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This toolkit was written for and by HIV trainers in Africa. It has been designed to help trainers plan and organise educational sessions with community leaders or organised groups to raise awareness and promote practical action to challenge HIV stigma and discrimination. [author’s description]

The aim of this study was to establish whether a web-based package on the diagnosis of respiratory disease would be as effective and as acceptable to final year medical students as tutor-led methods of teaching the same material. [from abstract]

As a group, indigenous Australians are much less healthy and more likely to die at younger ages than their non-indigenous counterparts. Training more indigenous people as health workers could help to reduce these startling inequalities, say experts. [author’s description]

Malaria is a major cause of illness and death in Nigeria, and a significant drain on its economy and the poor. Yet most Nigerians do not obtain appropriate treatment for malaria, and depend on informal private providers for anti-malarial drugs (AMDs), largely through patent medicine vendors (PMVs). This study seeks to better understand the role played by PMVs in the provision of AMDs in Nigeria, and to explore ways to improve the regulation and delivery of AMDs. [from summary]

The study was carried out to evaluate short term effects of one to one educational intervention approach, conducted with 40 drug sellers in order to improve the private sector’s practices, compliance and performance in using the national treatment guidelines for malaria and other common childhood (diarrhoea, acute respiratory tract infection-ARI) illnesses in Kibaha district-Tanzania. [from abstract]

This study assessed whether the strategy of “a midwife in every village” in Indonesia achieved its aim of increasing professional delivery care for the poorest women. [from abstract]

Programs and services need to be sensitively designed to facilitate women’s access to physical and social needs. This paper narrates the experience of working with health providers from public and private sectors, community, local government representatives and community-based organizations. Through transformative learning, this endeavour focused on initiating a process of sensitization on gender related health issues for women. [from abstract]

This retrospective study assessed the effects of pre- and post-training programme for healthcare professionals about breastfeeding. [from abstract]

Limited human resources to treat HIV/AIDS (HRHA) are one of the main constraints to achieving universal ART coverage. We model the gap between needed and available HRHA to quantify the challenge of achieving and sustaining universal ART coverage by 2017. [from abstract]

We examined how individual and institutional factors in health care settings affected discrimination toward persons with HIV/AIDS. A representative sample of 1101 Chinese service providers was recruited in 2005, including doctors, nurses, and laboratory technicians. [from abstract]

In parts of rural Africa, where conflict and neglect have destroyed any remnants of a functioning health system, there is one long-running public-health programme that is not only surviving but thriving—by capitalising on communities’ desires to help themselves. [author’s description]

This report summarises the results of a study of health worker satisfaction, working conditions and intent to continue working in the health sector in Uganda. The findings point to the importance of a number of factors that contribute to satisfaction and intent to stay, including differences by cadre, gender, age, sector (public or non-profit) and location. The results suggest several policy strategies to strengthen human resources for health in Uganda. [from abstract]

This report reviews the literature, published and unpublished, available on HRH in Mozambique. It also carries out some secondary data analysis and presents data from interviews and focus group discussions with key informers and stakeholders. The study of the human resources situation in Mozambique followed a frame of reference that addressed key issues related to the context, professional policies, labour market, management of human resources, and performance and coping. [from executive summary]

These open source software solutions each address a specific human resources for health (HRH) leadership issue: iHRIS Qualify - a training, certification and licensure tracking database; iHRIS Manage - a human resources management system; iHRIS Plan - workforce planning and modeling software; and iHRIS Retain - costing healthworker retention strategies software. [publisher’s description]

This article evaluates a malaria in-service training for community health nurses working at a village level. The program included a computer-based training package, the first of its kind for health professionals in Gambia. [adapted from abstract]

Nurses provide the bulk of primary care services in South Africa. Post-apartheid health legislation envisions the provision of comprehensive primary services at all public clinics, which implies the need for a cadre of primary care nurses able to render such services. The objective of this study was to identify core competencies of clinic nurses and develop an evaluation tool for primary care nursing in South Africa. [from abstract]

