Dear HIFA colleagues,

This week we are exploring the question “How can health research from LMICs be made more visible and accessible?”. In our introductory message, we mentioned several programmes and initiatives, and perhaps it would be useful to say a few words about each of them. They are all represented here on HIFA, so I look forward to learn more about them.

The first project we mentioned is AuthorAID: ‘AuthorAID is a global network that provides support, mentoring, resources and training for researchers in developing countries’. ‘The AuthorAID community includes over 10,000 researchers from around the world. If you are looking for help, want to share your expertise or are searching for someone to work with, then the AuthorAID community can help!’ ‘AuthorAID is a pioneering program based at INASP. It is supported by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA). AuthorAID helps researchers in developing countries to publish and otherwise communicate their work. It also serves as a wider global forum to discuss and disseminate research.’

http://www.authoraid.info/en/

http://www.authoraid.info/en/about/

We noted that AuthorAID helps (inter alia) to support health researchers in LMICs (including and especially those who speak languages other than English) to write papers for publication. As we can see from the above description, AuthorAID provides a wide range of support and activities for researchers. As far as I know it is the leading (and perhaps the only) example of its kind and is as successful as it is needed.

When I searched on “health” on their website, I found lots of requests from health researchers looking for a mentor. This suggests perhaps that the demand is much greater than the supply? I would be grateful to hear from anyone who works with AuthorAID (whether as staff, mentor, mentee, or other capacity) whether this is indeed a challenge, and how this (and any other challenges) might be addressed.

Best wishes, Neil

Let’s build a future where people are no longer dying for lack of healthcare knowledge – Join HIFA: www.hifa2015.org  

Thank you for featuring AuthorAID (http://www.authoraid.info/en/ and http://www.authoraid.info/es/), a project primarily to help researchers in developing countries to publish and otherwise communicate their work. As a HIFA member deeply involved in AuthorAID since it began in 2007, I am delighted to reply.

AuthorAID activities include mentorship, online and face-to-face workshops, a resource library, a blog, a discussion list, and small grants to give workshops and present at conferences. As you perceived, many AuthorAID members seeking mentors are health researchers, and the demand for mentors greatly exceeds the supply. I encourage HIFA members who have not yet done so to become AuthorAID mentors. In my view, AuthorAID mentorship is a substantial service and can be highly rewarding. Registering on the AuthorAID website is quick and easy.

We would be grateful as well for other involvement by HIFA members. Examples include responding to questions posed on the AuthorAID discussion list, writing guest blog posts, suggesting or developing materials for the AuthorAID resource library, and translating AuthorAID presentations into additional languages. Those who might like to contribute in such ways can contact me at bgastel@inasp.info.

HIFA colleagues also can help extend our effort by encouraging others to join AuthorAID and by using AuthorAID resources in their work. The AuthorAID resource library (http://www.authoraid.info/en/resources/) contains many presentations and other materials on research communication and related topics. We are pleased to have others use or adapt these items.

My thanks to Neil and others who have been supporting or taking part in AuthorAID. We hope to welcome many more HIFA members as mentors or other participants in the AuthorAID community.

Regards to all,

Barbara

HIFA profile: Barbara Gastel, a physician specializing in biomedical editing and writing, is a Professor at Texas A&M University, where she coordinates the master’s degree program in science and technology journalism. She plays a lead role in AuthorAID, a project based at INASP. bgastel AT cvm.tamu.edu

This documentary looks at the National Health Insurance (NHI), focusing on the re-engineering of primary healthcare to meet the health needs of the country.

I wanted to let you know about a webinar this week on “Sharing and re-using health training content for frontline health workers”.

This webinar is 10:00 – 11:00am EST on Wednesday 22 July.

We would love you to join us! You can register for free here

https://cc.readytalk.com/cc/s/registrations/new?cid=h1o6if28qlst

Hosted by the Better Immunization Data Learning Network, the presenters are mPowering Frontline Health Workers, Digital Campus, Medical Aid Films and Jhpiego.

Summary of webinar

mPowering’s ORB platform (http://health-orb.org) has recently been launched to help promote the sharing and re-use of openly licensed health worker training content.

The aim of this webinar is to provide an introduction to the platform and why it’s needed; we will provide an overview of the content and explain how resources may be submitted and re-used to increase the availability of high-quality training content to frontline health workers. You will hear about the value mPowering’s partners see in sharing their open source content on ORB, and plans to use the content in upcoming maternal and child health programs.

Learning Outcomes

After the webinar you will:

1. Understand the role of ORB in the mPowering mission to help improve the performance of frontline health workers.

2. Be able to explain what it meant by ‘open source content’ and ‘publishing content under a Creative Commons’ license.

3. Describe how to upload a resource to ORB, and explain the review process used to approve content for the platform.

4. Understand the value for both content developers and implementing organizations for sharing and re-using the content on ORB.

