Healthcare Policy in Africa

Healthcare Policy in Africa PDF

Author: Jean-Germain Gros

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2015-10-16

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 1442235365

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A comparative study of healthcare policy in Africa, the book explores the impact of historical institutions, multilateral organizations, and informal norms, such as, respectively, colonialism, the World Health Organization, and the Western-inspired biomedical approach to disease on health policy choices, implementation, and results in Africa. In addition, it examines the role of international philanthropy, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Partners In Health, Doctors Without Borders, and the multitude of NGOs that pullulate the African healthcare landscape. The emphasis on these (f)actors, not to mention Cuban medical aid, clearly underscores the “globalization” of healthcare policy in Africa. The case studies of Botswana, Ghana, and Rwanda —three differently endowed countries economically that are also at varying stages of democratic rule— help to shed light on the influence of domestic political institutions and elite agency on healthcare policy processes across the continent.

Governing Health Systems in Africa

Governing Health Systems in Africa PDF

Author: Martyn Sama

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 2869781822

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Drawing on various disciplinary perspectives, this book re-focuses the debate on what makes a good health system, with a view to clarifying the uses of social science research in thinking about health care issues in Africa. The explosion of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the persistence of malaria as a major killer, and the resurgence of diseases like tuberculosis which were previously under control, have brought about changes in the health system, with implications for its governance, especially in view of the diminished capacity of the public health facilities to cope with a complex range of expanded needs. Government responsibilities and objectives in the health sector have been redefined, with private sector entities (both for profit and not-for profit) playing an increasingly visible role in health care provisions. The reasons for collaborative patterns vary, but chronic under-funding of publicly financed health services is often an important factor. Processes of decentralisation and health sector reforms have had mixed effects on health care system performance; while private health insurance markets and private clinics are pointers to a growing stratification of the health market, in line with the intensified income and social differentiation that has occurred over the last two decades.These developments call for health sector reforms.

HEALTH SERVICES IN AFRICA

HEALTH SERVICES IN AFRICA PDF

Author: Chinua Akukwe

Publisher: Adonis & Abbey Publishers Ltd

Published: 2008-04-25

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 1912234165

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The challenges to better health services in Africa are well known: Africa lags behind all regions of the world, including other developing regions, on all indicators of better health. A recent report from the World Health Organisation for instance shows that while Africa has 20% of the world's sick people, it has only 4% of its healthcare workers - many of them vulnerable to the high mortality rate associated with malaria and notably the AIDS epidemic. The state of investment in healthcare infrastructure is also grossly inadequate as is the efficiency of healthcare delivery. But does this need to be so? What factors are responsible for this unacceptable state of affairs? Contributors to the volume examine the evolution of healthcare services in Africa, the ongoing national, regional and continental efforts to improve the delivery of healthcare in the continent, and the direct and indirect obstacles militating against the maturation of the services and their efficient delivery. The contributors - all distinguished experts in the field, who hold either challenging responsibilities in health in Africa or have worked in multiple components of the healthcare delivery system in the continent - also provide powerful personal insights and lessons learned in their current or previous work in the health sector in Africa. Some of the themes covered include clinical care and centers of excellence, healthcare finance and resource mobilization, primary health care systems and community health; preventive care and risk reduction in health; the role of reference laboratories; clinical research and partnerships, the role of epidemiology, statistics, monitoring and evaluation in health services; the role of the African Diaspora, and the role of politics in the organization of healthcare and the training of medical and other health professionals. From their analyses and experience the authors articulate proven strategies and solutions based on consensus expert opinions on how to improve the quality of health services and health outcomes in the continent.

Africa's Health Challenges

Africa's Health Challenges PDF

Author: Andrew F. Cooper

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-01

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 1317184033

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This volume addresses the ideational and policy-oriented challenges of Africa’s health governance due to voluntary and involuntary cross-border migration of people and diseases in a growing 'mobile Africa'. The collected set of specialized contributions in this volume examines how national and regional policy innovation can address the competing conception of sovereignty in dealing with Africa’s emerging healthcare problems in a fast-paced, interconnect world.

