The International HIV/AIDS Alliance is an international development non-governmental organisation which was established to respond to the need for a specialist, professional intermediary organisation which would work in effective partnership with non-governmental and community-based organisations in developing countries, as well as with governments, donors and the UN system. The Alliance's mission is to support communities in developing countries to play a full and effective role in the global response to AIDS. In some countries the Alliance supports linking organisations, in others the Alliance supports field partners. The Alliance currently has three field offices: in India, Ukraine and Zambia. The secretariat is based at Queensberry House, 104-106 Queens Road, Brighton BN1 3XF, United Kingdom, and the Alliance website has a number of useful links, updates and publications.
Useful Resources
ISEqH will launch the International Journal for Equity in Health by Spring 2002. This will be a peer-reviewed, electronic journal under the auspices of BiomedCentral (www.biomedcentral.com). Articles published in the journal will be cited in PubMed. The purpose of the journal will be to further the state of knowledge about equity in health, defined as systematic and potentially remediable differences in health across populations and population groups defined socially, economically, demographically, or geographically.
The KidsRights Index is an initiative by the KidsRights Foundation and the Erasmus University Rotterdam to monitor the status of children’s rights across the world in order to promote and foster the realisation of these rights. The KidsRights Index is the first global ranking on how countries are adhering to children’s rights. The country-ranking will be published yearly and will be made available to the public through a comprehensive website. New dimensions may be added over time to enrich the index. The Index draws on two key available sources of information: The Concluding Observations adopted by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child and UNICEF’s annual State of the World’s Children reports.
The ICD is the international standard diagnostic classification for all general epidemiological, many health management purposes and clinical use. These include the analysis of the general health situation of population groups and monitoring of the incidence and prevalence of diseases and other health problems in relation to other variables such as the characteristics and circumstances of the individuals affected, reimbursement, resource allocation, quality and guidelines. It is used to classify diseases and other health problems recorded on many types of health and vital records including death certificates and health records. In addition to enabling the storage and retrieval of diagnostic information for clinical, epidemiological and quality purposes, these records also provide the basis for the compilation of national mortality and morbidity statistics by WHO Member States.
EngenderHealth, a nonprofit agency working to improve women's health worldwide, today (9 April, 2002) released two online minicourses to support the international network of family planning and sexual and reproductive health providers in their efforts to prevent the transmission of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs). The two new courses, entitled Sexually Transmitted Infections and HIV and AIDS, are part of EngenderHealth's Web-based series Topics in Reproductive Health (the first course in the series, Sexuality and Sexual Health, was released last fall). They will provide health care providers, especially those in resource-poor settings, with knowledge and strategies for addressing HIV/AIDS and STI prevention, management, and counseling with their clients. Developed by EngenderHealth through a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the courses are now available online or on CD-ROM. For more information, contact Carrie Svingen, EngenderHealth, NY, at 212-561-8538 or by email.
The purposes of this bibliography are to present an overview of the published literature on equity in health and to summarize key articles relevant to the mission of the International Society for Equity in Health (ISEqH). The intent is to show the directions being taken in health equity research including theories, methods, and interventions to understand the genesis of inequities and their remediation. Therefore, the bibliography includes articles from the health equity literature that focus on mechanisms by which inequities in health arise and approaches to reducing them where and when they exist.
The Open and Collaborative Science in Development Network (OCSDNet) announces the launch of the network and a public Call for Concept Notes on case studies that explore the linkages between Open Science and development initiatives. Open and Collaborative Science (OCS) is a set of ideas and practices that aims to change the traditional culture of research by making the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge inclusive and publicly accessible. Open approaches to science include increased sharing of research plans and data, participatory citizen science, distributed “crowdsourced” forms of data collection, and innovative models of large or small scale scientific collaborations, enabled by networked technologies. While principles of openness and collaboration are recognized as critical for development, they remain to be realized. Moreover, there is limited awareness about the benefits and practices of OCS in the Global South. If the global scientific community understands how scientific knowledge can be effectively made more open and inclusive, then researchers and research-users in the Global South and North can work to ensure that scientific knowledge informs development efforts.
Rural and Remote Health, is an international, electronic journal of rural and remote health education, practice and policy. The journal's aim is to provide an easily accessible, peer-reviewed, international evidence-base to inform improvement in health service delivery and health status in rural communities.
DevInfo is a database system that harnesses the power of advanced information technology to compile and disseminate data on human development. In particular, the system has been endorsed by the UN Development Group (UNDG) to assist countries in monitoring achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). It facilitates data sharing at the country level across government departments, UN agencies and development partners by providing methods to organise, store and display data in a uniform way. By the end of 2006, more than 90 national, regional and global DevInfo adaptations had been developed around the world. DevInfo has been adapted by several UN agencies for the dissemination of regional and global databases.
This is an online ten-unit short course on health systems and their functioning. Like organ systems, health systems break down in predictable patterns and lead to syndromes that can be diagnosed and addressed. Dysfunctional health systems are why thousands of effective low-cost health interventions remain on the shelves while people suffer and die. Dysfunctional health systems leave people vulnerable to financial catastrophe. Failure to manage health resources judiciously permits not just waste, but the delivery of inappropriate or harmful services. While many lament how little research addresses the development of ‘new cures’ for the diseases of the poor, the inexcusable tragedy is the world’s failure to deliver affordable and effective ‘old cures’ to treatable and preventable diseases. Diarrhoea, pneumonia, tuberculosis and malaria are all easily and cheaply treatable. Their persistence around the world is a testament to failed health systems more so than a lack of scientific prowess.