Best wishes

Lesley-Anne

Lesley-Anne Long

Global Director

mPowering Frontline Health Workers

www.mpoweringhealth.org

1776 Massachusetts Ave NW |Suite 100 |Washington, D.C. 20036

Work +1.202.835.3154

Cell +1.202.689.4759

Twitter: @mPoweringHealth

ORB: aiming to transform learning for frontline health workers http://linkd.in/1PZOCAK

Learn or refresh your skills in finding, organizing and using health information. Below are links to various training material including a training manual for students, researchers and health workers in Africa developed by the Network of African Medical Librarians in Africa. http://karibouconnections.net/medlibafrica/#cour

Finding, organizing and using health information: Online training module

Module One – Information sources [Video] [PDF] [*see note below]

Module Two – Searching Tools [Video] [PDF]

Module Three – Electronic Informationn Searching Techniques [Video] [PDF]

Module Four – Intellectual Property Rights [Video] [PDF]

Module Five – Management of Information [Video] [PDF]

Module Six – Evaluating Electronic Resources [Video] [PDF]

Module Six – (French version) [Video]

Module Seven – Scholarly Communication [Video] [PDF]

Greeetings from former AHILA President [Video]

Summary in Portuguese [Video]

Another good online training source to refresh or learn skills in information literacy and using HINARI among others, is:

http://moodle.itoca.org

Regards

Chipo Msengezi,

ITOCA

HIFA profile: Chipo Msengezi is an IT Officer at ITOCA, South Africa. ITOCA (Information Training and Outreach Centre for Africa) is a capacity building organization aimed at enhancing information and communications (ICT) skills for African librarians, information specialists, scientists, researchers and students in Sub-Sahara Africa. Since Jan 2012 Chipo has also been working as a part time coordinator for AHILA and Phi – organisations working towards the improvement of information exchange and knowledge sharing.  ITOCA, AHILA and Phi are working together in collaborative initiatives with the aim of making a positive difference to health outcomes in Africa.  chipo AT itoca.org

[*Note from HIFA moderator (Neil PW): Note from HIFA moderator: To access these videos and PDFs, please visit http://karibouconnections.net/medlibafrica/#cour  ]

USAID’s flagship Maternal and Child Survival Program (MCSP), along with World Health Organization, is excited to introduce our latest evidence brief: Recommendations for Augmentation of Labour.

This evidence brief provides highlights and key messages from the World Health Organization’s 2014 Global Recommendations on the Augmentation of Labor. The goal of the brief is to summarize guidelines for effective interventions for safe augmentation to accelerate their dissemination and use. Additionally, policy and programme actions to incorporate the new guidelines are outlined alongside the recommendations. This brief is intended for policy-makers, programme managers, educators and providers who care for pregnant women.

Find the brief here – http://bit.ly/1Iv0YHv

Help us spread the word to others by sharing this email with your networks and sending out a message on social media. Here are a few sample messages that you and your organizations can use:

See brief from @MCSPglobal highlighting KEY msgs from @WHO’s 2014 Global Recommendations on Augmentation of Labour http://bit.ly/1Iv0YHv

Can we prevent prolonged labour & tackle prob of high caesarean rates? See BRIEF of @WHO’s Recs for Augment. of Labour http://bit.ly/1Iv0YHv

Please contact me if you have any additional questions. Apologies for any cross-posting.

Sincerely,

Jillian

Jillian Rossman

Administrative Coordinator

Maternal and Child Survival Program

USAID Grantee

1776 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Suite 300

Washington, DC 20036

tel: 202.835.3112

skype: jillrossman

www.mcsprogram.org

Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | Flickr

From the American People

Medical Aid Films is delighted to launch eight new films in Luganda for use by community health workers in Uganda.  The films can be used to build awareness around nutrition, warning signs in pregnancy, newborn care and other essential topics in maternal and child health.

We were delighted to work in partnership with the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, who run health worker training and community education projects in Uganda.  With their support and the help of local voice artists, we translated and dubbed eight films into the local language, Luganda, to reach many people throughout the community.  They are now available to watch and download for free from our website ­ just follow the links below.

Emere yo obulamu: Abakyala abali embuto kyebetaga okulya (Food for Life: What Pregnant Women Need to Eat)

http://medicalaidfilms.org/our-films/films-in-luganda/?v=125022187

Emere yo obulamu: Okuyonsa (Food for Life: Breastfeeding)

http://medicalaidfilms.org/our-films/films-in-luganda/?v=125021454

Emere yo obulamu: Kiki na di lwo liisa omwanawo (Food for Life: What and When to Feed Your Child)

http://medicalaidfilms.org/our-films/films-in-luganda/?v=125021453

Obuboneero bwo obubenje nga omukyala alilubuuto (Warning Signs in Pregnancy)

http://medicalaidfilms.org/our-films/films-in-luganda/?v=125021452

Engeri yokulabirira ebujje (How to care for a newborn)

http://medicalaidfilms.org/our-films/films-in-luganda/?v=125021451

Okumanya Obuboneero bwa kafuuba; ekidukano Nâ Omusujja (Is your child sick? Identifying signs of pneumonia, malaria and diarrhoea)

http://medicalaidfilms.org/our-films/films-in-luganda/?v=125021450

Manya omubiri gwo: Engeri yo kwetegekera olubuto (How to plan a pregnancy)

http://medicalaidfilms.org/our-films/films-in-luganda/?v=125021345

Okulabirira Nakawere Okwenjawuulo (Focused Antenatal Care)

http://medicalaidfilms.org/our-films/films-in-luganda/?v=124984993

We would love to hear your feedback about these films ­ please email helen@meddicalaidfilms.org.

