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This case study looks at the contribution of the Observatório and its members to the development of the public health sector in Brazil. [from introduction]

This article builds on a recent publication on the capacity of the existing health workforce in Africa to expand through increasing production of its non-physician clinicians and by suggesting that there are four further issues to be urgently addressed if NPCs are to realize their full potential. [adapted from author]

The community score card process is a community-based monitoring tool that is a hybrid of the techniques of social audits and citizen report cards.The CSC is an instrument to exact social and public accountability and responsiveness from service providers. By linking service providers to the community, citizens are empowered to provide immediate feedback to service providers. [from author]

Malaria over-diagnosis in Africa is widespread and costly both financially and in terms of morbidity and mortality from missed diagnoses. An understanding of the reasons behind malaria over-diagnosis is urgently needed to inform strategies for better targeting of antimalarials. [from abstract]

Throughout Africa, the private retail sector has been recognised as an important source of antimalarial treatment, complementing formal health services. However, the quality of advice and treatment at private outlets is a widespread concern, especially with the introduction of artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs). This research aimed at assessing the performance of the retail sector in rural Tanzania. Such information is urgently required to improve and broaden delivery channels for life-saving drugs. [from abstract]

The so-called brain drain is a complex phenomenon with a web of push-pull factors determining final outcomes. There are no quick fixes. Yet, those on the front lines addressing the critical personnel shortages in South Africa’s public health system - especially in rural areas - have pointed to approaches that could slow the exodus and eventually turn the situation around. [from author]

This document explores some FBO health networks and facility-based services in Uganda and Tanzania. A pilot project in the Kasese District of Uganda illustrates how protestant, catholic and muslim health care providers and communities can work together from household-to-hospital levels to improve health outcomes. [from author]

This report calls for a rapid and significant scaling up of the education and training of health workers as part of a broader effort to strengthen health systems. It highlights the importance of training to meet a country’s own health needs and the great opportunity represented by the increased use of community- and mid-level workers. [from foreword]

There are also case studies from Ghana, Malawi, Pakistan, Ethiopia and Bangladesh on strategic implementation of health worker training plans.

This brief discusses the Capacity Project’s work to train health workers to help prevent mother to child transmission of HIV.

This brief describes the successful process of working within the government to achieve results in HIV planning. [adapted from author]

This paper aims to present the existing HRH problems exemplified by migration in the light of other related issues such as the nurse medic phenomenon, foreign doctors taking up residency training, quality of nursing education, paradoxical enrollment trends in nursing and medicine and the effects of migration on health service delivery.

This environmental scan of pharmacy technicians is intended to develop an accurate summary of knowledge, issues and activities relating to the roles and responsibilities, curriculum and accreditation, and certification of pharmacy technicians in Canada, from a national, provincial, territorial and international perspective. [from summary]

This is a comprehensive review of the Pharmacy Workforce in Northern Ireland undertaken between February and April 2001. It outlines themethodology and discusses the results obtained with regard to the areas of recruitment and retention, demand and models of deployment. [adapted from author]

This study aims to project the supply and demand for pharmacists between 2000 and 2010. On the supply side, these include the latest information on student intake and projected graduations. On the demand side, they include a consideration of the impact of the Third Community Pharmacy Agreement, the increasing focus on safety and quality of medicines use across the continuum of care and a host of clinical governance and Commonwealth and State/Territory government policies which impact on the demand for pharmacists. [from summary]

In light of pharmacy workforce shortages in Great Britain, the profession’s regulatory body commissioned a programme of longitudinal work to explore pharmacy career decision-making in relation to influences on career choice and intended career paths. Our objective was to gather data on career intentions that could be used to produce robust predictions about pharmacist supply. [from abstract]

This note discusses challenges and options in scaling up the production of skilled health workers and strengthening the health professions educational capacity of the countries in crisis, particularly in Africa. [from introduction]

Focusing on the formal public health sector in Tobago, the HSPA findings provide information on both basic and advanced-level HIV and AIDS services and the availability of record-keeping systems for monitoring HIV and AIDS care and support. Within the Caribbean region, there is a concern for the recent training of health professionals who provide HIV and AIDS services, for health worker attitudes towards people living with HIV and AIDS (PLHIV) and for patient movement within the region.

The government of Indonesia launched the village-based midwife program to place a skilled birth attendant in every village to provide antenatal and perinatal care, family planning, other reproductive health services, and nutrition counseling. The attendants were also to facilitate basic primary health-care services, including immunization and nutrition interventions.

