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 MESSAGE FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
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Dear
readers,
I am delighted to introduce you to a fresh new format of our Alliance
newsletters, which will now come to you once a month. It is my hope
that this improved and more comprehensive news service will help keep
you up to date with the latest work of the Alliance and our members/ and
partners in resolving the health workforce crisis.
These are encourgaing times. There is more commitment than ever before to
resolve the HRH crisis. And increasingly we are seeing results on the
ground. We must continue to pull together and direct all our efforts to
translate this momentum into concrete and immediate action.
We count on your continued collaboration and support.
Dr Mubashar Sheikh
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 NEWS
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Overwhelming
commitment and support for health workers worldwide
At
the recently concluded United
Nations General Assembly and other meetings that took place in New York
last month - the health workforce was recognised as an indispensible
element to move closer to the achievement of MDGs and to ensure progress
especially in the areas of maternal and child health and non communicable
diseases.
The High
Level meeting on Noncommunicable Diseases, a landmark summit co hosted
by the WHO, was the second ever meeting during the UN General Assembly to
deal with health issues. Several events around the high level meeting had a
health workrforce / health systems strenghthening component. At one such
event “Addressing
Noncommunicable Diseases (NCDs) – It Takes a Workforce” panelists
and keynote speakers concurred that effectively addressing the challenges
posed by NCDs is dependent on the availability of a prepared, motivated,
supported and well-functioning health workforce at all levels of care. Maternal
Health in Crisis: Health Workers on the Frontline highlighted the links
between- maternal health and noncommunicable diseases, retention and
training of health workers, and strengthening aid architecture in order to
better support expansion of the health workforce. A WHO event focused on
the critical aspect of developing health fincancing for universal health
coverage and its contribution to meeting the costs of prevention and
treatment of NCDs. The Political
Declaration on Non communicable Diseases was adopted at the opening
session of the General Assembly urges to "promote the
production, training and retention of health workers with a view to
facilitating adequate deployment of a skilled health workforce within
countries and regions, in accordance with the World Health Organization
Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health
Personnel."
A global
campaign calling for more and better supported health workers
culminated in New York with a series of events and campaign
acitvities in support of health workers world wide. Over 300
organizations have come together in the campaign, from NGOs, businesses,
governments and the private sector, helping to galvanise efforts in
tackling the health worker crisis.
Furthermore, pledges to the Secretary General's Every Woman Every Child strategy were also discussed. With an
increase in financial investment, there were also immeasurable, but
invaluable policy change commitments. 25 of 40 new commitments
included measures to increase the number of health workers. Countries made
many important policy and service delivery commitments : Bangladesh
committed to double the percentage of births attended by a skilled
health worker by 2015 and train 3,000 midwives; Ethiopia pledged
to increase the proportion of births attended by a skilled professional
from 18% to 60%; Nepal pledged to train and deploy 10,000
additional skilled birth attendants and fund free maternal health services
among hard-to-reach populations.
The Clinton
Global Initiative Annual meeting, held at the same time, provided
a platform to raise the issue of the health workforce crisis. Dr Sheikh,
Executive Director of the Alliance had the privilege of participating at a
session entitled Closing
the Gap: the Global Health Worker challenges where he shared the stage
with the likes of Barbara Bush and Paul Framer and was provided an
opportunity to present on innovative approaches to strengthening the global
health workforce and improving access to quality health care for the global
community. Barbara Bush spoke of the need of recruiting, training, and
supporting future leaders in health and diversifying the pool of young
people working in global health. Commitments on health were
also made at the session, where Rajesh Punjabi announced and pledged on
behalf of Tiyatien
Health to train unemployed women and former patients in rural Liberia
to save lives and provide health care, while Jonathan Quick, CEO of Management
Sciences for Health committed to bringing quality essential medicines
to 70 million people in rural communities in five African nations, starting
with Uganda, Tanzania, and Liberia, by 2015.
The Alliance commends these recent pledges and the fresh impetus accorded
to the crisis and urges further action – to ensure countries, governments,
policy makers, donors remain firm in their commitment on HRH.
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 HIGHLIGHTS
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 Board member Professor
Were selected to the WHO led Expert Review Group on maternal and child
health
The
Alliance is delighted to announce the selection of its Board member
Professor Miriam K Were to the Expert Review Group (ERG) of the UN
Commission on Information and Accountability for Women's and Children's
Health. The ERG will report regularly to the United Nations
Secretary-General on the results and resources related to the Global
Strategy and on progress in implementing the Commission’s recommendations.
Read
more
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 Alliance Board member - Frances Day Stirk elected as
President of the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM)
The
Alliance extends its heartfelt congratulations to Board member Frances
Day-Stirk, on her recent selection as President of the International
Confederation of Midwives (ICM).
Read
more
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Scaling-up the
Community-based Health workforce for Emergencies
The
Alliance along with other partners actively involved in supporting the
community based health workforce have come together, under the thematic
platform on disaster risk reduction for health, to develop a Joint
Statement on Scaling-up the Community-based Health workforce for
Emergencies. The joint statement will be officially launched in Geneva,
Switzerland on October 20. Prior to the launch, partners will come together
in a workshop to take the recommendations of the Joint Statement forward
through strengthening the partnership and generating an action plan which
identifies priority outputs and steps for collaboration and implementation
across the community, country, regional and international levels. We will
have more on this story and the Joint Statement in the next edition of the
newsletter.