Thank you so much to everyone at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and their partners in Uganda who made this possible.

HIFA profile: Josie Gallo is Content Co-ordinator for Medical Aid Films in the United Kingdom. Professional interests: Media for development.       josie AT medicalaidfilms.org

MENTAL HEALTH TOOLKIT – 42 pages

http://chayn.co/mental-health/

While working with survivors and victims of domestic abuse, we have learned that many people who have experienced abuse or trauma in their lives also experience mental health issues as a direct effect of what they have been through.  This is why Chayn has created a Mental Health Toolkit available for download by NGOs who support vulnerable individuals of all situations and circumstances. Knowing more about the various psychological conditions that victims of trauma can experience, such as depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicide, and even Stockholm Syndrome, will help NGOs and charities provide better and more effective support.

The Toolkit was written and approved by a team of Psychologists and includes information from several well-trusted sources to ensure the high quality of the information provided. It can be used in any way you think your organisation will benefit from it. Some examples of applications include: as a training tool, in therapy, as web content, printed off as pamphlets for your local area.

The Toolkit is under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license so if you are a professional or organisation who works with survivors, please use, remix & distribute this guide as you see fit but attributions to CHAYN for the original work will be most appreciated.

==

be well,

nand

Nand Wadhwani

The Mother and Child Health and Education Trust

http://motherchildtrust.org  |  http://healthphone.org

http://iap.healthphone.org

Laying the Foundation for Combating Malnutrition in India

Now that we can, we must!

MCAI is delighted to announce that our textbook (Maternal & Child Health Care: a practical manual for hospitals worldwide) and related pocketbook (Pocket Book of Hospital Care for Maternal Emergencies including Major Trauma and Neonatal Resuscitation) are now available to access free of charge from our website  http://www.mcai.org.uk/  as PDFs and HTML versions. For those with possibly slow speed internet, MCAI has developed a portal where the PDFs and HTML versions can be easily accessed, downloaded or read, whatever the internet speed:  http://books.mcai.org.uk/

On our main website, there is also the option to purchase hard copies of both books for those who can afford to do so. MCAI is committed to health information for all and we hope that you find the contents of both books, in all of the available formats, helpful in your work.

Here is more information:

Written and reviewed by over 100 experts from around the world, including several HIFA members, the textbook is written specifically for health workers treating pregnant women and adolescents, their newborn infants, and children admitted to hospitals in countries all over the world. Based on the latest evidence, including Cochrane Reviews and WHO Guidelines, the textbook identifies an internationally applicable, minimum standard of care in poorly-resourced hospitals and reflects the management of problems often inherent in resource-limited countries.

The pocketbook is a summarised version of the maternal and neonatal resuscitation sections of the textbook. It compliments the reference textbook but is also a stand-alone product.

Although intended to be most helpful to health workers working in low-income settings, the textbook and pocketbook contain up to date evidence based material of value world-wide.

In order to maximise access to the contents of both books, MCAI has made available on our websites http://www.mcai.org.uk and http://books.mcai.org.uk (for those with low internet speeds) PDFs of the different component sections of the whole textbook up to around 1 MB in size. Larger sections of the textbook and the whole of the pocketbook can also be downloaded as PDFs for those who have reasonable internet download speeds.

Following a suggestion from a HIFA member, MCAI is also making HTML versions of the textbook sections available to help improve access to those with poor quality internet, where download speeds may make downloading PDFs prohibitively slow.  Several sections of the textbook are already available as HTML and MCAI is working hard to have all sections available in this format within the next week or so.

MCAI is also selling the textbook and pocketbook on our website http://www.mcai.org.uk for those who can afford to buy them. The proceeds from any sales will enable MCAI to print more hard copies of both books to be provided free of charge to health workers based in frontline public hospitals in low-income or conflict-affected countries, in which hard copies of the book are a much needed and valued resource.  To date, MCAI has provided and distributed free-of-charge 2569 textbooks and 246 Pocketbooks to health workers in 33 low-income or conflict-affected countries.  The sale of 1 textbook enables MCAI to print and distribute (including packaging and shipping costs) up to 4 copies of the textbook to health workers in such settings.

If you think that you and your colleagues qualify to receive free copies of the textbook and / or the pocket books, please contact MCAI through <http://www.mcai.org.uk/>  or through <http://books.mcai.org.uk/> or email one of us directly and we will send you a criteria form to complete.

We hope you find the contents of both books in all their formats helpful and please widely distribute through your networks.

Professor David Southall OBE, MD, FRCPCH and Dr Rhona MacDonald MBChB, MRCGP, MPH, DCH, DRCOG Honorary Medical and Executive Directors.  MCAI, 1 Columba Court,

Laide IV22 2NL, UK

Telephone: 0044 (0) 7710 674003

http://www.mcai.org.uk and http://books.mcai.org.uk  

Registered as a SCIO (Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation) No. SC043467

HIFA profile: David Southall is a retired Professor of Paediatrics and Honorary Medical Director of Maternal and Childhealth Advocacy International (MCAI)    http://www.mcai.org.uk    He is also on the board of the International Child Health Group email: director AT mcai.org.uk

Below is the citation and summary points of a new paper in the open-access journal PLoS Medicine. I would be interested to hear from anyone working with the four major training programmes described (MEPI, NEPI, HRH Program, and GHSP).