The Political Economy of Universal Healthcare in Africa

The Political Economy of Universal Healthcare in Africa PDF

Author: Philip C. Aka

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-04-27

Total Pages: 98

ISBN-13: 1000580687

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The global rise in pandemics, most recently COVID-19, and other health challenges, some of which are due to climate change, have imposed significant challenges on the healthcare systems in economies around the world. Thus, this book deals with an issue that is very timely and relevant, not just in Africa but globally. It critically assesses healthcare reforms in Ghana under the Fourth Republic, since 1993. Although it focuses on Ghana’s National Health Insurance Scheme of 2003, the book instructively goes beyond this program. The book argues that, although Ghana is a bellwether of healthcare reforms in Africa, its healthcare initiatives are still far from the service haven of healthcare as a human right. Themes that animate the book’s argument include the need to translate human rights law, such as the right to health, into practical policies that work for ordinary citizens. Key highlights of the book include an increased accent on health as a human right, emphasis on comparative analysis in healthcare studies, and the formulation of a four-hallmark framework, embedded in economics, law, politics, and human rights, to act as a guide for assessment of healthcare reforms in Africa in particular, and Ghana more specifically. Using Ghana as a case study and analytical window into the world, the book offers a valuable and timely resource for academics, students and policymakers across the disciplines of development and healthcare economics, law, public policy, political science, sociology, and African and Caribbean studies, as well as in various fields in health science.

African Health Leaders

African Health Leaders PDF

Author: Francis Omaswa

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2014-08-28

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0191008419

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Most accounts of health and healthcare in Africa are written by foreigners. African Health Leaders: Making Change and Claiming the Future redresses the balance. Written by Africans, who have themselves led improvements in their own countries, the book discusses the creativity, innovation and leadership that has been involved tackling everything from HIV/AIDs, to maternal, and child mortality and neglected tropical diseases. It celebrates their achievements and shows how, over three generations, African health leaders are creating a distinctively African vision of health and health systems. The book reveals how African Health Leaders are claiming the future - in Africa, but also by sharing their insights and knowledge globally and contributing fully to improving health throughout the world. It illustrates how African leadership can enable foreign agencies and individuals working in Africa to avoid all those misunderstandings and misinterpretations of culture and context which lead to wasted efforts and frustrated hopes. African Health Leaders challenges Africans to do more for themselves; build on success; tackle weak governance, corrupt systems and low expectations and claim the future. It sets out what Africa needs from the rest of the world in the spirit of global solidarity - not primarily in aid, but through investment, collaboration, partnership and co-development. It concludes with a vision for improvement based on three foundations: an understanding that 'health is made at home'; the determination to offer access to health services for everyone; and an insistence on the pursuit of quality.

African Futures

African Futures PDF

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2022-02-28

Total Pages: 407

ISBN-13: 9004471642

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The essays in this collection are written to make readers (re)consider what is possible in Africa. The essays shake the tree of received wisdom and received categories, and hone in on the complexities of life under ecological and economic constraints. Yet, throughout this volume, people do not emerge as victims, but rather as inventors, engineers, scientists, planners, writers, artists, and activists, or as children, mothers, fathers, friends, or lovers – all as future-makers. It is precisely through agents such as these that Africa is futuring: rethinking, living, confronting, imagining, and relating in the light of its many emerging tomorrows.

Historical Perspectives on the State of Health and Health Systems in Africa, Volume II

Historical Perspectives on the State of Health and Health Systems in Africa, Volume II PDF

Author: Mario J. Azevedo

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-01-24

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 3319325647

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This book focuses on Africa’s challenges, achievements, and failures over the past several centuries using an interdisciplinary approach that combines theory and fact and evidence-based practices and interventions in public health, and argues that most of the health problems in Africa are not a result of scarce or lack of resources, but of the misconceived and misplaced priorities that have left the continent behind every other on the globe in terms of health, education, and equitable distribution of opportunities and access to (quality) health as agreed by the United Nations member states at Alma-Ata in 1978.

Global Politics of Health Reform in Africa

Global Politics of Health Reform in Africa PDF

Author: Amy Barnes

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2014-12-10

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 1137500158

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Drawing on qualitative research with African actors and global health institutions, the authors explore the politics of how performance funding modalities and participation are used to shape health reform in African countries as well as the role of African actors, global policy elites and international donors within these processes.