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People's Rural Health Watch on India's National Rural Health Mission  new

An informal discussion of access and rights to healthcare in rural india co-hosted by Panos London and Healthlink Worldwide

http://www.research4development.info/news.asp?articleID=50219

(Added: Fri May 16 2008   Hits: 1)

Economic Impacts of HIV/AIDS and its impact on governance in South Africa  pop

Compiled by: The Centre for AIDS Development, Research and Evaluation (Cadre), on behalf of USAID, through the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies Developed by: Warren Parker, Ulrike Kistner, Stephen Gelb, Kevin Kelly, Michael OíDonovan, Diane Stuart and Annelie van Niekerk © USAID November 2000

http://www.jointcenter.org/index.php/publications_recent_publications/international/economic_impact_of_hiv_aids_on_south_africa_and_implications_for_governance

(Added: Wed Jun 13 2001   Modified: Fri Mar 28 2008   Hits: 1764)

Email the CEO of pharmaceutical giant Novartis

Vital medicines are priced out of the reach of poor people. This is in violation of the promises made five years ago by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to make life-saving medicines available and affordable to all. As a result, millions of poor people in developing countries are dying because they can't afford the medicines they so desperately need. Global drug company, Novartis, must stop denying India the right to produce cheaper medicines for poor people worldwide!

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what_you_can_do/campaign/mtf/a2m.htm?ito=2505&itc=0

(Added: Wed Nov 15 2006   Hits: 261)

Following the Money: Toward Better Tracking of Global Health Resources

The lack of timely, accurate information about spending on health services and public health programs represents a key constraint for good policymaking and effective use of limited resources in developing countries. Although important advances have been made in improving the quality of data and policy-relevance of data on national spending and external flows from public and private donors, the need to further improve data systems is clear. None of the existing tracking systems or efforts provides up-to-date, comprehensive information in a form that addresses central policy questions. Without information about what resources are expected -- from whom, and for what purpose -- and without better tracking of how those funds have been spent, policy leaders, advocates and analysts are unlikely to be able to effectively raise additional resources and allocate them toward the populations and types of services that are vital to the achievement of the Millennium Development (Center for Global Development, May 2007).

http://www.dev-zone.org/downloads/following%20the%20money.pdf

(Added: Wed Jun 06 2007   Hits: 68)

Following the Money: Toward Better Tracking of Global Health Resources

This report of the Global Health Resource Tracking Working Group calls for a move: from tracking expenditures on specific health programs in an uncoordinated way to coherent and long-term support to improve government budgetary and financial systems in the developing world; to institutionalizing standard approaches to documenting and analyzing health sector expenditures; and to providing more timely, predictable and forward‑looking data on external assistance to the health sector.(Centre for Global Development, 17 May 2007).

http://www.cgdev.org/files/13711_file_Resource_Tracking.pdf

(Added: Fri Jul 20 2007   Hits: 66)

Palestinian blood - a crisis

Gaza's blood banks have been crumbling for years. The Israeli seige made it extremely hard to get new machine parts into this congested strip of land, where one and a half million people live trapped. Then the international boycott - after the democratic election of Hamas - dried up the dribble of international funds that used to make it through, making it hard for the Shifa Blood Bank to buy even simple blood bags and testing kits. Blood has long been a bleak symbol of Palestinian life, and now it is becoming another in its long list of crises. (Johann Hari, Independent, 13 December 2006)

http://johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=1029

(Added: Fri Dec 15 2006   Hits: 80)

Trade in Health Services: Global, Regional and Country Perspectives

This publication explores issues related to Trade and Health services and WTO's GATS Agreement. Papers were presented at the Inter-Regional Meeting on Health and Trade: Towards a Millennium Round, and the book includes general conclusions and recommendations from the meeting. (Susan Pasquariella, Pan American Health Organization, September 2003)

http://www.paho.org/English/HDP/HDD/trade.htm

(Added: Thu Oct 19 2006   Modified: Mon Dec 04 2006   Hits: 105)

A guide to the post-2005 world: TRIPS, R&D and access to medicines

Based on a January 18, 2005, presentation to Members of the European Parliament by Ellen 't Hoen Following the full implementation of the TRIPS Agreement as of January 1st 2005 in India and the few other developing countries not yet granting pharmaceutical patents, access to affordable new drugs is expected to become more difficult. For example, most of the ARVs currently available at affordable prices come from India. Successful AIDS programmes such as those of Brazil and Thailand were possible because key pharmaceuticals were not patent-protected and could be produced locally at much lower costs. From 2005 onwards, all new drugs may be subject to at least 20 years of patent protection in all but the least developed countries and the occasional non-WTO country such as Somalia, Palestine or Macedonia. A number of developing countries that are presently scaling up AIDS treatment have expressed their concern to the World Health Organization about the effects of TRIPS implementation in India.

