Useful Resources

The book Global Health Versus Private Profit focuses on the changes taking place in global health care systems. It presents evidence on how market-style reforms result in health care systems that are more unequal, more costly, more fragmented and less accountable – but which offer more profits to the private sector. The book offers an analysis of the “menu” of market-style reforms to health care systems that have been rolled out in country after country, despite the absence of evidence for their effectiveness, and ignoring the evidence of harm that is being done. These include the emphasis on competition rather than planning and cooperation, the splitting of health care systems into purchasers and providers, privatisation in various guises – including buying in services from the private sector that were previously delivered by public sector providers – the imposition of user fees, and the focus on health insurance and managed care in place of social provision and universal coverage. Many of these policies are being implemented in rich countries and poor alike, but they are having the most devastating impact on the poorest. They are argued to sap vital resources, dislocate and fragment systems, prevent them from responding to health needs, and obstruct the development of planning. My book argues that these so called “reforms” are driven not by evidence, but by ideology – but that behind the ideology is a massive material factor: the insatiable pressure from the private sector which is desperate to recapture a much larger share of the massive $5 trillion-plus global health care industry, much of which only exists because of public funding. The concluding chapter argues “It doesn’t have to be this way” and brings together a lot of different ideas, emphasising that the policies we are opposing are not inevitable products or even a rational response to the current situation, but choices that have been deliberately made by politicians working to a neoliberal agenda. They can be rejected and defeated by mass political action.

The Global Health Watch (GHW) is a new project which articulates civil society's vision for global health. It is a platform for the strengthening of advocacy and campaigns to promote equitable health for all. The global community has failed to achieve 'Health for All by the Year 2000'. New targets such as the Millennium Development goals look increasingly unachievable. Questions need to be asked about whether current policies in global health are working. The Global Health Watch for 2005 will not only look at some of the most important problems such as commercialisation of health and access to medicines, but also suggest solutions and monitor the efforts of institutions and governments concerned with promoting health world-wide.

This monitoring and evaluation framework is a guide for project implementers to help them develop national monitoring and evaluation plans to monitor and report on progress when implementing mobile messaging programmes for mothers. The key objective of this framework is to ensure that MAMA programme outputs meet the needs of the target population. The indicators presented in this framework can be used to monitor and report on progress in the implementation of the various MAMA initiative components in countries.

The new interface for the World Health Organisation’s Global Price Reporting Mechanism (GPRM) is now available online. This improved interface enables users to search for the price and volumes sold of HIV medicines (all, or selected formulations), in countries, regions, by income category, by Human Development Index category, by manufacturer and by type of manufacturer (generic or innovator). New data has been included for trends of price and volumes sold. All data is quality controlled, as duplicates have been removed, suspicious data are quarantined and queried before they are uploaded. Data for 2011 and 2012 are now available from GPRM in the public domain as they are uploaded for the first time.