Tag: Health
The contribution of contraception to reductions in obstetric mortality and morbidity is universally acknowledged. One major pathway is by reducing the number of unwanted births. Each pregnancy and childbirth carry a health risk for the woman, and where obstetric services are poor, maternal mortality is still very high. In most Asian and Latin American countries… Read more
Considerable progress has been made over the past decade towards Millennium Development Goal 4. The number of deaths among children younger than 5 years has declined from 12 million in 1990 to 6·9 million in 2011.1 But do the surviving children have an equal chance to realise their human potential, achieve social justice, and contribute… Read more
On average, urban health levels are better than those in rural areas. However, averages can be misleading: once the data are disaggregated, it is clear that the urban poor face health risks often as high as and sometimes worse than those of rural residents, despite the proximity of modern health services (UNFPA, 2012). This report… Read more
Containment strategies for Ebola rupture fundamental features of social, political and religious life. Control efforts that involve local people and appreciate their perspectives, social structures and institutions are therefore vital. Unfortunately such approaches have not been widespread in West Africa where response strategies have been predominantly top-down. Authoritarian tactics have had questionable effect, potentially worsening… Read more
The international response to Ebola has been decried for being ‘too slow, too little, too late’. As well as racing to respond, we need to consider what has happened over the past decades to leave exposed fault lines that enabled Ebola to move so rapidly across boundaries of people’s bodies, villages, towns and countries. Gender… Read more
Ebola has had significant, negative effects in the rapidly expanding, unregulated areas of peri-urban and urban West Africa. The residents of these areas maintain vital connections with rural populations while intermingling with and living in close proximity to urban and elite populations. These interconnections fuel the spread of Ebola. The degradation of natural resources, temporary… Read more
The economic effects of the Ebola health crisis are slowly unfolding as the virus continues to affect Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea. The most important sector is mining as these three countries share a rich iron ore geological beltway. The macroeconomic impacts of the crisis came into sharp focus when London Mining, Sierra Leone’s second… Read more
The origin of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has been traced to the likely confluence of a virus, a bat, a two-year-old child and an underequipped rural health centre. Understanding how these factors may have combined in south-eastern Guinea near the end of 2013 requires us to rethink elements of the familiar Ebola ‘outbreak… Read more
The spread of Ebola in West Africa centres on a region with a shared recent history of transnational civil war and internationally led post-conflict reconstruction efforts. This legacy of conflict and shortcomings in the reconstruction efforts are key to understanding how the virus has spread. The dynamics of warfare tied into and accentuated the state’s… Read more
In countries with high levels of poverty or instability and with poor health system management and governance, people are highly vulnerable to shocks associated with ill health, including major epidemics. An effective health system can help build their resilience by reducing exposure to infection and minimising the impact of sickness on livelihoods and economic development…. Read more
The Ebola outbreak in West Africa has exposed the limits of the current approach to the global governance of infectious diseases, which mixes public health and security interests. International efforts to strengthen ‘health security’ quickly faltered when confronted with weak national health systems. Costly attempts by Western governments to strengthen global health security by developing… Read more