This report documents the assessment of a family planning training program for providers to enable them to offer family planning counseling and methods, and make referrals where needed as part of antiretroviral therapy services in Ghana. [from summary]

The mapping exercise illustrated in this report was conducted to inform and support the efforts of the Ugandan Ministry of Health to increase the contraceptive prevalence through enhanced community-based distribution (CBD) of family planning. The specific objectives of the exercise were to determine the historical and current coverage of CBD of family planning services in Uganda, by both governmental and nongovernmental programs, and to identify potential districts for scaling up these services. [adapted from summary]

The emphasis of the COPHIA program is the provision of home-based care and support services by multi-purpose community-based health workers to vulnerable households in the geographic focus areas that are coping with the burden of caring for seriously ill family members or caring for orphans and vulnerable children. The COPHIA community-based health workers, with the support of clinical and non-clinical supervisors, provide the direct physical and emotional care and support services to PLWHA and orphans and vulnerable children in the project catchment area with the support of trained primary caregivers.

A questionnaire survey was conducted on 50 primary health care physicians in Iraq to assess their knowledge and identify misperceptions about breastfeeding. Basic knowledge about the main processes of breastfeeding was good (when to start feeding, frequency of feeding, relactation, importance of psychological factors), but there were deficiencies in their ability to deal with some practical problems related to breastfeeding. Steps for improving the knowledge and training are addressed. [from abstract]

The 2005 Barbados HIV/AIDS Service Provision Assessment (Barbados HSPA) survey report provides baseline information on the capacity of the formal public health sector in Barbados to provide both basic and advanced level HIV and AIDS services and the availability of recordkeeping systems for monitoring HIV and AIDS care and support. Within the Caribbean region, there is a concern for the recent training of health professionals who provide HIV and AIDS services, for health worker attitudes towards people living with HIV (PLHIV) and for patient movement within the region. The Barbados HSPA captured information on these region-specific indicators in addition to the standard HSPA indicators.

The HIV/AIDS Service Provision Assessment (HSPA) was developed to assess the
quality and capacity of HIV and AIDS-related services in high prevalent situations. information on both basic and advanced level HIV and AIDS services and the availability of recordkeeping systems for monitoring HIV and AIDS care and support. Within the Caribbean region, there is a concern for the recent training of health professionals who provide HIV and AIDS services, for health worker attitudes towards people living with HIV and AIDS and for patient movement within the region. The Dominica HSPA captured information on these region-specific indicators in addition to the standard HSPA indicators.

The HIV/AIDS Service Provision Assessment (HSPA) was developed to assess the quality and capacity of HIV and AIDS-related services in high prevalent situations. Focusing on the formal public health sector in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the HSPA findings provides information on both basic and advanced-level HIV and AIDS services and the availability of record-keeping systems for monitoring HIV and AIDS care and support. Within the Caribbean region, there is a concern for the recent training of health professionals who provide HIV and AIDS services, for health worker attitudes towards people living with HIV and AIDS and for patient movement within the region.

In a rural village in India, newborn deaths have been halved not by neonatologists or high-tech interventions but by local villagers trained in simple life-saving practices. Some experts, however, are sceptical about whether this strategy can work everywhere. [from author]

The objective of this research is to explore inequities in utilization of skilled attendance at birth, delivery by caesarean sections and use of postnatal care services, by key socioeconomic factors in two home-based SBA areas of Bangladesh to provide insights for future programming. [from introduction]

This paper presents field narratives selected as illustrations of mythologising and masking in popular responses to HIV/AIDS in South Africa. The stories appear in the context of traditional health practitioners and the testimony of the healers is used to demonstrate the ways in which they interpret these narratives, and seek to challenge them.2 The examination then re-assesses these accounts, and the healers’ responses to them, in relation to the antipathy that exists between western medicine and traditional healing in the context of HIV/AIDS. [introduction]

This paper documents the results of the second year of operation of the HOPE Cape Town (HIV Outreach Program and Education) Pilot Traditional Healer Project, an innovative HIV/AIDS collaboration between traditional health practitioners and western medicine in the Western Cape Province. The paper identifies the project’s achievements, and explores key problems in operation and management, including recommendations for the design and implementation of future initiatives. [from introduction]

This brief is a best practice model for improving the quality and accessibility of family planning and HIV services in rural communities in Zimbabwe. [from author]