Worldwide, 830 women die daily from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth, and unfortunately one fifth of these women reside in India (UNICEF). Maternal death accounts for highest share of Disability-Adjusted Life Year (DALY) and is more prevalent in rural areas as compared to urban ones. This is demonstrated in areas such as the Sundarbans, where geographically inaccessible terrain makes maternal health service delivery challenging. In the near absence of formal delivery care at the grassroots level, Community Delivery Centers (CDCs) bring basic obstetric care to the doorsteps of hard-to-reach regions of Indian Sundarbans.
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There is growing scientific evidence that infections that are resistant to antibiotics are a serious global health challenge. This has stimulated wide agreement on a Global Action Plan for Addressing AMR and many countries have produced National Action Plans. It is important that these action plans take into account the local context. This is especially important in countries with a pluralistic health system in which people seek health care from a wide variety of public and private providers of drugs and medical care. One lesson from the work of the Future Health Systems Consortium is the need to take a systems approach for tackling health challenges in these countries. This blog highlights some priority issues that this kind of approach needs to take into account.
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The term ‘BRICS’ was coined to reflect a changing world, in which a number of large, emerging economies were starting to play a greater role in world economic affairs. Terms such as this reflect changing global realities, but also have the potential to shape those realities. The jury is still out on how far China’s ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI) will reshape the way we see the world. The view of blog post authors Lewsi Husain and Gerry Bloom is that it will have a significant impact in many areas, one of which is advancing cooperation for global health. At a time of retrenchment and reorientation in developed economies’ assistance, how China, existing donors and health agencies learn to work together will have an important impact on global health outcomes and may provide learning on how to collaborate on other, more contentious, issues.
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In India, there is a growing interest in partnership driven innovative service delivery models for providing health services to the poor. Consequently, the state and central governments in India have initiated 226 innovative programs of which 43 are through public private partnerships (PPPs). In spite of this interest in PPPs, very few programs have been scaled up to reach a wider population.On one hand, PPPs are lauded as an innovative model for service delivery and multiplicative scale-up that includes multiple actors. On the other hand, it is argued that factors such as inadequate funding, changing political context and PPP modalities like tendering and contracts limit the resources available for development and scale-up of innovations. But the fundamental question is – how can partnerships based on the premise of collaborative functioning that leverages each other’s strengths foster innovative solutions for local problems and drive them to scale?
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There are about 7 billion mobile users globally, and no less than 95% of people are covered by at least 2G network. Via smartphones, people have access to over 40,000 health apps. As a result, globally there is much interest in eHealth, especially in addressing various barriers related to access to healthcare. However, from the health equity standpoint, we have to ask, who has access to quality health information through electronic platforms (eHealth)?
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How can Rural Medical Practitioners (RMPs) improve health service delivery in the hard-to-reach areas in the Sundarbans? IIHMR Researcher, Rittika Bramhachari explores how incorporating RMPs can help India to reach Universal Health Coverage.
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The use of new knowledge intermediaries in the public health sphere gives rise to a host of ethical issues. These include questions about fairness of access; the quality of the technology used and information generated; who has access to and control of such information; the impact of commercial interests within a healthcare setting; and regulation across borders. How do we address all of these from within our current frameworks of ethical thinking in medicine? In fact, can we?
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Much energy is spent on debating whether services such as health, education and veterinary medicine, should be provided by the public or private sectors. But the answer to this question turns out to be irrelevant for most of the globe’s poorest.
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As part of my ongoing work investigating health markets and the role of non-state actors in provision of health services, I am involved in a project concerning the role of mining companies in supporting the provision of health services to their employees and the wider community in mineral rich countries. This provided me with the opportunity to participate in the Mining Indaba 2012 in Cape Town in early February. This is an annual event for managers of mining companies, financiers, officials of multi-lateral organisations and Ministers from many African countries. The meeting was an eye-opener.
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