CITATION: Maximizing the Impact of Training Initiatives for Health Professionals in Low-Income Countries: Frameworks, Challenges, and Best Practices

by Corrado Cancedda, Paul E. Farmer, Vanessa Kerry et al.

PLoS Med 12(6): e1001840 (16 June 2015)

http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/fetchObject.action?uri=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001840&representation=PDF

SUMMARY POINTS

– Historically, the impact of many health professional training initiatives in low-income countries has been limited by narrow focus on a small set of diseases, inefficient utilization of donor funding, inadequate scale up, insufficient emphasis on the acquisition of practical skills, poor alignment with local priorities, and lack of coordination.

– Fortunately, several innovative training initiatives have emerged over the past five years in sub-Saharan Africa. This article focuses on four initiatives funded by the United States government: the Medical Education Training Partnership Initiative (MEPI), the Nursing Training Partnership Initiative (NEPI), the Rwanda Human Resources for Health Program (HRH Program), and the Global Health Service Partnership (GHSP).

– The best practices adopted by these initiatives are: alignment to local priorities, country ownership, competency-based training, institutional capacity building, and the establishment of long-lasting partnerships with international stakeholders,

– Based on these best practices, we outline a framework for health professional training initiatives that can help better address the health workforce shortage in low-income countries.

—

Let’s build a future where people are no longer dying for lack of healthcare knowledge – Join HIFA: www.hifa2015.org  

‘This moving video from a Finnish broadcasting company sought to test how much stigma lingers toward HIV positive people; watch what happened when this HIV-positive man asked strangers to touch him.’

http://www.newnownext.com/watch-what-happened-when-this-hiv-positive-man-asked-strangers-to-touch-him/06/2015/

—

Let’s build a future where people are no longer dying for lack of healthcare knowledge – Join HIFA: www.hifa2015.org

The Lancet Commissions

Health and climate change: policy responses to protect public health

Nick Watts, W Neil Adger, Paolo Agnolucci, J ason Blackstock, Peter Byass, Wenjia Cai, Sarah Chaytor, Tim Colbourn, Mat Collins, Adam Cooper, Peter M Cox, Joanna Depledge, Paul Drummond, Paul Ekins, Victor Galaz, Delia Grace, Hilary Graham, Michael Grubb, Andy Haines, Ian Hamilton, Alasdair Hunter, Xujia Jiang, Moxuan Li, Ilan Kelman, Lu Liang, Melissa Lott, Robert Lowe, Yong Luo, Georgina Mace, Mark Maslin, Maria Nilsson, Tadj Oreszczyn, Steve Pye, Tara Quinn, My Svensdotter, Sergey Venevsky, Koko Warner, Bing Xu, Jun Yang, Yongyuan Yin, Chaoqing Yu, Qiang Zhang, Peng Gong, Hugh Montgomery, Anthony Costello

The Lancet, 2015

The Lancet Commissions

Published online: 22 June 2015

Executive Summary / Informe Ejecutivo:

The 2015 Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change has been formed to map out the impacts of climate change, and the necessary policy responses, in order to ensure the highest attainable standards of health for populations worldwide. This Commission is multidisciplinary and international in nature, with strong collabor ation between academic centres in Europe and China. The central fi nding from the Commission’s work is that tackling climate change could be the greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century. The key messages from the Commission are summarised below, accompanied by ten underlying recommendations to accelerate action in the next 5 years.

Keywords / Palabras clave:

Climate Change; Environmental Health; Public Health; Global Health

How to obtain this article / Como obtener el artículo: click here<http://bit.ly/1KhLzi5>.

Visit the Portal/Blog of the PAHO/WHO Equity List & Knowledge network : http://equity.bvsalud.org/

Visite el Sítio/Blog de la Lista de Equidad y Red de Conocimiento: : http://equity.bvsalud.org/es/

For additional information of the Equity List or contributions please contact Mrs. Eliane P. Santos, Advisor, Library and Information Networks – Department of Knowledge Management, Bioethics and Research (KBR). Pan American Health Organization, Regional Office of the World Health Organization – pereirae@paho.org<mailto:pereirae@paho.org>

Pan American Health Organization, Regional Office of the World Health Organization for the Americas

Office of the Assistant Director

Department of Knowledge Management, Bioethics and Research (KBR)

http://www.paho.org<http://www.paho.org/>

[Note from HIFA moderator (Neil PW): Below are the ten recommendations]

The Commission recommends that over the next 5 years, governments:

1 Invest in climate change and public health research, monitoring, and surveillance to ensure a better understanding of the adaptation needs and the potential health co-benefits of climate mitigation at the local and national level.

