Comments for IH - BLOG

Comment on Much still needs to be done for women’s health by Sociolingo

Sociolingo — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:09:03 +0000

These are good points. So often women’s health needs are ignored in less developed countries, particularly health issues around childbirth and pregnancy. It’s good to see these issues being addressed in the large arena rather than just being left to small NGOs. Healthy mums can mean healthy, higher weight babies which can mean fewer deaths before age 5. At the same time issues like FGM which can cause birth difficulties need to be addressed. I’m encouraged to see movement in this area too with local NGOs, like TOSTAN in West Africa seeing recent success and whole villages turning against the practice.

Comment on How effective is our work towards reaching the MDGs? by Annie Shek

Annie Shek — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:41:23 +0000

To give or not to give, this is the debated question! Aid Effectiveness and Accountability is an important topic to continually address. In terms of aid effectiveness, William Easterly writes in “The White Man’s Burden”, that grandiose programs using massive amounts of foreign aid is hard to evaluate. If grand schemes and big ideas are hard to evaluate, it would be quite difficult for future improvement. He even includes studies which mention that aid may have no effect or even negative consequences on the aid recipient. We have to continually evaluate all aid programs so that we ensure it will only bring about positive outcomes. Perhaps, we should keep in mind our ultimate goals like providing basic human rights to every global citizen, but approach it in small steps and smaller programs which we can evaluate.

To address accountability, all foreign aid results should be presented to host country partners, donors, and even more! As a global citizen, everyone should see the positive and unfortunate negative effects of various aid programs. Foreign aid includes any type of resources provided to another country. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t… Unfortunately, the continual teaching and implementation of Western ideas, including free markets and capitalism, don’t always benefit a country, but actually worsen their situation. We have seen various types of catastrophes happen; loans that carry along exorbitant interest rates that result in poorer countries and structural adjustment programs that ask countries to reduce national spending, the list goes on. Who will be accountable for various types of foreign aid that do more harm than good?

All who give assistance, give out of compassion, but it doesn’t mean we cannot own up to our mistakes!

Comment on World Pneumonia Day by Jenna

Jenna — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:45:53 +0000

The WHO/UNICEF recently released a new action plan to fight pneumonia. The plan would cost $39 billion between now and 2015 and will prevent 5.3 million child deaths in that time period.

Comment on Are Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Unfair to Africa? by Are Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Unfair to Africa? « SocioLingo Africa

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 20:21:52 +0000

[...] Are Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Unfair to Africa? WordPress.com is home to a diversity of good content blogs not found on many other sites. One of the blogs I follow is IH-Blog which is the blog of the APHA International Health Section. You’ll find a number of thoughtful articles there on health topics. The following article picks up the argument about Millennium Development Goals and contains a link to the paper under discussion. You may also want to follow some of the discussion that ensued on the blog. Are Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Unfair to Africa? [...]

Comment on Are Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Unfair to Africa? by Are Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Unfair to Africa? « Sociolingo’s Africa

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:09:02 +0000

[...] Are Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Unfair to Africa? [...]

Comment on Motivating Moments by Eckhard

Eckhard — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 22:57:41 +0000

DREAMS
At the grand opening of 2008 APHA 136th Anuual Meeting in San Diego, Sir Michael Marmot gave an inspiring keynote address. He talked about all the health challenges that remain despite considerable progress over past decades. To go about our work every day we have to keep up a healthy optimism. What Sir Marmot said stuck in my mind when he talked about the need to keep going in the face of challenges (such as reducing child mortality by 2/3 in Africa by 2015 as targeted by MDG 4; ed.):

The tragedy is not that we may not fulfil our dreams; the tragedy is not to dream at all.

Comment on Are Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Unfair to Africa? by Jochen Jesinghaus

Jochen Jesinghaus — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 11:14:12 +0000

Population growth is without doubt a big issue, but Easterly’s argument “African women have the desired number of children” points to the fact that pg is an MDG-dependent variable, not something that can be slowed down by decree from Mr. Prime Minister. One factor that is not sufficiently debated is donors’ tendency to measure success as GDP growth.
First, income and “true success” are only vaguely, and logarithmically, correlated, see .
Second, while the great majority of MDG indicators improve only when poor people improve (grade 5, access to water and sanitation, …), this is not the case for income. One can imagine a situation where donor money doubles a country’s GDP, with the result that the imports of SUV’s and the latest hightech gadgets double but none of the money arrives outside the fenced fortresses of the upperclass. Changing the logic from “more income” to a comprehensive benchmarking system is perhaps the biggest achievement of the MDGs – and justifies supporting them despite of their weaknesses.

Comment on Are you interested in the APHA Trade and Health Forum? by adamgilcrist

adamgilcrist — Tue, 27 May 2008 06:01:43 +0000

The article about the “Are you interested in the APHA Trade and Health Forum?” is really innovative. Good work keep going on. I will refer this to my friend
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Comment on Are Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Unfair to Africa? by Azumi

Azumi — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:12:45 +0000

The idea of millenium dev elopment goal is a welcome idea in africa but not fair. because pwer supply is not included which is also a backbone for economic development. How can our industries survive when we hardly have 5 hours supply of power without interruption. The issue should be tackled to fight pvoerty

Comment on Are Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Unfair to Africa? by Eckhard

Eckhard — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 02:45:22 +0000

Uganda: Big Population in the Way of Development Goals

“Much as the Ugandan economy continues to register impressive growth rates, it is quite obvious that the critical goals to development will not be easy to attain by 2015. The rapid population growth poses a unique challenge to the attainment of most MDGs within the next seven years.”

Talk about a coincidence! This article was just published by The Monitor in Kampala and posted on allAfrica. Witness through Dennis Kawuma’s eyes what large families and crowding look like in his neighborhood. Moreover, he is worried about what will happen to the many young children when they grow up and face a bleak future as teenagers and young adults. Will they get an education and find work? What will poverty and despair breed?

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Thanks much, John for pointing out the report “Return of the Population Growth Factor”. Your blog about it is thought-provoking – as are many of the blogs on your site!
Check out John’s weblog “Growth is Madness!”, fellow Section members and friends, the read is worth your time!