This study aims to assess patient satisfaction and factor of importance on the service they receive at the primary health care facility in Botswana. The study was a cross sectional study in which 360 systematically selected participants completed 5 point likert scale self-administered questionnaire to rate their satisfaction level as well as factors of importance where best service was provided. Results showed that pharmacy received the highest satisfaction level while the nurse got the least level of satisfaction in terms of services rendered. 14.4% of participants still think time is not important to them as factor as long as they got what they wanted. Participants mentioned that an increase in personnel and staff training stood out as areas that need to be significantly considered
for improvement.
Governance and participation in health
The paper seeks to investigate the effect of using volunteer screeners in active tuberculosis case-finding in South Kivu, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, especially among groups at high risk of tuberculosis infection. In order to identify and screen high-risk groups in remote communities, the authors trained volunteer screeners, mainly those who had themselves received treatment for tuberculosis or had a family history of the disease. A non-profit organization was created and screeners received training on the disease and its transmission at 3-day workshops. Screeners recorded the number of people screened, reporting a prolonged cough and who attended a clinic for testing, as well as test results. Data were evaluated every quarter during the 3-year period of the intervention (2014–2016). Acceptability of the intervention was high. Volunteers screened 650 434 individuals in their communities, 73 418 of whom reported a prolonged cough; 50 368 subsequently attended a clinic for tuberculosis testing. Tuberculosis was diagnosed in 1 in 151 people screened, costing 0.29 United States dollars per person screened and US$ 44 per person diagnosed. Although members of high-risk groups with poorer access to health care represented only 5.1% of those screened, they contributed 19.7% of tuberculosis diagnoses. The intervention resulted in an additional 4300 sputum-smear-positive pulmonary tuberculosis diagnoses, 42% of the provincial total for that period. Patient-led active tuberculosis case-finding represents a valuable complement to traditional case-finding, and should be used to assist health systems in the elimination of tuberculosis.
This systematic review of 18 papers published between 1999 and 2019 describes Patient-Public Engagement (PPE) research in Sub-Saharan Africa in relation to theories of PPE; and identifies knowledge gaps to inform future PPE development. Five PPE strategies implemented were traditional leadership support, community advisory boards, community education and sensitisation, community health volunteers or workers, and embedding PPE within existing community structures. PPE initiatives were located at either the ‘involvement’ or ‘consultation’ stages of the engagement continuum, rather than higher-level engagement. Most PPE studies were at the ‘service design’ level of the health system or were focused on engagement in health research. No identified studies reported investigating PPE at the ‘individual treatment’ or ‘macro policy or strategic’ level. The authors suggest that the findings call expanding for PPE at all health system levels and different areas of health system improvement.
Sex Workers Outreach Programme (SWOP) is a project run by the University of Nairobi and Canada's University of Manitoba, which trains sex workers to be peer educators for other sex workers and inform them about sexual health and rights. Through the SWOP programme, educators have enabled more than 3,000 of their Nairobi peers to get tested for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. They have also taught them skills to negotiate condom use with their clients. Since 2008, the SWOP clinic in Nairobi, which is open 24 hours a day, has provided HIV prevention services to more than 7,000 commercial sex workers, 150 of them male. The HIV prevalence among those tested is 33 percent. The prevention package includes condom demonstration and provision, sexually transmitted infection screening and treatment, family planning and post-exposure prophylaxis.
After two years of participatory engagement and planning, the People’s Health Movement gathered 800 people from 90 countries for the 3rd People’s Health Assembly. The Assembly strengthened and deepened solidarity; expressed outrage at the continuing global health crises that are embedded in myriad structural and socio-political inequities; developed principles for alternative economic, political and social orders; and re-committed delegates to work towards the world envisioned by the movement. The Assembly reaffirmed commitment to the People’s Charter for Health and the Cuenca Declaration which are the foundational documents to the Call to Action drafted at the Assembly reported here. The Call to Action guides the movements work until the fourth People’s Health Assembly is held.
We are organizing a People's Summit, the G6B Conference to be held just prior to the G8 meeting in June, 2002 in Calgary, Canada. The People's Summit will address issues of global importance. In researching HIV in Africa for the People's Summit, we are requesting information regarding the following:
* What are the areas of interest for your organization?
* Can you provide us with specific information in the areas of your work regarding HIV in Africa?
* Are you interested in collaborating with the People's Summit Conference?
* Can your organization join the Conference? Are you able to fund the participation of a delegate to the Conference? We are looking for experts in this area to join a Health Committee Panel during the Conference. Do you know of any such persons who would be suitable for this?
More information on the G6B Conference can be found at the website.
The author comments that Oxfam has been successful in highlighting the gross and rapidly growing inequalities in the world in international fora, but critiques the approach of asking rich elites and their allies in governments to do the right thing as perpetuating the myth that there are no alternatives other than to depend on large corporations. The author argues that it is in people’s everyday practices that it is far more likely to find meaningful solutions to inequality and the seeds of a more human economy. He raises, for example, the issue of redistribution of assets, such as to address land inequality, as a more pertinent pathway for peoples practices to address societal inequality and challenge the structural power of the drovers of inequality.
This study aims to fill a research gap regarding the positive health and socio-economic outcomes and experiences of volunteers in the home-based care context in South Africa. It investigated the perception of rewards among volunteers working in home-based care settings. Qualitative interviews were conducted with a purposively selected sample of 55 volunteer caregivers using an interview schedule containing open-ended questions. The study found that volunteer caregivers derived intrinsic rewards, related to self-growth and personal development, which were a direct consequence of the experiences of caring for terminally ill patients with AIDS. Extrinsic rewards came from appreciation and recognition shown by patients and community members. The greatest sources of extrinsic rewards were identified as the skills and competencies acquired from training and experience while caring for their patients, and volunteers' ability to make a difference in the community. The insights revealed by this study may be useful to programme managers in recruiting and assisting volunteers by helping managers to identify and reflect on rewards in the caregiving situation as a means of reducing the burden of care and sustaining volunteer interest in caregiving.
Shah’s book presents the latest thinking of leading development scholars on operationalising a framework of governance to empower citizens to demand accountability from their governments. Focusing on the question of how to institutionalise performance-based accountability, especially in countries that lack good accountability systems, the essays in the book describe how institutions of accountability may be strengthened to combat corruption. In general, the essays in the book highlight the causes of corruption and the use of both internal and external accountability institutions and mechanisms to fight it. It provides advice on how to tailor anticorruption programs to individual country circumstances and how to sequence reform efforts to ensure sustainability. They offer insights into ways policy makers can initiate governance reforms that introduce performance-based accountability in the public sector.
The People’s Health Movement (PHM), a world-wide civil society network, has a series of concerns about the World Health Summit (WHS), which is being planned as an annual event. Although the summit speaks of participation of nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), the costs ranging between 290–490 Euro for NGOs will exclude those that could legitimately reflect the voices and needs of grassroots and marginalised communities. The summit is also by invitation only, which suggests that NGO participation will be hand-picked and limited. PHM believes that, rather than creating a parallel policy forum, efforts and resources should be spent strengthening the World Health Organization (WHO) as the international coordinating body for issues related to people's health. WHO is one of the United Nation organisations in which each country has a voice. WHO thus provides a reasonably democratic decision making process, despite mechanisms used by powerful member states to direct the decisions. We are concerned that the declaration of the World Health Summit is likely to preferentially represent the interests of the Global North, corporations and those who financially sponsor the Summit.