Friday 24 June 2011 by Charlie Matthews
Last week I took Harriet Harman MP out to visit Save the Children UK’s health programmes in Sierra Leone.We spent most our time in the slums of Freetown — taking in Susans Bay, Kroobay and Mabella. Our visit came just over a year after the removal of health user fees in the country for pregnant and lactating women and children under 5, and everywhere we went it was clear the huge difference this is already making.
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Tuesday 22 February 2011 by Simon Wright
AIDS, pneumonia and sausages all have a special Day. One World and Save the Children have a Week. Black and LGBT history now have a Month. The UN currently has a Year of Youth. But did you know that vaccines are going to have a whole decade?
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Wednesday 5 January 2011 by Simon Wright
On New Year’s Eve, the UK government released its new “Framework for results for improving reproductive, maternal and newborn health in the developing world.” With the title, Choices for Women, this strategy was the result of a major consulatation last year.
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Wednesday 21 July 2010 by Sarah Giles
There is a growing realisation that in order to strengthen health systems, the gap between HIV research and programme implementation and other health needs must be closed and programmes have to be integrated with other sectors.
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Tuesday 25 May 2010 by David Melody
Working in Mozambique a couple of years ago, I met a woman who, every month, walked overnight in order to receive her antiretroviral medication at the district hospital – a remarkable endeavour, albeit not that exceptional for people in remote communities in many parts of the developing world. In a lot more cases, distance can have deadly consequences…
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Wednesday 10 March 2010 by Simon Wright
The way that charities like Save the Children work in a country is more complex than people think. It is understandable that members of the public donate money and assume that we are delivering services. Sometime we perpetuate this by saying things like “we save lives” and “we have immunised children”.
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Wednesday 25 November 2009 by Eleonora Genovese
What if one day we will be able to write….“This is the story of a success: the story of a wise policy maker who made the right decision, the story of capable experts who planned the right actions, the story of committed donors who granted the right support and stayed the course to translate policies into actions, and actions ultimately into tangible and lasting results for mothers and children’s health. This is the story of Sierra Leone”. I think…that we are getting there!
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Friday 20 November 2009 by Simon Wright
Here in Hanoi at the GAVI Partners’ Forum, we have been discussing the Joint Platform for Health Systems Financing – a proposed mechanism whereby GAVI, the World Bank and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS TB & Malaria put their funding together instead of duplicating processes. There are various ideas floating around, but they are are depressingly unambitious.
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Thursday 19 November 2009 by Simon Wright
I am at the GAVI Partners’ Forum in Hanoi – looking at how this UN-backed initiative needs to expand access to vaccines and immunisation programmes and to engage civil society in its governance and operations.
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Tuesday 25 August 2009 by Genevieve Rasle
Second to politics, the hot topic in Niger is polygamy.
Many discussions amongst the staff over lunch result in two camps: ‘one wife is enough trouble!’ or ‘trouble is halved with polygamy!’ When I ask whether the first wife has a say, quite simply the answer is no. But it’s ok apparently, because they’ve known since the outset that it’s less ‘til death do us part’ and more ‘wait til another wife comes along.’
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