred annually since 1998, but previous epidemics never reached today’s proportions. The last large outbreak was in 1992 with 3000 cases recorded. Cholera cases have also been reported either side of Zimbabwe’s border with South Africa, Botswana and Mozambique, demonstrating the subregional extent of the outbreak.
Health policy has tended to export models of health systems from developed nations to low-income countries without questioning their appropriateness and adaptability. Debates about the roles of public and private providers are meaningless in poor countries that do not have the institutional framework to govern a market economy and where government has little capacity to regulate providers of health services. The lack of appropriately contextualised debate and language hampers national and international efforts to address major health challenges. Health systems, like other systems of producing social goods, are ways of producing and organising access to expert knowledge and the technologies that derive from it. Their failure, in many contexts, to serve the interests of the poor means we should also be exploring different ways of producing and delivering services rather than simply intensifying efforts to recreate existing ones.
Government, business and civil society leaders gathered at the United Nations to launch a global campaign to reduce malaria deaths, currently at more than 1 million each year, to near zero by 2015, with an initial commitment of nearly a $3 billion. The Global Malaria Action Plan (GMAP) aims to cuts deaths and illness by 2010 to half their 2000 levels by scaling up access to insecticide-treated bed nets, indoor spraying and treatment, and achieve the near-zero goal through sustained universal coverage. Ultimately it seeks to eradicate the disease completely with new tools and strategies.
This report aimed to identify health-care and provider-related determinants of diabetes and hypertension patients attending public sector community health centres (CHCs). A random sample of eighteen CHCs in the Cape Peninsula, South Africa, providing hypertension and diabetes care was selected. Twenty-five diabetes and 35 hypertension patients were selected per clinic and interviewed by trained fieldworkers and their medical records audited. Knowledge about their conditions was poor. Prescriptions for drugs were not recorded in medical records of 22.6% of the diabetes and 11.4% of the hypertension patients. Primary care for patients with hypertension and diabetes at public sector CHCs is suboptimal. This highlights the urgent need to improve health care for patients with these conditions in the public sector of the Cape Peninsula.