Access to anti-AIDS drugs is improving in Zimbabwe, due to recent initiatives to roll-out antiretroviral (ARV) therapy and to manufacture the medicines locally. A Zimbabwean pharmaceutical company has started manufacturing generic antiretroviral (ARV) drugs in a bid to significantly reduce the cost of the medication for people living with HIV/AIDS.
Equity in Health
Local production of AIDS drugs begins in Zimbabwe
Long-term food security: Investing in people and livelihoods: Five-year strategic framework on food security for Africa 2008-2012
Red Cross and Red Crescent Centre on Climate Change and Disaster Preparedness, 2008
Sub-Saharan Africa is not on track to achieving a single Millennium Development Goal, and is the only region in the world where malnutrition, an outcome of food insecurity, is not declining. This paper presents the Red Cross Red Crescent five-year strategic framework on long-term food security for Africa. Guided by the 2000 Ouagadougou Declaration and the Algiers Plan of Action 2004, it aims to reduce food insecurity in communities vulnerable to disasters and/or affected by HIV/AIDS. The paper notes that interventions will be evidence-based and will be driven by good practice developed both internally and externally. Programmes will be developed with the full consultation and participation of vulnerable communities in order to ensure that programmes build on the existing assets, capabilities and priorities of the communities and are owned by them.
Low malnutrition but high mortality: Explaining the paradox of the Lake Victoria region
Priebe J and Grab J: 2009
The combination of low levels of malnutrition together with dramatically high rates of mortality encountered in Kenya's Lake Victoria territory is unique for Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper points to a unique interplay of cultural, geographical and political factors in the region that are responsible for causing the described paradox. Moreover, it demonstrates that a salient disease environment is one of the key drivers of the massive under-5 mortality rates in the lake region. This environment is characterised by extremely high malaria prevalence, polluted water sources and high rates of infectious diseases like HIV. It also found that an ethnic specific effect remains even after controlling for mother's age at birth, birth spacing, birth order and HIV-status. Political discrimination seems also to be an important factor. The paper reveals that the HIV status of the mother and children's diarrhoea status explain the largest part in the variation of stunting outcomes between families. Educational attainment of the mother turns out to be the single most important source in explaining mortality differentials between families.
Macroeconomics and Health: Investing in Health for Economic Development
Report from the chair of the Commission, Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs, to Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, Director-General of the World Health Organization.
A drastic scaling up of investments in health for the world’s poor will not only save millions of lives but also produce enormous economic gains, say experts in a landmark Report presented to the World Health Organization (WHO). A group of leading economists and health experts maintain that, by 2015–2020, increased health investments of $66 billion per year above current spending will generate at least $360 billion annually. About half of this will be as a result of direct economic benefits: the world’s poorest people will live longer, have many more days of good health and, as a result, will be able to earn more. The other half will be as a consequence of the indirect economic benefits from this greater individual productivity.
Further details: /newsletter/id/28989
Mainstreaming Health Equity in the development agenda of Africa countries
UN Economic Commission for Africa
This report presents the findings of a study on “Mainstreaming health equity into the development agenda in Africa”. A steep gradient in health outcomes between rural and urban areas, between better-off households and the less better-off are due in part to inequities in health. Reducing inequities in health is integral to success in reaching the targets of the three health-related MDGs and the other MDGs where health is an important component. The Report shows that policy makes a difference and that success requires that health equity is clearly mainstreamed in the national development plan because it provides the overall strategic direction to ensuring that development is more inclusive; it can infuse the multi-sectoral linkages required in addressing health inequities; and can strengthen the case for increased resources to health. In only a few countries are there identified health equity-focused strategies to
be implemented. Most of the plans outline strategies that are aimed at universal coverage of health services and take the goal of equity as given.
Mainstreaming Health Equity in the Development Agenda of African Countries
Economic Commission for Africa, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia 2008
Equity is emerging as an urgent policy priority in health sector reforms in many African countries. This report presents the findings of a study on “Mainstreaming health equity into the development agenda in Africa”. The widely reported fact that health outcomes in Africa are generally poor obscures the existence of a steep gradient in health outcomes between rural and urban areas, between better-off households and the less better-off. These differences in outcome are due in part to inequities in health. There is strong evidence that the poor health outcomes reported for most African countries are attributable to inequities in health. Reducing inequities in health is therefore argued to be integral to success in reaching the targets of the three health-related MDGs and the other MDGs where health is an important component.
Major AIDS Group Files Complaint Against Drug Giant in South Africa
AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the largest AIDS organisation in the United States has filed a complaint with South Africa’s Competition Commission against GlaxoSmithKline. AHF filed the complaint over the company’s drug pricing and AIDS policies in South Africa, which it described as “having a stranglehold on key AIDS drug patents” and exercising “unfettered monopoly pricing on these life-saving medications.” AHF wants the commission, an independent body ensuring that companies compete fairly and do not abuse positions of power, to overturn GlaxoSmithKline’s sole right of manufacturing drugs in the country.
Major Humanitarian Agencies issue urgent appeal for southern africa
The United Nations and several major humanitarian agencies have issued a plea to the international community to fund relief efforts for the "dual human tragedy" of HIV/AIDS and famine in Southern Africa, Agence France-Presse reports. A U.N. appeal for $611 million in aid for Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe has reached 58% of its target, Elizabeth Byrs, spokesperson for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said.
Make medicines child size
World Health Organisation
Launched on 6 December 2007, 'make medicines child size' is a global campaign spearheaded by WHO to raise awareness and accelerate action to address the need for improved availability and access to safe child specific medicines for all children under 15. To achieve this goal, more research is needed, more medicines need to be developed, and improved access measures are essential. At present, many medicines are not developed for children or available in suitable dosages or formats; and when they are they are not reaching the children who need them most. The 'make medicines child size' campaign is an effort to change that reality.
Making health systems more equitable
Health systems are consistently inequitable, providing more and higher quality services to the well-off who need them less than the poor who are unable to obtain them. In the absence of a concerted effort to ensure that health systems reach disadvantaged groups more effectively, such inequities are likely to continue. Yet these inequities need not be accepted as inevitable, for there are many promising measures that can be pursued, says this Lancet article.