Useful Resources

The Forum on the Future of Aid (FFA) website has recently been re launched. The FFA can make it easier for you to voice your opinions in the international aid debate. By accessing and contributing to the FFA website, you and others can share and generate new ideas, and help promote collective action for genuine reform of the international aid system. The website primarily provides exposure to work from developing countries (Africa, Asia and Latin America). For example, the FFA website includes research written by the Community Development Resource Network (CDRN) in Uganda, the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) in Bangladesh and the Centre for Development Studies and Promotion (CDSP) in Peru.

This is the first edition of the largest global listing of health information resource centres, with data pertaining to about 1,000 centres. The focus is on their missions and objectives, with particular reference to their attitudes to technology, and their capabilities and requirements. You may consult or download the entire Directory at the site, or just pick out letters of the alphabet to select countries that are of interest. The Directory is an ongoing work, and will be updated. We aim to refine the data, and invite all readers to suggest improvements and provide better information. There are questionnaires available on the site in English, French, Russian, Spanish, Swahili.

The ninth edition of The North-South Institute’s flagship publication explores the right to health, why it is important to development and how it might best be achieved. The volume investigates public health care’s role in advancing development and also examines the role Canada is playing and might well play in achieving the global right to health. The CDR 2007 also includes up-to-date statistics and analysis related to social and economic indicators of developing countries, along with statistics regarding the Canadian government’s involvement with such countries.

Applying to the United States the kind of scrutiny that Nobel–prize winning economist Amartya Sen has devoted to developing countries, The Health of Nations demonstrates that growing inequality is undermining health, welfare, and community life in America. Harvard professors Ichiro Kawachi and Bruce P. Kennedy review the social costs of inequality, revealing that the United States and other wealthy countries with high levels of social inequality have lower general health than do more equitable societies, rich or poor. The Health of Nations makes an urgent argument for social justice as the necessary vehicle for the betterment of society, including improving the health of our bodies and our body politic.