2 Scale-up financing for climate resilient health systems world-wide….

3 Protect cardiovascular and respiratory health by ensuring a rapid phase out of coal from the global energy mix…

4 Encourage a transition to cities that support and promote lifestyles that are healthy for the individual and for the planet…

5 Establish the framework for a strong, predictable, and international carbon pricing mechanism…

6 Rapidly expand access to renewable energy in low-income and middle-income countries…

7 Support accurate quantification of the avoided burden of disease, reduced health-care costs, and enhanced economic productivity associated with climate change mitigation…

8 Adopt mechanisms to facilitate collaboration between Ministries of Health and other government departments, empowering health professionals and ensuring that health and climate considerations are thoroughly integrated in government-wide strategies…

9 Agree and implement an international agreement that supports countries in transitioning to a low-carbon economy…

To help drive this transition, the 2015 Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change will:

10 Develop a new, independent Countdown to 2030: Global Health and Climate Action, to provide expertise in implementing policies that mitigate climate change and promote public health, and to monitor progress over the next 15 years. The Collaboration will be led by this Commission, reporting in The Lancet every 2 years, tracking, supporting, and communicating progress and success along a range of indicators in global health and climate change.

__________

To send a message to the HIFA forum, simply send an email to: HIFA2015@dgroups.org

30 JUNE 2015 ¦ GENEVA ¦ WASHINGTON – Cuba today became the first country in the world to receive validation from WHO that it has eliminated mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis.

“Eliminating transmission of a virus is one of the greatest public health achievements possible,” said Dr Margaret Chan, WHO Director-General. “This is a major victory in our long fight against HIV and sexually transmitted infections, and an important step towards having an AIDS-free generation” she added.

Michel Sidibé, Executive Director of UNAIDS: “This is a celebration for Cuba and a celebration for children and families everywhere. It shows that ending the AIDS epidemic is possible and we expect Cuba to be the first of many countries coming forward to seek validation that they have ended their epidemics among children.”

The challenge

Every year, globally, an estimated 1.4 million women living with HIV become pregnant. Untreated, they have a 15-45% chance of transmitting the virus to their children during pregnancy, labour, delivery or breastfeeding. However, that risk drops to just over 1% if antiretroviral medicines are given to both mothers and children throughout the stages when infection can occur. The number of children born annually with HIV has almost halved since 2009 – down from 400 000 in 2009 to 240 000 in 2013. But intensified, efforts will be required to reach the global target of less than 40 000 new child infections per year by 2015.

Nearly 1 million pregnant women worldwide are infected with syphilis annually. This can result in early fetal loss and stillbirth, neonatal death, low-birth-weight infants and serious neonatal infections. However, simple, cost-effective screening and treatment options during pregnancy, such as penicillin, can eliminate most of these complications.

Cuba’s achievement

WHO/PAHO has been working with partners in Cuba and other countries in the Americas since 2010 to implement a regional initiative to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis.

As part of the initiative, the country has worked to ensure early access to prenatal care, HIV and syphilis testing for both pregnant women and their partners, treatment for women who test positive and their babies, caesarean deliveries and substitution of breastfeeding. These services are provided as part of an equitable, accessible and universal health system in which maternal and child health programs are integrated with programs for HIV and sexually transmitted infections.

“Cuba’s success demonstrates that universal access and universal health coverage are feasible and indeed are the key to success, even against challenges as daunting as HIV,” said PAHO Director, Dr Carissa F. Etienne. “Cuba’s achievement today provides inspiration for other countries to advance towards elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis”.

Global efforts to stop mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis

There have been major efforts in recent years to ensure that women get the treatment they need to keep themselves well and their children free from HIV and syphilis and a number of countries are now poised to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of both diseases.

In 2007, WHO launched the Global elimination of congenital syphilis: rationale and strategy for action. The strategy aims to increase global access to syphilis testing and treatment for pregnant women. By 2014, more than 40 countries were testing 95% or more of pregnant women in prenatal care for syphilis. But although progress has been made, many countries have still to prioritize preventing and treating mother-to-child transmission of syphilis. In 2012, syphilis affected 360 000 pregnancies through stillbirths, neonatal deaths, prematurity, and infected babies.

In 2011, UNAIDS with WHO and other partners launched the Global Plan towards the elimination of new HIV infections among children by 2015, and keeping their mothers alive. This global movement has galvanized political leadership, innovation and engagement of communities to ensure that children remain free from HIV and that their mothers stay alive and well.

Between 2009 and 2013, the proportion of pregnant women living with HIV in low- and middle-income countries receiving effective antiretroviral medicines to prevent transmission of the virus to their children doubled. This means that globally, 7 out of 10 pregnant women living with HIV in low- and middle-income countries receive effective antiretroviral medicines to prevent transmission of the virus to their children. Among the 22 countries which account for 90% of new HIV infections, 8 have already reduced new HIV infections among children by over 50% since 2009, based on 2013 data, and another four are close to this mark.

WHO validation process

In 2014, WHO and key partners published Guidance on global processes and criteria for validation of elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis, which outlines the validation process and the different indicators countries need to meet.

As treatment for prevention of mother-to-child-transmission is not 100% effective, elimination of transmission is defined as a reduction of transmission to such a low level that it no longer constitutes a public health problem.

