Health Affairs

Over the past decade, it has become popular to invoke the term “strategy” in global health.  For many NGOs operating in developing world contexts, strategy is synonymous with “vision.”  For others, strategy is the set of operating activities that meet a defined goal.  And for others, still, strategy represents the ex-post principles invoked to justify... Read the rest of this entry »

Between 2002 and 2008, financial and in-kind assistance from public and private channels to improve health in developing countries grew rapidly; for instance, assistance grew by 17 percent between 2007 and 2008. However, a new study from Health Affairs finds that the worldwide economic crisis has taken a toll on health funding.Assistance for health grew... Read the rest of this entry »

As a professional working and living in Malawi, I have seen firsthand the country’s health challenges. Landlocked with poor health indicators, Malawi suffers from a high maternal mortality:  637 mothers die for every 100,000 live births. And there are fears that this number may be even higher: public health facilities face frequent and prolonged drug... Read the rest of this entry »

Health Affairs plans a thematic issue on lessons learned from, and future prospects for, the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). This special issue will appear in July 2012, before the opening of the World AIDS Meeting in Washington, D.C A number of articles have already been commissioned and are listed on the Health... Read the rest of this entry »

Since its inception in 2003, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has saved millions of lives through providing anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment to people living with HIV/AIDS.  PEPFAR has been essential in moving overall coverage levels in African countries from near zero to a few countries reaching 80 percent coverage (e.g. Botswana) and several... Read the rest of this entry »

In a rural town in western Uganda, Nagasha struggled to find the money to pay for her baby’s delivery at a faith-based hospital. She was forced to sell part of her harvest and her husband had to work overtime to come up with the 20,000 Ugandan Shillings. However, when preparing for the birth of her... Read the rest of this entry »

On World Polio Day, October 24, 2011, the Independent Monitoring Board of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative issued its third quarterly report.   The Independent Monitoring Board “was established at the request of the Executive Board of WHO [World Health Organization] and the World Health Assembly in 2010, to monitor the implementation and impact of... Read the rest of this entry »

The poor legislative and regulatory framework monitoring the quality, sale and transit of medicines in the developing countries, coupled with the scarcity of human and financial resources and a lack of political will, allows the trade in counterfeit and substandard medicines to boom. This problem must be addressed by ensuring that medicines in the developing... Read the rest of this entry »

Vaccinating children around the world against infectious diseases has saved the lives of millions over the past several decades. Now new opportunities exist to overcome remaining challenges, according to articles in the June 2011 issue of Health Affairs, Strategies For The Global ‘Decade Of Vaccines, published June 9. The new Health Affairs volume explores the... Read the rest of this entry »

Two new studies published today in the June issue of Health Affairs project huge benefits from a major ramp-up of vaccine development and delivery over the next 10 years in 72 countries. The studies, both from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, find that boosting vaccine coverage could prevent the deaths of 6.4 million children,... Read the rest of this entry »

Tomorrow, Thursday June 9, at 8:30 AM at the W Hotel in Washington DC, Health Affairs will hold a briefing in conjunction with the release of its June 2011 issue, “Strategies For The ’Decade of Vaccines.’” A complete line-up of speakers and other details are available here. If you want to attend the briefing, you can RSVP... Read the rest of this entry »

Immunizing the world’s children against infectious diseases has dramatically cut childhood death and suffering in recent decades.  In 2010, philanthropists Bill and Melinda Gates called for a new “Decade of Vaccines” to vault the progress dramatically forward. The June 2011 issue of Health Affairs, sponsored by the Gates Foundation, examines the strategies that will be... Read the rest of this entry »

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria has saved millions of lives, but now it is in crisis.  A string of revelations about the misuse of its grants to governments in developing countries, culminating in the recent news of the theft of $2.5 million worth of malaria drugs, has led some backers of... Read the rest of this entry »

Immunizing the world’s children against infectious diseases has dramatically cut childhood death and suffering in recent decades.  In 2010, philanthropists Bill and Melinda Gates called for a new “Decade of Vaccines” to vault the progress dramatically forward. The June 2011 issue of Health Affairs, sponsored by the Gates Foundation, examines the strategies that will be... Read the rest of this entry »

Health Affairs journal announced today that Deputy Editor Philip A. Musgrove, 70, an economist and leading expert in global health and a cherished colleague, died in a tragic boating accident at Iguazu Falls in Argentina on Monday, March 21, 2011.  He is survived by his wife, Rosa Amalia Viana Musgrove; three children, Antonina Musgrove, Anthony... Read the rest of this entry »

Recently there has been a spate of articles attacking and supporting the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria.  The issue has been corruption and whether the Global Fund has been lax in preventing diversion of drugs, fraud and misappropriation of funds. However well intentioned, the articles offer an example of how not to... Read the rest of this entry »

Jared Rhoads at the Lucidicus Project presents the latest edition of the Health Wonk Review. Among the health policy blogging Jared features are Health Affairs Blog posts by Scott Barrett and Judith Kaufmann looking at the potential rewards and risks of the new push to eradicate polio.

Editor’s Note: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other global health leaders recently launched a new effort to eradicate polio. Below, Scott Barrett comments on the potential rewards and the risks of this new initiative, and in another post Judith Kaufmann offers her thoughts on the new initiative as well. The global effort to eradicate polio... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other global health leaders recently launched a new effort to eradicate polio. Below, Judith Kaufmann comments on the potential rewards and the risks of this new initiative, and in another post Scott Barrett offers his thoughts on the new initiative as well. On January 31, Bill Gates introduced... Read the rest of this entry »

The story was tragic. A Tuberculosis patient from India who died because the system which was expected to provide for his treatment failed to deliver… and then the dessert arrived.  The setting? The official dinner of the First Global Symposium on Health Systems Research organized at the Montreux Casino. A photo of the dying TB... Read the rest of this entry »