To understand the patterns of Rwanda’s achievements in health development, it is important to explore how Rwanda addresses the Social Determinants of Health (SDH) particularly those related to routine conditions in which people are born, live and work. It is in this particular context that a case ...study on Rwanda’s Performance in Addressing Social Determinants of Health was conducted by the Rwanda Ministry of Health, with technical and financial support from the World Health Organization (WHO). The overall goal of the exercise was to document Rwanda's recent initiatives that contribute to the advancements of the Rio Political Declaration on Social Determinants of Health.
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BMJ 2009; 338 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.b158 (Published 05 February 2009)
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b158
Correspondence to: A Burns alistair.burns@manchester.ac.uk
Ghana is attracting global attention for efforts to provide health insurance to all citizens through the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS). With the program’s strong emphasis on maternal and child health, an expectation of the program is that members will have increased use of relevant servi...ces. The NHIS does appear to enable pregnant women to access services and allow caregivers to seek care early for sick children, but both the quantitative and qualitative assessments also indicated that the poor and least educated were less likely to have insurance than their wealthier and more educated counterparts.
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The Facilitator’s Guide for the basic-needs based Response Options Analysis and Planning (ROAP) is a step-by-step guide comprising tools and templates to carry out a multi-sectoral response analysis and planning of response options, in a sudden-onset or chronic crisis.
Being that so, the Guide i...s conceived to be applied hand in hand with the BNA Guidance and Toolbox, and other assessments methodologies. It is expected to assist in analysing data from different sources - including humanitarian staff’ own
knowledge and experience on the sector, cash, protection matters - to come up with response decisions
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The Facilitator's Guide has been piloted in Borno (Nigeria) and in Fafan zone (Somali region, Ethiopia) and improved iteratively after each test.
What does the ROAP have that you won't find in other methodologies?
It is based on holistic, people-centred approaches that span across sectors an...d consider people's perceptions, priorities, ways of coping, and assistance preferences.
It introduces the concepts of inter-sector needs profile and inter-sector causal analysis, and how to use these to articulate shared objectives and better integrated and holistic response packages, as opposed to siloed plans.
It introduces the concept of basic needs basket, and how to define the BN basket based on both households' perspective and sector experts' opinions, and acknowledging that needs have different frequencies and timings, and units of analysis (individual, household, community).
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Humanity & Inclusion has published a report on November 20, on the difficulties children with disabilities face in accessing education in the world’s poorest countries.
Since 24 February 2022, the war in Ukraine has caused widespread suffering to its people and serious damage
to the country’s infrastructure. Attacks on the country’s health system and its power network threaten people, compromise the provision of health care, and complicate the distribution of ...essential medicines and equipment.
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WHO needs US$2.54 billion to provide life-saving assistance to millions of people around the world facing health emergencies. WHO’s Health Emergency Appeal is a consolidation of WHO’s priorities and financial requirements for 2023 to carry out health interventions in emergency and humanitarian r...esponses. The number of people in need of humanitarian relief has increased by almost a quarter compared to 2022, to a record 339 million. WHO is responding to an unprecedented number of intersecting health emergencies: climate change-related disasters such as flooding in Pakistan and food insecurity across the Sahel in the greater Horn of Africa; the war in Ukraine; and the health impact of conflict in Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria and north eastern Ethiopia – all of these emergencies overlapping with the health system disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and outbreaks of measles, cholera, and other killers. Contributions to the appeal can be fully flexible, flexible across a region, or flexible within a country appeal.
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Recovery from COVID-19 has been challenging in Guatemala. As a result of the prolonged socio-economic impact of the pandemic, the average poverty rate nationwide has increased by almost 5%. This rise in the poverty level further exacerbates preexisting vulnerabilities and erodes the limited safety n...ets available to vulnerable populations. Year after year, recurrent disasters and humanitarian crises aggravate the historic social gaps that result in high levels of vulnerability, multidimensional poverty, and overall deprivation of essential services among hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans. According to the World Risk Report 2020, Guatemala is the tenth country with the highest level of exposure to disaster worldwide. Globally, it ranks 28th regarding vulnerability according to the 2021 INFORM’s risk index and 62nd in the Global Climate Risk Index 2021.
In 2020, Guatemala faced a record-breaking and devastating hurricane season with extreme rainfall, catastrophic winds, and deadly landslides, from which the country has not yet recovered. Unfortunately, recurrent extreme weather events, such as Hurricane Julia that hit Central America in early October 2022, progressively but deeply eroded a weak health infrastructure and local health systems.
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The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has been facing a prolonged socio-political and economic situation that has profoundly and negatively impacted social and health indicators. The COVID-19 pandemic further aggravated the humanitarian context in the
country, which stretched the limits of an alread...y weakened national health system. Violence and social conflicts, hyperinflation, constant political tensions, the persistence of migratory movements, and intensification of climate threats and natural hazards
have worsened the living conditions and health status of populations in vulnerable situations, including women, children, and indigenous people. A large influx of returnees back to Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of) marked the first
two years of the pandemic. However, the country’s continued deteriorating political, socio-economic, and human rights situation resulted in renewed increased migration of Venezuelans in 2022. The profile of Venezuelan migrants has progressively changed
over the years, from single men in search of better economic opportunities to families with women and children in situations of extreme vulnerability. The increasingly irregular and unsafe journeys of those migrants are constantly putting their lives at high risk
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Insufficient funding is hindering the achievement of malaria elimination targets in Africa, despite the pressing need for increased investment in malaria control. While Western donors attribute their inaction to financial constraints, the global health community has limited knowledge of China’s ex...panding role in malaria prevention. This knowledge gap arises from the fact that China does not consistently report its foreign development assistance activities to established aid transparency initiatives. Our work focuses on identifying Chinese-funded malaria control projects throughout Africa and linking them to official data on malaria prevalence. By doing so, we aim to shed light on China’s contributions to malaria control efforts, analysing their investments and assessing their impact. This would provide valuable insights into the development of effective financing mechanisms for future malaria control in Africa.
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The Report describes the evaluation of WHO's contribution to the Maternal Health Program in South-East Asia Region. This was an independent evaluation conducted in 2015 by Amaltas, a Delhi based organization. The evaluation highlights the progress in five countries, namely Bangladesh, Indonesia, Mya...nmar, Nepal and Sri Lanka and provides specific recommendations for Organizational Learning and Development. This report will be useful for all those interested in WHO's work on Maternal Health Program in the Region.
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The State of the World’s Children 2013: Children with Disabilities examines the barriers – from inaccessible buildings to dismissive attitudes, from invisibility in official statistics to vicious discrimination – that deprive children with disabilities of their rights and keep them from partic...ipating fully in society. The report also lays out some of the key elements of inclusive societies that respect and protect the rights of all children, regardless of disability, and progress in helping all children to flourish and make their contribution to the world.
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The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has been facing a sociopolitical and economic situation that has negatively impacted social and health indicators. There have been intensified population movements both within the country and to other countries, particularly to Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia,... Costa Rica, Curaçao, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guyana, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago, and Uruguay. Since 2017, an estimated 5.2 million Venezuelans have migrated to other countries, including an estimated 4.3 million who have gone to countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
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A Formative Evaluation of UNICEF’s Child Protection System Building Approach in Indonesia