Health Systems

Emergency Care Comes into Focus in Ghana

Sarah Dwyer — Fri, 10 Oct 2014 13:24:50 +0000

Dr. Eno Biney is an emergency medicine specialist at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumasi, the second-largest city in Ghana. She’s part of a new cohort of health workers that are changing the way emergency care happens in the country.

See Dr. Eno Biney on the cover of Impact magazine. This issue is all about health workers.

“I chose to specialize in emergency medicine because I realized that it was one of the most lacking specialties in our country,” Eno says. “There wasn’t any form of organized emergency treatment of patients.”

Instead, Ghanaians injured in accidents or suffering from medical, surgical, or obstetric emergencies were rushed to feebly equipped emergency care centers that didn’t have specially trained health workers or triaging systems in place. During her medical training, Eno saw the resulting delays in diagnosis and treatment—and lost lives.

Author's name:

Carol Bales and Gracey Vaughn

Publication Date:

October 2014

Why Nigeria’s Response to Ebola Succeeded

Sarah Dwyer — Thu, 09 Oct 2014 13:12:56 +0000

A man arrived by plane in Lagos on July 20. He fell ill at the airport and was taken to a hospital. Shortly afterward he was diagnosed with Ebola, the first case in Nigeria.

Lagos is an enormous city of 22 million, and public-sector doctors were on strike. The number of lives at risk was terrifying.

“If Ebola hits Lagos, we're in real trouble,” warned Laurie Garrett in Foreign Policy, and added that her colleague John Campbell predicted it “would instantly transform this situation into a worldwide crisis.”

Yet August 29 marked the last reported case of Ebola in the country, and the number of confirmed cases topped out at 20, with eight deaths. The incubation period for those who had contact with Ebola patients ended on October 2. After 42 days with no new cases, Nigeria will be officially free of Ebola.

Author's name:

Sarah Dwyer

Publication Date:

October 2014

Understanding Health Workforce Productivity at the Facility Level: A New eLearning Course

Sarah Dwyer — Wed, 08 Oct 2014 17:47:52 +0000

People drive health systems. In the words of Vujicic and colleagues, health workers are “gatekeepers and navigators for the effective or wasteful application of all other resources.”

The global health community recognizes that there is “no health without a workforce.” Efforts have been made to train, deploy, and retain more health workers in areas where they are most needed. But beyond this, we need those health workers that are already at their jobs to be productive.

What does this mean? Well, imagine that you are a district health manager.

Author's name:

Rachel Deussom

Publication Date:

October 2014

The Oft-Overlooked Job Description

Sarah Dwyer — Fri, 15 Aug 2014 13:40:10 +0000

This post originally appeared on VITAL, the blog of IntraHealth International.

Job descriptions for health workers—it seems like a simple concept. And in fact, job descriptions can increase a community’s access to high-quality health care in low-resource settings.

But many health workers in low-income countries don’t have this basic tool.

For example, only 57% of health workers in Namibia and 38% of health workers in Kenya have job descriptions, according to data from Service Provision Assessments conducted by the countries’ ministries of health.

Research conducted in Kenya shows that health workers who have written job descriptions provide higher-quality care than those who do not. This may be because job descriptions provide structure, guidance, accountability lines, minimum skills and qualifications standards, and performance benchmarks.

Author's name:

Kate Sheahan

Publication Date:

August 2014

Five Key Steps to Making the Health Workforce a Post-MDG Priority

Carol Bales — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 20:34:14 +0000

This post originally appeared on VITAL, the blog of IntraHealth International.

This is a pivotal year for the international development community.

Fourteen years ago, world leaders gathered at the United Nations headquarters and set eight major goals to reduce extreme poverty and improve lives around the world. Those Millennium Development Goals provided a shared blueprint that unified the global community and accelerated progress like never before. The deadline for the goals is 2015—just around the corner.

The big question now is this: What development goals will we set next? And how can we make even faster progress toward global health and well-being?

Author's name:

Pape Gaye

Publication Date:

April 2014

Hitting the (Super) Target: Shopping for Tools for Health System Success

Carol Bales — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 15:26:50 +0000

Tool [noun]: Anything used as a means of accomplishing a task or purpose¹ [emphasis added].

At any particular moment, there are likely dozens of international health professionals working on the development or revision of tools, ranging from assessment questions to frameworks and diagrams to software. Think of international health as a Super Target that offers resources for nearly every question you can imagine. When provided the opportunity, we can shop for potential resources manufactured by various organizations, but these resources only become tools when we take the products off the shelf and actually put them into use.

Author's name:

Crystal Ng and Carie Muntifering

Publication Date:

November 2011