The World Health Organisation’s Health Equity Monitor currently includes data for about 30 reproductive, maternal, neonatal and child health indicators for 91 countries, disaggregated by child’s sex, place of residence (rural vs. urban), wealth quintile and education level. Data are based on demographic and health surveys and multiple indicator cluster surveys conducted in the represented countries - 90 of which are low- or middle-income countries - totalling nearly 200 surveys in the period 1993-2011. For around half of the countries, data are available for at least two time points. Country profiles are also provided. These highlight disaggregated data for each of the 91 study countries, using the most recent available data. Finally, interactive visualisations show inequalities in select health outcomes and services (situation and trends).
Useful Resources
Women with disabilities often discover that the social stigma of disability and inadequate care are greater barriers to health than the disabilities themselves. A Health Handbook for Women with Disabilities will help women with disabilities overcome these barriers and improve their general health, self-esteem, and abilities to care for themselves and participate in their communities. This groundbreaking handbook was developed with the help and experience of women with disabilities in 42 countries-women with various disabilities. The book is full of useful advice on organising for disability-friendly health care, caring for daily needs with limited access to equipment, having healthy and safe sexual relationships, choosing family planning methods that work best with specific disabilities, preparing for pregnancy and childbirth, and defending against violence or abuse.
According to this paper, health impact assessment (HIA) provides an important decision-making tool through which health issues can be addressed upstream in development planning and design. HIA proposes a systematic process to screen, scope, assess, appraise and formulate management plans to address key issues in development project implementation. While most African countries have a framework for environmental impact assessment (EIA), few have adequate capacity for HIA, which is still at a relatively early stage of development compared to other types of impact assessment globally. Partly because the importance of HIA is not yet well understood by policy makers in Africa, the tool has not been used to support development processes, including large-scale infrastructure projects. In addition to the lack of awareness of HIA, low technical competencies and inadequate institutional arrangements hinder the application of the process in Africa. The development of national HIA capacity building is the main means through which to respond to these challenges. This paper explains how to implement the HIA process.
The WHO has launched its Health in All Policies Training Manual. The manual provides a resource for regional and country training workshops to increase understanding of HiAP by health professionals and others. WHO is developing a global plan to raise awareness among the end-users regarding this tool, and is seeking to consolidate a strong network of institutions to support responses to training requests at national and sub-national levels.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) calls on enhanced global efforts to improve health in some of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable communities by tackling the root causes of disease and health inequalities. In order to address this and to spur up action, raise awareness and facilitate implementation of a Health in All Policies (HiAP) approach WHO has launched a Health in All Policies training manual. This manual is a training resource to increase understanding of the importance of Health in All Policies among health and other professionals. The material will form the basis of 2- and 3-day workshops, which will: build capacity to promote, implement and evaluate HiAP; encourage engagement and collaboration across sectors; facilitate the exchange of experiences and lessons learned; promote regional and global collaboration on HiAP; and promote dissemination of skills to develop training courses for trainers.
These six right-to-health pamphlets contain basic, easy to read information and can be placed in any South African public health service facility or distributed to patients and organisations working in public health. Topics include: community involvement; the Patients’ Rights Charter; individual and collective rights; access to information; and rights and resource allocation.
The Health InterNetwork was created to bridge the "digital divide" in health, ensuring that relevant information - and the technologies to deliver it - are widely available and effectively used by health personnel: professionals, researchers and scientists, and policy makers. As the first phase of making vital health content available, the Health InterNetwork provides here a vast library of the latest and best information on public health: more than 2,000 scientific publications, one of the world's largest collections of biomedical literature.
The HINARI program, set up by WHO together with major publishers, enables developing countries to gain access to one of the world's largest collections of biomedical and health literature. Over 3090 journal titles are now available to health institutions in 113 countries, benefiting many thousands of health workers and researchers, and in turn, contributing to improved world health.
In response to an overwhelming appeal for access to health information from researchers and scientists in the developing world, the Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative (HINARI) was launched in January 2002. HINARI is a partnership between the World Health Organization (WHO) and major international publishing companies and offers access to academic institutions, which currently provides free or low-cost access to over 2400 online biomedical and social science journals for eligible institutions in 103 countries.
Bulletin 2, September 2001
Welcome to Consultancy Unit Update! The update aims to provide an insight into the range and scope of services available to clients, and to enable general readers to follow the progress of the consultancy unit, in accordance with Healthlink’s drive toward greater transparency. This month’s update focuses on the effective development of resource centres; and the need for monitoring and evaluation. In STAFF PROFILE we talk to Victoria Richardson (Information Systems Officer), and Christine Kalume (IP&M Team Leader) about the launch of SOURCE and their role in Healthlink Worldwide.