An international expert mission convened by PAHO/WHO visited Cuba in March 2015 to validate the progress toward the elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis. During a five-day visit, members visited health centers, laboratories, and government offices throughout the island, interviewing health officials and other key actors. The mission included experts from Argentina, the Bahamas, Brazil, Colombia, Italy, Japan, Nicaragua, Suriname, the United States of America and Zambia.

The validation process paid particular attention to the upholding of human rights, in order to ensure that services were provided free of coercion and in accordance with human rights principles.

Note to editors:

Required validation indicators include:

HIV

Impact Indicators – must be met for at least 1 year

New paediatric HIV infections due MTCT of HIV are less than 50 cases per 100 000 live births; and

MTCT rate of HIV to less than 5% in breastfeeding populations or less than 2% in non-breastfeeding populations

Process Indicators – must be met for at least 2 years • More than 95% of pregnant women, both who know and do not know their HIV status, received at least one antenatal visit • More than 95% of pregnant women know their HIV status • More than 95% of HIV-positive pregnant women receive antiretroviral drugs

Syphilis

Impact Indicators – must be met for at least 1 year

Rate of MTCT syphilis are less than 50 cases per 100 000 live births

Process Indicators – must be met for at least 2 years

More than 95% of pregnant women received at least one antenatal visit

More than 95% of pregnant women are tested for syphilis

More than 95% of pregnant women with syphilis receive treatment.

The term “validation” is used to attest that a country has successfully met criteria (internationally set targets for validation) for eliminating MTCT of HIV and/or syphilis at a specific point in time, but countries are required to maintain ongoing programmes.

In 2013, only two babies were born with HIV in Cuba, and only 5 babies were born with congenital syphilis.

For more information, contact:

Fadéla Chaib , WHO Geneva, Telephone: +41 22 791 3228, Mobile: +41 79 475 5556, E-mail: chaibf@who.int

Leticia Linn, PAHO /WHO, Telephone: + 1 202 974 3440, Mobile +1 202 701 4005 , E-mail: linnl@paho.org

Sophie Barton-Knott, UNAIDS Geneva, Telephone: +41 22 791 1697, E-mail: bartonknotts@unaids.org

‘Despite the push for evidence-based practice the majority of healthcare interventions being used may not be based on current evidence. A mere 14% of evidence-based interventions are estimated to make it into real world healthcare settings…

‘Within implementation science there are many theories, frameworks and models to assist this process. However the sheer number of these, addressing different aspects of the implementation process, can make their selection and use overwhelming and unappealing.

Furthermore, many frameworks are based on high-resource settings and may ignore obvious priorites in low-resource settings.

HIFA uses a common-sense, systems-thinking approach to better understand drivers and barriers to evidence-informed health policy and practice, in the context of health worker empowerment:  

http://www.hifa2015.org/about/the-strategy-for-achieving-our-goal/

http://www.hifa2015.org/about/hifa2015-in-context/

Best wishes, Neil

Let’s build a future where people are no longer dying for lack of healthcare knowledge – Join HIFA: www.hifa2015.org

Community engagement in global health/public health is gaining increasing importance. In this paper published in BMC Medical Ethics, we focus on the need for metrics for evaluating community engagement practices in global health research.

Full text available: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6939/16/44

Evaluating community engagement in global health research: the need for metrics

Kathleen M. MacQueen1*, Anant Bhan2, Janet Frohlich3, Jessica Holzer4, Jeremy Sugarman5 and the Ethics Working Group of the HIV Prevention Trials Network

*Corresponding author: Kathleen M MacQueen kmacqueen@fhi360.org

Author Affiliations

1Social and Behavioral Health Sciences, FHI 360, 359 Blackwell Street, Durham 27514, NC, USA

2Bioethics and Global Health, Bhopal/Pune, India

3Vulindlela Clinical Research Site, CAPRISA, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa

4Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY, USA

5Berman Institute of Bioethics, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

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BMC Medical Ethics 2015, 16:44  doi:10.1186/s12910-015-0033-9

The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at:http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6939/16/44

Received: 12 January 2015

Accepted: 26 May 2015

Published: 1 July 2015

© 2015 MacQueen et al.

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

Abstract

Background

Community engagement in research has gained momentum as an approach to improving research, to helping ensure that community concerns are taken into account, and to informing ethical decision-making when research is conducted in contexts of vulnerability. However, guidelines and scholarship regarding community engagement are arguably unsettled, making it difficult to implement and evaluate.

Discussion

We describe normative guidelines on community engagement that have been offered by national and international bodies in the context of HIV-related research, which set the stage for similar work in other health related research. Next, we review the scholarly literature regarding community engagement, outlining the diverse ethical goals ascribed to it. We then discuss practical guidelines that have been issued regarding community engagement. There is a lack of consensus regarding the ethical goals and approaches for community engagement, and an associated lack of indicators and metrics for evaluating success in achieving stated goals. To address these gaps we outline a framework for developing indicators for evaluating the contribution of community engagement to ethical goals in health research.

