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71. Think Long Term: How Global AIDS Donors Can Strengthen the Health Workforce in Africa

Author:
Nandini Oomman and Christina Droggitis
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
For the past decade, global AIDS donors—including the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEFPAR), the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (the Global Fund), and the World Bank's Multi-Country HIV/AIDS Program for Africa (the MAP)—have responded to HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa as an emergency. Financial and programmatic efforts have been quick, vertical, and HIV-specific. To achieve ambitious HIV/AIDS targets, AIDS donors mobilized health workers from weak and understaffed national health workforces. The shortages were the result of weak data for effective planning, inadequate capacity to train and pay health workers, and fragmentation and poor coordination across the health workforce life-cycle. Ten years and billions of dollars later, the problem still persists. The time has passed for short-term fixes to health workforce shortages. As the largest source of global health resources, AIDS donors must begin to address the long-term problems underlying the shortages and the effects of their efforts on the health workforce more broadly.
Topic:
Development, Globalization, Health, Human Welfare, Humanitarian Aid, and Foreign Aid
Political Geography:
Africa

72. Start with a Girl: A New Agenda for Global Health

Author:
Miriam Temin
Publication Date:
08-2010
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Improving adolescent girls' health and wellbeing is critical to achieving virtually all international development goals, from reducing infant and child deaths to stimulating economic growth and encouraging environmental sustainability. Governments and donors seem to recognize this, but they have yet to take the specific actions needed to genuinely invest in adolescent girls' health and, thereby, the health and wellbeing of generations to come.
Topic:
Development, Gender Issues, Health, Human Rights, and Border Control
Political Geography:
Africa and China

73. Rice Crisis Forensics: How Asian Governments Carelessly Set the World Rice Market on Fire

Author:
Tom Slayton
Publication Date:
03-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
The world rice market was aflame last spring and for several months it looked as if the trading edifice that had exhibited such resilience over the last two decades was going to burn to the ground. World prices trebled within less than four months and reached a 30- year inflation-adjusted high. Many market observers thought the previous record set in 1974 would soon be toast. The fire was man-made, not the result of natural developments. While the governments in India, Vietnam, and the Philippines did not to set the world market on fire, that was the unintended result of their actions which threatened both innocent bystanders (low-income rice importers as far away as Africa and Latin America) and, ultimately, poor rice consumers at home. This paper describes what sparked the fire and the accelerants that made a bad situation nearly catastrophic. Fortuitously, when the flames were raging at peak intensity, rain clouds appeared, the winds [market psychology] shifted, and conditions on the ground improved, allowing the fire to die down. It remains to be seen, however, if the trading edifice has been seriously undermined by the actions of decision makers in several key Asian rice exporting and importing countries. In describing the cascading negative effects of these seemingly rational domestic policies, this paper aims to help policy makers in the rice exporting and importing nations to avoid a repeat of the disastrous price spike of 2008.
Topic:
Agriculture, Economics, Health, Humanitarian Aid, Markets, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Africa, India, Asia, and Latin America

74. The Carter Center News Spring 2009

Publication Date:
04-2009
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Carter Center
Abstract:
Last November, The Carter Center was one of the sponsors of a major health initiative in Ethiopia, in which some 5 million people were treated for trachoma and tested (and treated, when needed) for malaria in a one-week campaign. You might wonder how many staff members The Carter Center sent from Atlanta headquarters to Ethiopia to handle this unprecedented, labor-intensive effort, called Maltra week. We sent one person.
Topic:
Health and Poverty
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, and Ethiopia

75. Governing HIV/AIDS in South Africa. The Role of Firms

Author:
Tanja Anita Börzel, Anna Kristin Müller-Debus, and Christian Thauer
Publication Date:
07-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Collaborative Research Center (SFB) 700
Abstract:
Firms relocating production to countries with lower social standards are regarded as driving force behind the regulatory 'race to the bottom'. However, there are numerous instances in which the behavior of firms reveals just the opposite: They adhere to self-regulatory standards (CSR) and even pressure governments to issue stricter public regulations. We intend to identify the conditions under which firms contribute to higher regulatory standards in states with weak regulatory capacities, thereby following a 'race to the top' rather than a 'race to the bottom'-logic. Theoretically, we set out to test in how far the existing literature can be utilized to answer this question. Empirically, the assessment concentrates on the textile and automotive industries in South Africa and HIV/AIDS abatement. Only limited state capacities have been involved in fighting HIV/AIDS in South Africa. Under which conditions do firms try to foster state capacities for the fight against the disease?
Topic:
Health and Human Welfare
Political Geography:
Africa

76. The New Poverty Agenda in Uganda

Author:
Anne Mette Kjaer and Fred Muhumuza
Publication Date:
09-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This paper explores the poverty agenda in Uganda, its drivers and its effects. We show that transforming the economy by increasing productivity was initially considered more important than to reduce poverty through redistributive policies. However, as a consequence of the 1996 elections a consensus on poverty eradication through health and education emerged. The Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP) had a shopping list nature and it is therefore difficult to establish whether it was implemented. Growth and poverty reduction during the PEAP period was mainly due to a continuation of macro-economic policies that were introduced prior to the PEAP. Around the multi-party elections in 2006, policy priorities changed towards more focus on agricultural production, agro-business and infrastructure. The government now has a two-edged focus: poverty reduction through economic transformation and poverty reduction through social services. However, there is also a political agenda about remaining in power which threatens to undermine the results achieved so far.
Topic:
Education, Health, and Poverty
Political Geography:
Uganda and Africa