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 MEMBERS' CORNER
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Johns Hopkins
Center for Clinical Global Health Education - Webinars Distance Education
Grand Rounds Series
The
Johns Hopkins Center for Clinical Global Health Education (CCGHE) has
launched a new distance education Grand Rounds initiative in partnership
with the Medical Education Partnership for All Ugandans (MESAU).This Grand
Rounds Series will take place monthly and will be available for free
viewing via live or recorded webcasts at www.ccghe.jhmi.edu.
The CCGHE also hosts the online India HIV Case Discussion in
partnership with Byramji Jeejeebhoy Medical College (BJMC) and
National AIDS Research Institute (NARI). Two cases are presented
and discussed at each session. Please vist the India
HIV Case Discussions page to view these and other archived cases from
this ongoing, monthly program.
Read
more about Alliance member CCGHE
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AEMRN medical
camp and mobile clinics reach out to rural populations in Kitale, Kenya
Alliance
member the Afro-European
Medical and Research Network (AEMRN) walked the talk with the
recently conducted multi-disciplinary medical work camps and mobile clinics
in Kitale, North-Western Kenya. AEMRN addressed its core mandate by sharing
experiences and knowledge with communities in need, and reaching out to
populations living in resource limited and hard to reach areas through a
powerful and diverse volunteering programme. "We are delighted
that we have been able to conduct the mobile clinics in Kitale, as it
proved that there is a real need for such exchange and sharing of knowledge
by professionals from different disciplines and countries"
said Dr Charles Senessie, President of AEMRN International.
Read
more
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 Call for Proposals
The 4th edition Geneva
Health Forum will take place in Geneva from 18-20 April 2012
- the theme of which is chronic conditions. The organizers are now
inviting frontliners and health workers around the world to submit
proposals -whether research abstracts or project experiences.
Submissions along the entire health continuum- from upstream multi-sectoral
policies for prevention of chronic conditions- both communicable and non
communicable and related risk factors to downstream actions in the health
sector for detection and treatment.
Read
more
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HRH IN THE PRESS THIS MONTH
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In
this section we hope to capture the essense of HRH in the press on a
monthly basis. With this new monthly compilation, we regret to inform you
that we will be discontinuing with our "This Week's
News" service.
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The
Lancet, UK - Education
for health professionals in Japan—time to change
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The
Lancet, UK- Keizo
Takemi: a catalytic charisma
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The
Lancet, UK - Progress
towards Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5 on maternal and child
mortality: an updated systematic analysis
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Daily
Monitor, Uganda - African
governments must find lasting solution to brain drain
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Financial
Mail, SA - White coats hang empty
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The
Guardian, UK - Midwife
shortage 'dangerously high'
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The
Guardian, UK - It's
all about health workers
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Associated
Press- Poorest
countries investing more as UN states meet pledge for maternal, child
health
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American
Medical News - Number of
physician assistants doubles over past decade
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Upcoming
event
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13
October:
Strengthening
21st Century Global Health Systems: Investing Strategically in the
Health Care Workforce, New York, USA
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19-21
October:
World
Conference on Social Determinants of Health, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
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23-26
October:
World
Health Summit 2011 & Special event on Health Workforce, Berlin,
Germany
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21
October:
deadline for applications to Regional
workshop on Monitoring and Evaluation of Population, Health and Nutrition
Programs, 28 November – 16 December 2011, Bangkok, Thailand
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? More
events
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New
resources
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No
Child out of Reach - Time to end the health worker crisis (Save the
Children report)
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Aligning
and Clarifying Health Worker Tasks to Improve Maternal Care in Niger -
The Tahoua Region Human Resources Quality Improvement Collaborative
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Joint
Statement by Global Health Workforce Alliance, WHO, IFRC, UNICEF, UNHCR "Scaling-up
the Community-Based Health Workforce for Emergencies"
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New
psychological first aid guide to strengthen humanitarian relief
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? Visit
the Knowledge Centre
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Multimedia
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Health care in danger - Insights Series of short films depicting the
situation faced by health workers in conflict zones (ICRC Films).
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Health-care workers under pressure Mirta Nubia Rosero is the only
health worker in a remote village in south-western Colombia(ICRC Film).
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"Imagine..." Haven't you seen this animation on "a
health worker for everyone, everywhere", produced by the
Alliance?
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This is Maya, short animation on health system strengthening, produced
by the World Bank
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Alliance YouTube Playlist on health workforce crisis
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New
members
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Family
Health International (FHI)
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Health
Policy Research Center (HPRC) - Shiraz University of Medical Sciences
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Deloitte
Consulting LLP (Deloitte Consulting)
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Faculty
of Public Health at Naresuan University
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Enfants
du Monde
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Integrated
Development in Focus (DIF)
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ITEM
Interactive
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Mobile
Diagnosis
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Africa
Health Placements
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World
Lung Foundation
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Global
Health Alliance Western Australia
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