Summary

There is a critical need to enhance efforts in evaluating community engagement to ensure that the work on the ground reflects the intentions expressed in the guidelines, and to investigate the contribution of specific community engagement practices for making research responsive to community needs and concerns. Evaluation mechanisms should be built into community engagement practices to guide best practices in community engagement and their replication across diverse health research settings.

Keywords: Research ethics; Community engagement; Participatory research; Global health; Evaluation; Metrics

HIFA profile: Anant Bhan is a Researcher at SRC, India. Professional interests: Global health, public health, bioethics. dranantbhan AT gmail.com

Medical Aid Films is delighted to launch our latest film – Growing Up.

http://medicalaidfilms.org/our-films/sexual-reproductive-health/?v=129781422

This film is about the physical and emotional changes that take place during puberty.  It’s the first in a suite of content which we will be producing for health workers and communities to support education and training about sexual and reproductive health.

Shot in Kibera, Kenya, the film follows Marci – a health worker and peer educator, who works with young adults in her community to share knowledge and education about sexual health.

We’ve worked with partners, Amref Health Africa, Pathfinder, Carolina for Kibera, Channel Initiative and Empower Tanzania to develop the film – a huge thank you for their help and contribution.

All our films are free to download from our website. Please do use this film in your work and send us your feedback.  You can follow us on Twitter or on Facebook  or sign up to our newsletter.  

We would love to hear how you are using this film to support your vital work!

Francis Webster |Head of Development |Medical Aid Films

16 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, WC2A 3ED, UK

020 7396 5393 | 07597 961823

A letter in this week’s issue of The Lancet, led by Judith Shamian (President, International Council of Nurses), says that governments have made substantial investments in the health workforce, but that these investments have focused on the numbers of skilled health workers (ie, midwives, nurses, physicians, and community health workers) without any investigation into the health needs of the population, the quality and efficiency of the health workforce, and the resulting requirements of the health system’.

I would be interested in thoughts from HIFA members, especially those working in HRH. Do you agree that there is too much focus on quantity of health workers at the expense of understanding needs, improving quality and efficiency, and other aspects of health system strengthening?

If so, what could be done about it? The authors suggest several actions: ‘dialogue and collaborative work between all levels in the health system; use of evidence to inform interprofessional education and practice strategies to support collaborative, community-based health care;…’

The full text is freely available here: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/issue/current

Human resources for health: a new narrative

Judith Shamian, Gail Tomblin Murphy, Annette Elliott Rose, Lianne Jeffs

The Lancet 2015;386:25 4 July 2015

Best wishes, Neil

Let’s build a future where people are no longer dying for lack of healthcare knowledge – Join HIFA: www.hifa2015.org  

[Forwarded from the HRH e-Update of the Global Health Workforce Alliance and WHO website: http://who.int/hrh/resources/globstrathrh-2030/en/ ]

A draft of the Global Strategy on Human Resources for Health: Workforce 2030 is now online for public consultation until 31 August, 2015.  

Global Strategy on Human Resources for Health: Workforce 2030

DRAFT for consultation

Publication details

Number of pages: 30

Publication date: July 2015

Languages: English

The zero draft of the Global Strategy on Human Resources for Health: Workforce 2030 forms the basis of consultations with WHO Regions, Member States and other partners in the period June – August 2015. This global dialogue will inform the continuing improvement of the draft and a final version to be submitted to the WHO Executive Board in January 2016.

WHO has been setting the agenda on health workforce issues since the World Health Report 2006 – Working Together for Health, which generated unprecedented attention to human resources for health (HRH). The report called for a decade of action on HRH, and acted as a catalyst for numerous policy initiatives and the adoption of several resolutions on this matter: WHA63.16 – WHO Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel (2010); WHA64.6 – Health workforce strengthening (2011); WHA64.7 – Strengthening nursing and midwifery (2011); WHA66.23 – Transforming health workforce education in support of universal health coverage (2013), and; WHA67.24 – Follow-up of the Recife Political Declaration on Human Resources for Health: renewed commitments towards universal health coverage (2014). The 68th World Health Assembly in 2015 reiterated the centrality of the health workforce across different areas of work of WHO, including the discourse on resilient health systems and the resolutions on surgical care and the global emergency health workforce, among others.

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Let’s build a future where people are no longer dying for lack of healthcare knowledge – Join HIFA: www.hifa2015.org  

Dear Madam, Dear Sir,

As you may know, the World Health Organization launched the WHO global strategy on people-centred and integrated health services at the 15th International Conference for Integrated Care that took place in Edinburgh in March 2015 as an interim report. The Strategy promotes a paradigm shift in the way health services are funded, managed and delivered, and responds to the need to put people at the centre of service delivery and to foster integration across the care continuum. As we all know, this is urgently needed to meet the challenges being faced by health systems around the world, whether in high, middle or low income countries.

The final version of the Strategy will be submitted for discussion at the 138th meeting of the Executive Board to the 69th World Health Assembly in 2016. Before this official submission, we are expecting additional contributions from the WHO Regional Offices and experts in the field to enrich and revise the current interim documents.

