Advocacy

This post was originally published on the IntraHealth International blog.

To mark the beginning of Open Access Week, a global event now in its fifth year, which promotes open access as a new norm in scholarship and research, we started thinking about the concept of “open.” Google defines it as:

Allowing access, passage, or a view through an empty space; not closed or blocked up: ‘the door was wide open.’

IntraHealth has long championed the importance of health workers and managers having open access to information, particularly in developing countries. Open access is a natural extension of that work. As we blogged last spring, readily available and accessible information can help health workers save lives. Read more »

The UN’s Millennium Development Goals Report 2011 provides a fascinating snapshot of how far we’ve come in improving health outcomes—and how much further we need to go. Unfortunately, the report ignores the health workforce crisis in many of the countries struggling to meet their 2015 health goals. The MDGs cannot be achieved when large numbers of people lack access to a health worker, yet the persistent, severe shortage of health workers is paid scant attention in the recently released UN report.

A fundamental barrier to improving health is the health worker crisis. The report’s section on Goal 5 (Improve Maternal Health), for example, points out that far too many women are without access to a skilled birth attendant during delivery. While many regions have made progress, “coverage remains low in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia, where the majority of maternal deaths occur.” Read more »

The main hallway at the AIDS 2010 conference is a barrage of banners, notices, and signs—yet a few things jump out and demand to be noticed. One large photo shows an erect penis with a bejeweled hand grasping its base. Posters ask, “Will you be spanked between sessions?”

These got my attention. AIDS activists are good at such tactics, and they need to be—it’s a matter of life and death.

Death and dying are what many health workers confront every day, noted Yogan Pillay of South Africa’s National Department of Health. Showing some sobering data, he pointed out that “if we don’t take care of health workers, they will not take care of patients.” And in a session on supporting health workers to deliver care, Masamine Jimba of the University of Tokyo described how the Japanese character for “busy” literally means “losing heart.” Read more »