Health Policy And Systems Research In Sub Saharan Africa

The research in this technical brief is part of a multi-country study commissioned by the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research to understand the evidence-to-policy process around health decisions in Ghana, Ethiopia and Mozambique. Through surveys and in-depth interviews with representatives from 54 locally based research institutions and 41 health policy-makers, the studies explored the entire chain of evidence generation, from conception of the research idea, through to its synthesis and dissemination. For each country, this included discussions with key actors involved in tracer policies. This technical brief distils regional lessons from the studies and offers a set of recommendations to support efforts to develop and strengthen existing institutions towards enhanced uptake of research.

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.

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.

Contemporary Healthcare Issues in Sub-Saharan Africa: Social, Economic, and Cultural Perspectives discusses contemporary healthcare issues in Sub-Saharan Africa to identify deficiencies in the system and provide workable recommendations for strengthening healthcare delivery on the continent. Contributors address topical issues such as drug quality, malaria control, health insurance, geriatric care, and the environment-health nexus. The contributors also study intimate partner violence and maternal-child health, food safety, prevalence of childhood tuberculosis, and cardiovascular diseases. This book provides in-depth analyses of current issues in Sub-Saharan Africa that blend theory and practice. The diverse group of contributors includes experts in clinical medicine, pharmacy, economics, anthropology, public health, and the social sciences.

"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"--

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.

Since the private health sector is an important, and often dominant, provider of health services in Sub-Saharan Africa, it is the job of governments as the stewards of the health system to engage with it. Increasing the contributions that the existing private health sector is making to public health is an important, but often neglected, element of meeting the daunting health-related challenges facing African nations. This Report presents newly collected data on how and how effectively each country in the Africa region is engaging the respective private health sectors; and how the engagement compares across the region. While the approach taken by governments varies greatly between countries, there is much room for improvement in the Africa region overall to engage more effectively and room for exchange of ideas and good practices on how to do so. Improved solutions on the policy/regulatory side should be supported by effective organization of the private sector itself and by adjustments in donor programs that take the dynamics of the private health sector better into account.

Traditional health practitioners in Africa are an important human resource in health care, and there are reasons why ministries of health might want to formulate an overt policy toward traditional medicine. Here are some policy options to consider.

1, 2017 Organization of the Article This article examines how social health insurance can be made workable in spite of the challenges facing the idea by drawing on the experiences of four countries in sub-Saharan Africa in the administration of health insurance. [...] Although the ascendancy of the market economy, the trend towards minimalist government, a poor economic outlook and different interpretations of the role of the African state (as outlined by Kawabata 2006, for example) have combined to gradually alter the roles of government in the developing world, and Africa in particular, the importance of government as an organizer, implementer and regulator o. [...] a powerful equalizer that abolishes distinctions between the rich and the poor, the privileged and the marginalized, the young and the old, ethnic groups, and women and men (Chan 2012). [...] Depth of coverage corresponds to the number and quality of services and assesses the range of health services available to meet the healthcare needs of covered populations. [...] Strong political leadership also featured in the cases of South Africa and Nigeria, although for the former, the apartheid root of the health insurance system deprived the scheme of equity as a key UHC objective, which has not been redressed in the post-apartheid period.