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81. A Comprehensive and Inclusive Peace Process for Chad

Publication Date:
12-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Africa Policy Information Center
Abstract:
Analysts, policy makers and experts are now accepting that the conflicts in Chad and Sudan have mutually reinforcing dynamics. Chad's internal political instability is having devastating consequences on the peace processes in Sudan and the Central African Republic (CAR). The U.N. Security Council Sanctions Committee Panel of Experts on Sudan stated that Chad supports Sudanese insurgent groups with arms, ammunition, vehicles, food, training and safe haven Violations of humanitarian law and international human rights continue unabated in the region and violators in eastern Chad operate in an environment of almost total impunity. A new U.S. Government strategy must be created to stabilize Chad and bring to an end the continued degradation of conditions in the region. This strategy must work in parallel with the peace process for Sudan and with the efforts led by the “Contact Group” to normalize Chad-Sudan relations.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Health, Human Rights, Human Welfare, Humanitarian Aid, Peace Studies, United Nations, and War
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, and Sudan

82. Zimbabwe in Crisis: Mugabe's Policies and Failures

Author:
Hany Besada and Nicky Moyo
Publication Date:
10-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
Exemplifying the negative consequences of a variety of inappropriate fiscal and social policies, Zimbabwe has failed to realize its potential to become a strong, independent state, going from the admiration and envy of its neighbours to near-complete collapse and abject poverty. Economic turmoil, caused by failed land reforms and inflation, combined with increased malnutrition, and evaporating access to education, health care, and employment have only exacerbated unrest, particularly for constituencies who receive few benefits from President Robert Mugabe's regime. This paper assesses Zimbabwe's social, political and economic crisis and its impact on Zimbabweans, indicating the steps needed for national recovery and sustainable development.
Topic:
Corruption, Education, Government, and Health
Political Geography:
Africa and Zimbabwe

83. South Africa's Medical Brain Drain: Myths, Facts and What (not) to do

Author:
Jon Mortensen
Publication Date:
07-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
A global shortage of health professionals makes it relatively easy for doctors and nurses from poor countries to emigrate to rich countries. This has raised fears of a medical brain drain from poor to rich countries and has been the subject of much – impassioned – debate. This paper questions the underlying rational behind South Africa's current policies toward the medical brain drain. In doing so, it also challenges the dominating view on the medical brain drain: that out-migration of health workers from developing countries has damaging consequences and curbing that migration is pivotal in safeguarding developing countries' health systems. A view which is rooted in a perhaps intuitively convincing assumption that out-migration and low levels of health workers are tightly correlated – that outward migration causes low levels of health workers in South Africa and elsewhere.
Topic:
Health and Migration
Political Geography:
Africa and South Africa

84. Africa Malaria Day 2007 - Time for a Checkup

Author:
Roger Bate and Kathryn Boateng
Publication Date:
04-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
Funding for malaria control has increased significantly over the past decade, but it is still unclear whether that funding is actually saving lives. Setting targets has emerged in recent years as a key fundraising tool for disease-control programs. However, available evidence shows that most health targets are immeasurable or not measured. Unless performance is measured in a meaningful way and successful policies followed thereafter, current and future malaria funding may not help to save lives and may even be counterproductive. It is time to stop setting meaningless targets.
Topic:
Development, Health, and Human Welfare
Political Geography:
Africa

85. Performance-Based Incentives for Health: A Way to Improve Tuberculosis Detection and Treatment Completion?

Author:
Rena Eichler, Diana Weil, and Alexandra Beith
Publication Date:
04-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Tuberculosis is a public health emergency in Africa, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia. Of the estimated 1.7 million deaths from TB, 98 percent are in the developing world, the majority being among the poor. In order to reach the MDG and the Stop TB partnership targets for 2015, TB detection rates need to double, treatment success rates must increase to more than 7075 percent, and strategies to address HIV-associated TB and multi-drug resistant TB must be aggressively expanded. DOTS, the internationally-recommended TB control strategy is the foundation of TB control efforts worldwide. A standard recording and monitoring system built on routine service-based data allows nearly all countries in the world to track progress in case detection and treatment completion through routine monitoring. This provides a good base for measuring the impact of different strategies for improving TB control outcomes.
Topic:
Health, International Organization, and Poverty
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, and Asia