http://www.msf.org/countries/page.cfm?articleid=88694E5B-0FED-434A-A21EDA1006002653

(Added: Mon Feb 28 2005   Modified: Fri Jun 03 2005   Hits: 125)

A High Price To Pay: The Detention of Poor Patients in Hospitals

Over the past few years, public hospitals in Burundi have detained hundreds of patients who were unable to pay their hospital bills. Guarded by security staff, detained patients without money often went hungry or were not given basic follow-up care. The detention of patients unable to pay their bills both results from and draws attention to broader problems of health care in Burundi. Patients must pay all medical costs, such as medical consultations, tests, medicines, supplies, and their stay at a hospital. The Burundian health sector is plagued not just by huge funding shortfalls, but by inconsistent state funding, and by fraud and corruption that shrinks an already small pie. International financial institutions and other donors should ensure their funding is used to improve access to health care and to end hospital detentions. (Human Rights Watch, September 2006)

http://hrw.org/reports/2006/burundi0906/

(Added: Mon Sep 11 2006   Hits: 70)

A Simple Solution

Despite a cheap and effective rehydration treatment made of salt, sugar and clean water, 3 million people -- including 1.9 million children younger than five -- die every year of complications from chronic diarrhea, according to the World Health Organization. This article examines why the simple, inexpensive solution to diarrhea is not more widely used -- namely because of a lack of treatment availability and publicity. (Andrea Gerlin, Time Europe, 11 October 2006)

http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/article/0,13005,901061016-1543876,00.html

(Added: Thu Oct 12 2006   Hits: 88)

Access to drugs: a suitable case for treatment

This article comments on the recently released WHO report "Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property Rights". While the main message of the report - that governments should do more to increase poor people's access to medicines - will be likely to make much impact, it is in reading between the lines that the great debate of how to make globalisation benefit the poor is revealed. The absence of concrete proposals for change reflects not so much the panelists' lack of commitment as their inability to reach a consensus on how to reach the above goal. On one side are those who believe the solution lies in the hands of pharmaceutical companies, open markets, and governments that believe these should be allowed to operate with minimal interference. On the other are those whose main concern is that the current lack of available and accessible medicines for the poor is clear evidence of market failure and who believe governments have a responsibility to intervene. Such is the disagreement that half the panel's members felt it necessary to publish statements dissociating themselves from some of the report's conclusions. (David Dickson, Sci-Dev Net, 5 April 2006)

http://www.scidev.net/Editorials/index.cfm?fuseaction=readEditorials&itemid=187&language=1

(Added: Mon Apr 10 2006   Hits: 371)

Afganistan's Health System since 2001: Condition Improved, Prognosis Cautiously Optimistic

A look at Afghanistan's health care system since 2001 (Afghan Research and Evaluation Unit, April 2007)

http://www.areu.org.af/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=40&Itemid=74

(Added: Tue Aug 28 2007   Hits: 57)

Aids activists bring gift of life to South Africa

UK Guardian 30 Jan 2002. Cheap copies of drugs that can keep people with HIV/Aids alive have been imported into South Africa from Brazil by doctors and activists, in defiance of patent laws, in order to demonstrate to poor countries that they can afford to treat their dying populations, it was revealed yesterday.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/aids/story/0,7369,641442,00.html

(Added: Mon Oct 20 2003   Modified: Fri Jun 03 2005   Hits: 145)

AIDS treatment fails to reach remote lakeshore community

The challenges of achieving the Malawian government's goal of universal access to anti-AIDS treatment are nowhere more apparent than in Usisya, an isolated community on the northern shores of Lake Malawi, where treatment is not yet available. (IRIN, 16 November 2006)

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/ccf2bfa3c5bb1f7fcc731454096410b6.htm

(Added: Wed Nov 29 2006   Hits: 82)

AIDS: Burma's Shadowy Mass Export

In 2005 an estimated 360,000 people in Burma were living with HIV, according to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS. These are hardly African levels yet, but rates are increasing dramatically and Burma's generals are doing nothing to stop them. Among ethnic minorities such as the Shan, an estimated 9 percent of men are HIV-positive; so, in some areas, are a staggering 96 percent of injecting drug-users. These rates are exacerbated by public ignorance, widespread poverty, burgeoning prostitution and drug abuse, lack of medicines, and the collapse of a once-respectable healthcare system under military misrule. "You essentially have the perfect storm, the perfect set of conditions for an explosive and sustained HIV epidemic," says Chris Beyrer, director of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School's Center for Public Health and Human Rights in the US, and co-author of a recent report on the spread of serious infectious diseases in Burma. (Andrew Marshall, Irrawaddy, July 2006)

http://www.burmanet.org/news/2006/07/06/irrawaddy-aids-burma%E2%80%99s-shadowy-mass-export-andrew-marshall/

