This section includes posts related to policy, politics, health systems and delivery. The posts in this section are aggregated from numerous sources on the web. Please contact us with any additional sources you think should be included.
By CGDev
By Nancy Birdsall – Jim Kim, the incoming president of the World Bank, has gotten a lot of free (as in unsolicited) advice. I’ve participated happily, indeed eagerly (e.g. here), on the grounds that—to use Robert Zoellick’s apt title in a recent Foreign Affairs article—the world still needs the World Bank, and a better World Bank is better for
By CGDev
By Nancy Birdsall – This is a joint post with Christian Meyer. One of the pressing questions for Jim Kim in the years ahead as the World Bank’s new president is what to do as many countries graduate out of IDA, the bank’s fund for grants and concessional loans to the poorest countries. To generate ideas and possible directions
Image Credit: lilivanili Three new articled published this week in PLoS Medicine, including two magazine pieces on R&D: Diana Gibb and colleagues investigate the effect of in utero tenofovir exposure by analysing the pregnancy and infant outcomes of HIV-infected women enrolled in the DART trial. As part of a cluster of articles leading up to the 2012 World Health Report and critically reflecting on the theme of “no health without research,” Suerie Moon and colleagues argue for a global health R&D treaty to improve innovation in new medicines and strengthening affordability, sustainable financing, efficiency in innovation, and equitable health-centered governance. John-Arne Røttingen and Claudia Chamas, chairs of the the Consultative Expert Working Group on Research and Development (CEWG), summarize their recent report recommending to the World Health Assembly that a global health R&D convention be developed. Remember you can comment on, annotate and rate any PLoS Medicine article and see the views, citations and other indications of impact of an article on that articles metrics tab.
By CGDev
By Charles Kenny – I’ve been blogging a little about technology adoption of late. It’s a subject close to my heart: my last book was pretty much all about how new technologies and the spread of ideas were behind much of the global progress we’ve seen in the quality of life over the last fifty years. But there are
By IntraHealth
Go here to see the original: The Changing Landscape of International Development: The Turbulent Journey…
“There should be #NoControversy about a woman’s right to plan when and how many children to have, to have the opportunity to improve her own health and that of her children, to educate her children and to grow her family’s economic productivity,” Gary Darmstadt, head of the family health division of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Wendy Prosser, a research analyst with the family health division, write in this post in the foundation’s “Impatient Optimists” blog. The authors highlight a recent TEDxChange talk by Melinda Gates, co-chair of the foundation, in which “she addresses the issues surrounding birth control and how it is literally life-saving for millions of women and children around the world.” They continue, “But of course, any time politics, religion, and sex are intertwined, controversy tends to emerge,” and discuss several viewpoints that have emerged in media coverage of the issue (5/14).
By CGDev
By Owen Barder – On Friday the Governors of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) will decide who will be the Bank’s next President. Today we are publishing interviews with four of the candidates. In September 2009, the leaders of the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh called for the “the heads and senior leadership of all international institutions [to]
By Good Intentions Are Not Enough
This is a guest post written by Krisca Te. Krisca works with Open Colleges, Australia’s leading provider of TAFE courses equivalent and distance education. When not working, you can find her actively participating in local dog show events – in support of her husband. —– When a crisis hits in some far corner of the world, whether a drought in the North of Kenya or flooding in Sri Lanka, and the images of malnourished or orphaned children reach our television screens, we are naturally anxious to help out in some way.
By WhyDev.org
An article this week in the Times of Swaziland – “Corporal punishment to be phased out soon” – first filled me with encouragement regarding the progress Swaziland has made in its development issues in comparison to other countries. Then it whisked me down memory lane, making a pit stop at one of the mini crises I had dealt with in Ghana as Project Coordinator for an international volunteer organisation. It was the classic nightmare case: a 19-year-old boy from higher income country (HIC)-X imposed his beliefs and culture on another’s after two weeks on his project.Even with several hours of rigorous discussion courses specifically implemented to prevent circumstances such as this, he managed to do exactly what we instructed him to refrain from doing.Our organization placed him in a teaching assistant role with a primary school. This school, along with nearly every other primary school in Ghana, uses corporal punishment as its principal form of discipline.
View original post here: The ethics of drug addiction research in China
By WhyDev.org
Women Deliver recently came out with their annual “Women Deliver 50” list of inspiring ideas and solutions put forward by women and girls. The women and groups celebrated in the list cover a broad range of topics and programs, from midwives in Ethiopia to advocating for women’s voices in Libya.One that sparked my interest was “Africans feeding Africa” by Backpack Farm, which is a social enterprise that hosts trainings for small-scale farmers in East Africa and sells them green agriculture technologies and supplies– all in a backpack.I caught the founder, Rachel Zedeck, in the middle of the busy planting season in Kenya, but she managed to spare some time to tell me about their program and some of the challenges in pursuing the social enterprise model.Tanya Cothran: Where does your funding come from? What drew you to the commercial model as opposed to the donor-funded aid model?Rachel Zedek: I used my life savings to build the company, which is a registered LTD (limited company) in Kenya. In retrospect I think I was naïve.
By IntraHealth
See the article here: What’s the Best Way to Retain a Health Worker? Just Ask Her!
By CGDev
By Owen Barder – The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) will appoint its next president in ten days, after months of deliberation. Many in the international development community are pushing for the process to be open, transparent and merit-based–a rallying cry you’ll recall from the recent World Bank presidential selection process. On behalf of CGD Europe, We’ve invited each