It is with great pleasure that I announce that the Strategy is now ready for public consultation. We would like to engage individuals and organizations who have an interest in people-centred and integrated health services, with the aim of undertaking a critical review of the Strategy?s strengths and weaknesses and receiving valuable inputs to help inform its implementation. For this purpose, we have designed an online survey that deals with different sections of the Strategy. The survey will close on 15 July 2015, and the results will be compiled in a report to be published in the coming months. You can find all the information regarding this initiative and the online survey via the following link http://www.who.int/servicedeliverysafety/areas/people-centred-care/en/

On behalf of the Service Delivery and Safety department, I am pleased to invite you to contribute to this public consultation process.

We look forward to your active and enthusiastic involvement and encourage you to spread the message widely in your network.

We thank you very much for your collaboration.

Yours faithfully,

Dr. Edward Kelley

Director

Service Delivery and Safety

World Health Organization

20 Avenue Appia

1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland

+41 22 791 2472 (phone)

+41 22 791 4769 (fax)

kelleye@who.int

__________

To send a message to the HIFA forum, simply send an email to: HIFA2015@dgroups.org

Below are extracts from IRIN, the UN humanitarian news site. The full text is freely available here:

http://www.irinnews.org/report/101623/stigma-leaves-liberia-s-ebola-workers-high-and-dry

I would be interested to hear about experience in Sierra Leone and Guinea, and what is being done to address the issue.

Stigma leaves Liberia’s Ebola workers high and dry

By Prince Collins

MONROVIA, 11 June 2015 (IRIN) – Liberia’s Ebola outbreak has been over for a while, so what has happened to all those burial teams, contact tracers, Ebola Treatment Unit health workers, community mobilisers, ambulance drivers? What are they doing now? The answer is not a lot. The majority of the estimated 20,000 or so workers and volunteers who risked their lives during the year-long fight are unable to find work, largely due to lingering stigma and fears about the virus…

Stigma and discrimination have been a problem in all of the Ebola-affected countries since the start of the outbreak. Much of it has been led by the fear of the unknown, as this is the first time Ebola has affected people in West Africa. Despite intensive education campaigns, many say they still aren’t sure how the virus is and isn’t spread…

Some international organisations, such as Save the Children, say they have also made an effort to recruit Ebola workers, who now have valuable health and social mobilisation skills. But many local business owners say they are not yet ready to employ Ebola workers. A supermarket manager in Margibi county, for example – who wished to remain anonymous – said he was still not convinced it was safe to have contact with people who had worked on Ebola response or were Ebola survivors. He still believed they might be infectious…

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Let’s build a future where people are no longer dying for lack of healthcare knowledge – Join HIFA: www.hifa2015.org

Below is the citation and abstract of a new study in the open-access journal BMC Health Services Research. The full text is available here:

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6963/14/612

The authors conclude that ‘a network of local and global experts has created new spaces for evidence informed deliberations on priority health policy issues related to MDGs’.

CITATION: BMC Health Serv Res. 2014 Nov 29;14:612. doi: 10.1186/s12913-014-0612-3.

Initiatives supporting evidence informed health system policymaking in Cameroon and Uganda: a comparative historical case study.

Ongolo-Zogo P, Lavis JN, Tomson G, Sewankambo NK.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: There is a scarcity of empirical data on institutions devoted to knowledge brokerage and their influence in Africa. Our objective was to describe two pioneering Knowledge Translation Platforms (KTPs) supporting evidence informed health system policymaking (EIHSP) in Cameroon and Uganda since 2006.

METHODS: This comparative historical case study of Evidence Informed Policy Network (EVIPNet) Cameroon and Regional East African Community Health Policy Initiative (REACH-PI) Uganda using multiple methods comprised (i) a descriptive documentary analysis for a narrative historical account, (ii) an interpretive documentary analysis of the context, profiles, activities and outputs inventories and (iii) an evaluative survey of stakeholders exposed to evidence briefs produced and policy dialogues organized by the KTPs.

RESULTS: Both initiatives benefited from the technical and scientific support from the global EVIPNet resource group. EVIPNet Cameroon secretariat operates with a multidisciplinary group of part-time researchers in a teaching hospital closely linked to the ministry of health. REACH-PI Uganda secretariat operates with a smaller team of full time staff in a public university. Financial resources were mobilized from external donors to scale up capacity building, knowledge management, and linkage and exchange activities. Between 2008 and 2012, twelve evidence briefs were produced in Cameroon and three in Uganda. In 2012, six rapid evidence syntheses in response to stakeholders’ urgent needs were produced in Cameroon against 73 in Uganda between 2010 and 2012. Ten policy dialogues (seven in Cameroon and three in Uganda) informed by pre-circulated evidence briefs were well received. Both KTPs contributed to developing and testing new resources and tools for EIHSP. A network of local and global experts has created new spaces for evidence informed deliberations on priority health policy issues related to MDGs.

CONCLUSION: This descriptive historical account of two KTPs housed in government institutions in Africa illustrates how the convergence of local and global factors and agents has enabled in-country efforts to support evidence-informed deliberations on priority health policy issues and lays the ground for further work to assess their influence on the climate for EIHSP and specific health policy processes.

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Let’s build a future where people are no longer dying for lack of healthcare knowledge – Join HIFA: www.hifa2015.org