Posts Tagged:

 

August 24, 2009

Reflections on NYT Magazine Special Issue on Gender: Three Questions to Guide the New Crusade

Posted by Ruth Levine in Global Health Tags: , , ,

This is a joint post with Molly Kinder and originally appeared on the Global Development: Views from the Center blog.

This week The New York Times Magazine is dedicated to a single theme: women. The main attraction of this special issue is a stirring essay by journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, who write passionately about the great moral, national security and economic development imperatives of investing in the world’s women and girls. The “women’s crusade” they call for seems already to have begun. A few pages beyond, an interview with Secretary Clinton heralds the start of a “new gender agenda” at the highest reaches of the U.S. foreign policy. Also noted is the growing philanthropic attention to the cause of women and girls – a trend that will be further evidenced next month, when the issue headlines at the annual (Bill) Clinton Global Initiative meetings in NYC. Read More…

4 Comments »

 

July 9, 2009

Wedding Bells for GAVI, the World Bank and the Global Fund?

Posted by Ruth Levine in Global Health Tags: , , , ,

The global health meeting circuit is abuzz with discussions about whether the World Bank, the GAVI Alliance and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria will be able to forge a partnership to effectively support health system strengthening in low-income countries – and how that might happen through some undefined activity called “joint programming.” Paris in May, Venice in June, Washington in July. . . the conversation goes on and on, presumably with the intention of coming up with a mutually-agreed plan within the next several months.

The impetus to mobilize money and technical expertise to support improved health sector performance is strong. For the past several years a combination of evidence and anecdote has revved up concerns that (a) donor funding for health organized into disease-, population- or intervention-specific pots can cause problems and distortions, such as inefficiencies in information systems and drug supply chains, and poaching of health workers; and (b) ambitious disease-, population- and intervention-specific goals can’t be achieved without robust systems for financing, regulating and delivering public and private health care. Read More…

9 Comments »

 

May 4, 2009

Preparation for a Flu Epidemic Requires Collective Action on Surveillance; Or, Three More Things I Wish I’d Said on the CBS Nightly News Last Friday

Posted by Mead Over in Health Systems Tags: ,

On Friday Cynthia Bowers of CBS News asked me some questions about the economic impact of the current flu epidemic, particularly on the United States. Since my own focus, as reflected in my recent post, has been on the impact on the developing world, I wish I had said just three more simple things: “To prepare for the next time, the US together with the international community should:

1. Sustain international cooperation on surveillance
2. Expand surveillance effort to ALL infectious diseases
3. Learn from Mexico’s current difficulties”

Here’s what’s behind my recommendations: Read More…

Comment »

 

April 13, 2009

China-Gates Foundation Program to Tackle TB

Posted by Rachel Nugent in Drug Resistance, Gates Foundation Tags: , , ,

Drug-Resistant TBThe Gates Foundation and the Government of China recently announced a partnership to fight TB in China that is so multi-dimensional (a scaled-up diagonal health program) and so audacious (more so than the malaria eradication target proclaimed by the Gates’ two years ago) that it just might work! The Gates Foundation is putting $33 million on the table, and the Chinese are promising to change the way they deal with TB as part of their $130 billion health care initiative. Read More…

Comment »

 

March 26, 2009

Health Systems Strengthening: Whither the World Bank?

Posted by April Harding in Health Systems Tags: , ,

With Ruth Levine.

The High Level Taskforce on Innovative International Financing for Health Systems met week before last in London. To their great credit, they’ve posted draft reports from their two Working Groups so interested observers can see the where they’re going. Working Group 1 seeks to identify the health systems-related constraints to achieving global health goals, and presents estimates of costs of achieving priority goals (e.g. targeted reductions in maternal and child health). Working Group 2 (WG2) aims to identify new sources of funding and lay out the best options for channeling the funding to countries to improve health system performance. Further work and consultation is pending over the next three months, and then the Taskforce will provide their suggestions to the G8 for consideration at the July Summit in Italy. Read More…

2 Comments »