The overall objective of community-based medical education (CBME) is to produce highly qualified doctors in sufficient numbers to meet the health needs of the nation at community and hospital levels. In the current program, medical students undertake an eight-week residential posting in their final year. The objective of this study was to assess the communities’ awareness, perception and participation in the CBME program. [adapted from introduction]

A substantial number of patients with psychiatric disorders consult primary care physicians for comprehensive health care; however, the diagnosis and effective treatment of psychiatric disorders are deficient in primary health care. The aim of this intervention study is to assess the pre- and post-psychiatric training knowledge of primary care physicians. [from abstract]

This report was commissioned to describe experiences and to provide lessons learnt with respect to interventions to retain staff and improve their productivity, competence and responsiveness. [from summary]

This study proposes potential options for creating a pan-Canadian HHR planning mechanism or mechanisms to better serve the process of coordinated HHR planning across jurisdictions and among multiple professions. The second goal is to assess the current level of support among both government actors at the federal, provincial and territorial levels and stakeholder organizations for creating a pan-Canadian HHR planning. The study examines the current HHR planning infrastructure in the country, recent international developments in HHR planning and the attitudes of key informants in governmental and non-governmental communities.

Although misconceptions about family planning and cultural factors such as son preference presented some obstacles to progress, [two MSH] projects found that religion in Afghanistan is not a barrier to expanding family planning services. It was critical to engage clinicians and communities in culturally sensitive ways. Emphasizing the use of birth spacing to protect the health of mothers and children was especially effective. Activities to empower women

The purpose of this electronic resource is to make available information about the extent and nature of international opportunities for medical students, residents, and faculty. It provides information about which schools offer programs, how these are funded, and in which geographical regions they occur. In many cases, individual schools provide further information about their programs on their own websites. [publisher’s description]

The International Medical Education Directory (IMED) provides an accurate and up-to-date resource of information about international medical schools that are recognized by the appropriate government agency in the countries where the medical schools are located. The agency responsible for this recognition in most countries is the Ministry of Health. Medical schools that are recognized by the appropriate agencies in their respective countries are listed in the International Medical Education Directory. [publisher’s description]

In much of sub-Saharan Africa, a significant portion of the population lives in rural areas, leaving many women with limited access to clinic-based family planning services. Thus CBD of contraceptives remains an important service delivery mechanism in this region. The primary aim of this study was to assess the safety, quality, and feasibility of Depo-Provera provision by community reproductive health workers.

Under the ENABLE Safe Motherhood Core Initiative, CEDPA/India collaborated with the Community Aid and Sponsorship Program on the Safe Motherhood Initiative to reduce maternal death by showing women, their families and their communities how to prepare for a safe delivery, to identify pregnancy-related complications at their onset, and to seek medical help immediately. [publisher’s description]

Mental health care is an essential but often forgotten component of health care. Nurses are core health-care providers and they need to be able to contribute effectively to mental health care. [This document] presents results of a global survey on the availability, education, training and role of nurses in mental health care. [from foreword]

In Tanzania, the PHRplus project developed and tested a set of training materials and tools designed to strengthen the Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) system. All of the tools were implemented in twelve project districts in eight regions of the country. The tools can be adapted for use in other countries and include job aids for district training of trainers, facility training of trainers, district and facility level IDSR training materials and other supporting training tools. [adapted from publisher]

This paper discusses a collaborative effort between two universities in Sri Lanka and Canada to create a distance education program to train nurses in Sri Lanka.

The MCH clinic workers in Somalia receive formal and in-service training to perform their professional duties. Their competence in the field was never examined. This study assessed their competencies in detecting malnourished children 5 years and below in Beledweyne. [from abstract]

Family Medicine training and assessment is becoming more formalized and developed in South Africa. Assessment of competency in relation to clinical skills can involve observation in the clinical setting, but is more usually assessed in an examination. Summative assessment of family physician’s clinical skills now usually includes an Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE). Standardisation of the OSCE is required to define the pass mark above which a candidate performs at the level expected of a family physician. [from abstract]