77. Africa's Growth and Resilience in a Volatile World

Author:
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
Publication Date:
06-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Affairs
Institution:
School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
Abstract:
Until 2008, thanks to domestic policy reforms, external assistance and high commodity prices, most of the economies of sub-Saharan Africa experienced sustained and accelerating growth for over a decade. Poverty was declining, health and education indicators were improving—albeit from a low base—and there were signs that Africa's HIV/AIDS prevalence rate had begun to decline. Then, in 2008, the continent was subjected to three major global shocks: a 50 percent increase in food prices, a surge in world oil prices that reached $140 a barrel and the financial meltdown and worldwide recession that is still running its course. The initial impact of these shocks was devastating, but African policymakers and the international community responded quickly and effectively, preventing a far worse outcome. Using external assistance, they scaled up existing safety net programs to cushion the poor from the food price shock, and for the most part avoided unproductive but politically compelling policies, such as price controls and export bans. Leaders of the affected countries also increased the share of high food prices accruing to Africa's farmers. Similarly, many oil-importing countries passed on higher fuel prices to consumers, avoiding the temptation to increase poorly targeted and often regressive subsidies. Finally, when the price of oil plummeted, Africa's largest oil exporters were able to withstand the shock because they had been using a conservative reference price per barrel in their budgets and saving the rest. As the global recession worsens, the coming months or years will be extremely difficult for Africa. However, the combination of domestic policy reforms and prudent foreign assistance that enabled Africa to experience economic growth over the past decade and manage the food, fuel and financial shocks thus far, can, if replicated, enable the continent to minimize the impact on its poor and return to a path of self-sustaining growth.
Topic:
Education and Health
Political Geography:
Africa

78. AIDS, Access to Medicines, and the Different Roles of the Brazilian and South African Governments in Global Health Governance

Author:
Christian von Soest, Jan Peter Wogart, Gilberto Calcagnotto, and Wolfgang Hein
Publication Date:
09-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Abstract:
The present article illustrates how the main actors in global health governance (GHG)—governments, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), intergovernmental organizations (IOs), and transnational pharmaceutical companies (TNPCs)—have been interacting and, as a result, modifying the global health architecture in general and AIDS treatment in particular. Using the concept of “power types” (Keohane/Martin) and “interfaces” (Norman Long), the authors examine the conflicts among major GHG actors that have arisen surrounding the limited access to medicines for fighting HIV/AIDS basically as a result of the Agreement on Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), in force since 1995. They then analyze the efforts of Brazil and South Africa to obtain fast and low-cost access to antiretroviral medication against AIDS. They conclude that while policy makers in the two countries have used different approaches to tackle the AIDS problem, they have been able, with the support of NGOs, to modify TRIPS and change some WTO rules at the global level along legal interfaces. At the national level the results of the fight against AIDS have been encouraging for Brazil, but not for South Africa, where authorities denied the challenge for a prolonged period of time. The authors see the different outcomes as a consequence of Brazil's ability to combine discoursive, legal, administrative, and resource-based interfaces.
Topic:
Health, International Organization, and Non-Governmental Organization
Political Geography:
Africa, South Africa, Brazil, and South America

79. Programme Insights: The Africa Women's Protocol -- Policy Research on the African Women's Protocol

Publication Date:
02-2008
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
Oxfam GB Southern Africa commissioned a power analysis to identify key actors necessary to support efforts aimed at the ratification, domestication, and implementation of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People's Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (the Africa Women's Protocol) and the Abuja Declaration on Health (including HIV and AIDS). The power analysis contains a strategic analysis of key targets in the African Union and other inter-governmental organisations.
Topic:
Health and Non-Governmental Organization
Political Geography:
Africa and South Africa

80. Individual and Collective Resources and Health in Morocco

Author:
Marie-Claude Martin
Publication Date:
03-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
The interaction between available individual and collective resources in the determination of health is largely ignored in the literature on the relationship between poverty and health in developing countries. We analyse the role public resources play in the perception that rural women in Morocco have of their health. These resources are taken to contribute directly and indirectly to the improvement of individual health by, on the one hand, providing a health-promoting environment and, on the other, improving the individual's ability to produce health. The empirical results of multilevel models confirm the expected associations between socioeconomic status, individual vulnerability factors and health. Furthermore, the random part of the model suggests that variation in state of health is also associated with the presence of collective resources. However, the higher the level of women's individual wealth, the less the characteristics of the community in which they live seem to be associated with their health, and the less the potential vulnerability factors seem to constrain their ability to maintain or improve health. Our results suggest that collective investments derived from various areas of activity will be more favourable to improving health, insofar as they are adapted to the initial capacity of women to benefit from them.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Health, and Poverty
Political Geography:
Africa and Morocco