(Added: Tue Sep 12 2006   Modified: Mon Jul 02 2007   Hits: 131)

Call for cheaper life-saving drugs

BBC online, 12/03/2001. The International Red Cross joins the campaign for major pharmaceutical companies to reduce the cost of essential drugs in developing countries

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/newsid_1216000/1216409.stm

(Added: Mon Oct 20 2003   Modified: Fri Jun 03 2005   Hits: 173)

Cheap Drugs for Poor Countries

The UK Guardian. April 07 2001. The world's biggest drugs companies are to provide medicines for poor countries at bargain prices after bowing to mounting global pressure to reduce the cost of their patented treatments.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4167039,00.html

(Added: Mon Oct 20 2003   Modified: Tue Jun 14 2005   Hits: 151)

China: the intersections between poverty, health inequity, reproductive health and HIV/AIDS

This article argues that chronic and long term underinvestment in the health sector has created a public health crisis in China today. The weakened health system intersects with poverty and gender inequity which erodes women's right to basic health services. At the same time, as family planning programmes move away from their historically coercive practices (one child per family policy), the health system is increasingly unable to maintain basic access to provide for maternal health or the new challenges to women's health posed by HIV. (Joan Kaufman, Gender and Health Equity Network, 2005)

http://www.ids.ac.uk/ghen/resources/papers/KaufmanChinaHealthSystem.pdf

(Added: Wed Aug 23 2006   Hits: 200)

Claiming our space: Using the flexibilities in the TRIPS agreement to protect access to medicines

In 2001 the Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health provided a landmark political commitment reaffirming the option for World Trade Organisation (WTO) member states to use all flexibilities provided in the TRIPS Agreement to ensure access to affordable medicines, and to prevent patent monopolies stopping access to medicines where they are needed for public health. By 2006, many of these flexibilities are not yet exploited in Africa, despite the massive demand for cheap medicines. This brief outlines the opportunities that African countries have to use these flexibilities and the legal and other changes needed for this. It also outlines the challenges that we may face and the measures to respond to them. (Equinet, 2006)

http://www.equinetafrica.org/bibl/docs/POLBRF16trade.pdf

(Added: Fri Jan 12 2007   Hits: 93)

Countdown to 2015: Tracking progress in maternal, newborn and child survival : the 2008 report [pdf]

Mortality in children under age five is now concentrated in sub Saharan Africa (50%) and South Asia (almost 30%). Maternal and newborn mortality are similarly concentrated in those regions. Meanwhile, within countries, the richest quintile is gaining access to key interventions more quickly than the poorest. Reducing both types of inequity - between regions and within countries - is crucial for achieving the health-related Millennium Development Goals. (United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), 2008)

http://www.countdown2015mnch.org/documents/2008report/2008Countdown2015fullreport.pdf

(Added: Mon Apr 28 2008   Hits: 27)

Court battle over AIDS drugs

BBC online, 5/03/2001. The world's pharmaceutical giants go to court to stop South Africa importing cut-price versions of drugs needed to combat AIDS

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/newsid_1202000/1202402.stm

(Added: Mon Oct 20 2003   Modified: Fri Jun 03 2005   Hits: 149)

Criticisms Mount for Drugs Watchdog

BBC online, 02/05/2001. The body charged with deciding which drugs treatments are cost effective for the NHS comes under attack from disillusioned doctors

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_1307000/1307035.stm

(Added: Mon Oct 20 2003   Modified: Fri Jun 03 2005   Hits: 151)

Debt and health

Produced with Health Unlimited and Oxfam, the briefing looks at the impact of the debt crisis on access to healthcare in poor countries, as well as the positive results for health provision of the debt cancellation that some countries have received. (Jubilee Debt Campaign UK, December 2007)

http://www.jubileedebtcampaign.org.uk/download.php?id=589

(Added: Thu Dec 20 2007   Hits: 71)

Defeating Poverty

The UK Guardian. June 19 2000. We live in a world of extremes. Prosperity has reached levels that would have been unthinkable to our grandparents, yet one in five people lives in desperate poverty. In an age of breathtaking advances in medical technology, more than 12 million children die each year from easily preventable infectious diseases.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4030323,00.html

(Added: Mon Oct 20 2003   Modified: Fri Jun 03 2005   Hits: 148)

Delay for AIDS drugs case

BBC online, 6/03/2001. A court case brought by pharmaceutical giants seeking to stop South Africa importing cut-price AIDS drugs is adjourned till next month

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/newsid_1205000/1205388.stm

(Added: Mon Oct 20 2003   Modified: Fri Jun 03 2005   Hits: 161)

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