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This report examines four not-for-profit school chains, run by non-governmental organisations in low-income contexts. These are Fe y Alegría, the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (better known by its acronym BRAC), Gyan Shala and Zambia Open Community Schools. These school chains have succeeded in reaching marginalised students and expanding access to hard-to-reach groups. The evidence also… Read more
Country-led political and financial commitments to nutrition goals are widely recognized as critical to reducing malnutrition at scale. This report seeks to examine the relationship between country-level nutrition policy, implementation leadership, donor support and coordination, and nutrition outcomes at a national or subnational level. The analysis focuses on reducing the prevalence of stunting in countries… Read more
The evidence found for this report shows that vending machines have been used to make contraceptives available to vulnerable groups in low and middle income countries in a number of programmes. Examples from different parts of the world include: A six-year HIV prevention pilot programme started in 2009, which plans to install 100 CVMs using… Read more
In order to translate global commitments of ensuring access to sexual and reproductive healthcare services for every woman and every girl into practical, affordable and sustainable interventions, policy makers and implementers need to be able to draw on solid evidence of what does and does not work. The More Mobilising Access to Maternal Health Services… Read more
Where have all the teachers gone? Why there are never any teachers in Africa’s refugee camps and what we can do about it, is chapter 10 of Next steps in managing teacher migration: papers of the sixth Commonwealth research symposium on teacher mobility, recruitment and migration. When it is time to start formal education soon after… Read more
This paper explores the differing opinions of various stakeholders in relation to trypanosomiasis, a widespread and potentially fatal disease spread by tsetse flies which affects both humans and animals. It is an important time to examine this issue as human population growth and other factors have led to migration into new areas which are populated… Read more
The value of syphilis testing in early pregnancy has been gaining recognition in recent years. Mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of the disease is estimated to be responsible for between 2-4% of all neonatal deaths in sub-Saharan Africa in the 2010 Global Burden of Disease Study. This makes a clear case for strengthening the prevention of MTCT (PMTCT)… Read more
A training approach for community health volunteers increased skilled birth attendance rates in six rural districts in Zambia by 63 percent from baseline over a two-year period. The training approach was developed for adult community health volunteers operating in a low literacy context. The UK aid-funded Mobilising Access to Maternal Health Services in Zambia (MAMaZ)… Read more
As political commitment is an essential ingredient for elevating food and nutrition security onto policy agendas, commitment metrics have proliferated. Many conflate government commitment to fight hunger with combating undernutrition. The authors test the hypothesis that commitment to hunger reduction is empirically different from commitment to reducing undernutrition through expert surveys in five high-burden countries:… Read more
It is to the credit of the Zambian leadership and the development community that a great deal of momentum for nutrition has been built in the past few years. The level of undernutrition in Zambia is high and persistent, with almost one in every two children stunted for their age. In June 2013 the Zambian… Read more
The level of undernutrition in Zambia is high and persistent. The increasing commitment of Zambian and international stakeholders to changing this situation holds out the prospect a real decline in undernutrition over the coming years. In addition, the current strong growth of GDP per capita is potentially a positive driver of future undernutrition decline. Despite these… Read more