86. What About Women? The Failure of HIV/AIDS Initiatives to Address the Needs of African Women

Author:
Victoria Okoye
Publication Date:
06-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Africa Policy Information Center
Abstract:
HIV/AIDS continues to claim the lives of more African men, women and children than any other disease or conflict. As populations across the continent experience the destructive effects of this pandemic, the most marginalized communities feel the brunt. Africa Action calls for a new and intense international focus on the situation of African women, as the only effective means to combat this pandemic.
Topic:
Economics, Health, and International Organization
Political Geography:
Africa

87. Big Pharma and Big Profits: Denying Access to AIDS Medication

Author:
Stephanie Parker
Publication Date:
08-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Africa Policy Information Center
Abstract:
Almost 40 million people around the world are currently living with HIV/AIDS. The number of people affected by the AIDS pandemic has steadily climbed over the last decade, devastating entire populations and destroying communities, especially in Africa. While the international community has yet to find a solution to this grave threat to global health, innovations in drug development have allowed countless people to significantly prolong their lives through HIV/AIDS medication, specifically antiretroviral drugs (ARVs). This valuable medicine, however, is available only to a small portion of people living with HIV. Millions of people, the majority of which live in the Global South, are unable to receive drug treatment because they cannot afford the high costs of the medicine.
Topic:
Health
Political Geography:
Africa

88. Global Public Health and Biosecurity: Managing Twenty-First Century Risks

Author:
Margaret E. Kruk
Publication Date:
07-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
In this first decade of the twenty-first century, we have reason both to commend and to decry the state of human health and our ability to improve it. We have achieved a maximum life expectancy of eighty-six years and have found a way to manage, though not cure, the most deadly epidemic since the Black Plague, AIDS. We can keep up with mutating viruses to produce a new flu vaccine every year and we can save babies born only twenty-three weeks into a pregnancy. Yet that is only half the picture. We also live in a world where a Nigerian newborn has a nearly one in five chance of dying before reaching age five and her mother a one in sixteen chance of dying in one of her pregnancies. Life expectancy in parts of sub-Saharan Africa has fallen below forty years. We have experienced remarkable scientific advances over the past fifty years, although we have not been able to apply many of these to the bedside or to public health policy. And so we have powerful genetic tools to study the components of viral RNA but cannot predict when or even if the bird flu will spread to humans.
Topic:
International Relations, Globalization, Health, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
Africa and Nigeria

89. Performance-Based Incentives for Health: A Way to Improve Tuberculosis Detection and Treatment Completion?

Author:
Rena Eichler, Diana Weil, and Alexandra Beith
Publication Date:
04-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Tuberculosis is a public health emergency in Africa, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia. Of the estimated 1.7 million deaths from TB, 98 percent are in the developing world, the majority being among the poor. In order to reach the MDG and the Stop TB partnership targets for 2015, TB detection rates need to double, treatment success rates must increase to more than 7075 percent, and strategies to address HIV-associated TB and multi-drug resistant TB must be aggressively expanded. DOTS, the internationally-recommended TB control strategy is the foundation of TB control efforts worldwide. A standard recording and monitoring system built on routine service-based data allows nearly all countries in the world to track progress in case detection and treatment completion through routine monitoring. This provides a good base for measuring the impact of different strategies for improving TB control outcomes.
Topic:
Development, Health, Human Welfare, and Humanitarian Aid
Political Geography:
Africa, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe

90. Do Visas Kill? Health Effects of African Health Professional Emigration

Author:
Michael Clemens
Publication Date:
03-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
The emigration of highly skilled workers can in theory lower social welfare in the migrant-sending country. If such workers produce a good whose consumption conveys a positive externality—such as nurses and doctors in a very poor country—the loss can be greater, and welfare can even decline globally. Policies to impede emigration thus have the potential to raise sending-country and global welfare. This study uses a new database of health worker emigration from Africa to test whether exogenous decreases in emigration raise the number of domestic health professionals, increase the mass availability of basic primary care, or improve a range of public health outcomes. It identifies the effect through two separate natural quasi-experiments arising from the colonial division of the African continent. These produce exogenous changes in emigration comparable to those that would result from different immigration policies in principal receiving countries. The results suggest that Africa's generally low staffing levels and poor public health conditions are the result of factors entirely unrelated to international movements of health professionals. A simple model proposes that such results would be explained by segmentation of health workforce labor markets in the sending countries. The results further suggest that emigration has caused a greater production of health workers in Africa.
Topic:
International Relations, Health, and Migration
Political Geography:
Africa