Rehabilitating Health Systems in Post-Conflict Situations

Although baseline data for post-conflict situations are frequently unavailable, there is a clear deterioration in the health conditions of populations during and following conflict. Excess mortality and morbidity, displaced populations, and vulnerability to communicable diseases during and following conflict all call for immediate relief and restoration of basic services. As much as possible, short-term relief and assistance programmes should be implemented in a manner compatible with longer term health system rehabilitation. This paper presents a framework for analyzing the inputs and policies that make up post-conflict rehabilitation programmes in the health sector. Post-conflict ...health, conflict, war, institutions

Volunteering for INSPIRE : the AGI experience.

The Association for Geographic Information (AGI) is the UK volunteer membership body for everyone with an interest in geographic information. It serves members from all sectors including public, private, the third sector, academia, students and individuals. This paper describes how a voluntary organisation with very limited funds, and representing a wide cross section of the industry, has made – and is continuing to make – a significant contribution to the development of the INSPIRE Directive. It includes a summary of how AGI has supported the Directive, documenting the validity, the experience and the lessons learnt. Both AGI and INSPIRE seek to ‘maximise the use of geographic information for the benefit of the citizen, good governance and commerce.' AGI has been actively engaged from the first stages of the INSPIRE programme. It has responded to all consultations from the EC as well as those from the UK. This has been achieved by volunteers from across the UK and particularly those in the Devolved Administrations such as Scotland. AGI set up an Action Working Group in 2007 which tracked the Transposition stage and is now ensuring that AGI contributes to the Implementation phase. The AGI’s Scottish committee prepared a report to encourage the Scottish Government to act. This led to the publication of ‘One Scotland - One Geography’ in 2005 which is regarded as a model for other countries to follow. AGI is represented by its Director on the UK Location Council – responsible for the UK Location Strategy and oversight of the UK Location Programme – where it provides a focus for commercial, academic and third sector organisations. AGI has provided direct help for awareness events and technical workshops as well as organising an annual conference that always has INSPIRE or Location Programme ‘streams’

The financial protection impact of the public health system and private insurance in Brazil

Includes bibliographyThis research assesses the effectiveness of the Brazilian public healthsystem and of private insurance in Brazil in providing financial protectionin health care. The determinants of catastrophic health expendituresare estimated by probit regressions with Heckman selection adjustmentcontrolling for health-care need. Findings show that the public systemprovides a significant reduction (47%); in the probability of a householdhaving catastrophic health expenditures, and that private insurancemakes such expenditures more likely by 36%. Recommendations includeimprovements in the quantity, accessibility, quality and reliability of publicproviders, more appropriate provision of drugs by the public system andtighter regulation of private insurance

Performance of private sector health care: implications for universal health coverage

Although the private sector is an important health-care provider in many low-income and middle-income countries, its role in progress towards universal health coverage varies. Studies of the performance of the private sector have focused on three main dimensions: quality, equity of access, and efficiency. The characteristics of patients, the structures of both the public and private sectors, and the regulation of the sector influence the types of health services delivered, and outcomes. Combined with characteristics of private providers-including their size, objectives, and technical competence-the interaction of these factors affects how the sector performs in different contexts. Changing the performance of the private sector will require interventions that target the sector as a whole, rather than individual providers alone. In particular, the performance of the private sector seems to be intrinsically linked to the structure and performance of the public sector, which suggests that deriving population benefit from the private health-care sector requires a regulatory response focused on the health-care sector as a whole

CHILD HEALTH DIAGNOSIS

This paper was commissioned by the Pan Arab Project for Child Development (PAPCHILD), League of Arab States and supported by a grant from the United Nations UNSTAT

Long-term studies of the marine ecosystem along the west Antarctic Peninsula

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2008. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier B.V. for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Deep Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography 55 (2008): 1945-1948, doi:10.1016/j.dsr2.2008.05.014.Articles in this volume focus on longer-term studies of the marine ecosystem of the continental shelf west of the Antarctic Peninsula, principally by the Palmer, Antarctica Long- Term Ecological Research project (Ross et al., 1996; Ducklow et al., 2007). There is a rich history of oceanographic and ecological research in the Bellingshausen Sea region and on the continental shelf dating back to the 19th and early 20th centuries (El-Sayed, 1996). The modern era of scientific research started with the British Discovery Investigations of 1925-37 (Hardy, 1967), and included classic studies of phytoplankton (Hart, 1934) and krill (Marr, 1962). Hart’s report presciently suggested primary producers could be limited by iron availability. El-Sayed (1996) dissects the subsequent history of oceanographic research up to the advent of the Southern Ocean GLOBEC (Hofmann et al., 2001; Hofmann et al., 2004) and JGOFS (Anderson and Smith Jr., 2001) programs. The period from the 1970’s to the mid-90’s was dominated by expeditionary and process-level studies of particular regions and processes extending over a few seasons to a few years at most. The Research on Antarctic Coastal Ecosystem Rates (RACER) Program (Huntley et al., 1991; Karl, 1991) is the outstanding example of this mode of research, having focused on determination of key rate processes as a new approach to understanding ecosystem dynamics (Karl et al., 1991a; Karl et al., 1991b). RACER was a direct predecessor and major influence on Palmer LTER, GLOBEC and JGOFS. What was lacking in Antarctic waters, as in most other regions and ocean provinces were sustained, long-term observations of a variety of ocean properties and rates, conducted in the context of hypothesis-driven, experimental science (Ducklow et al., 2008a). The creation of the US LTER Network in 1980 (Magnuson, 1990) made this possible.Observations reported in this volume were supported by NSF Grants OPP-90-11927 and OPP- 96-32763 to the University of California-Santa Barbara and OPP-02-17282 to the Virginia Institute of Marine Science

The impact of the mixing properties within the Antarctic stratospheric vortex on ozone loss in spring

Calculations of equivalent length from an artificial advected tracer provide new insight into the isentropic transport processes occurring within the Antarctic stratospheric vortex. These calculations show two distinct regions of approximately equal area: a strongly mixed vortex core and a broad ring of weakly mixed air extending out to the vortex boundary. This broad ring of vortex air remains isolated from the core between late winter and midspring. Satellite measurements of stratospheric H2O confirm that the isolation lasts until at least mid-October. A three-dimensional chemical transport model simulation of the Antarctic ozone hole quantifies the ozone loss within this ring and demonstrates its isolation. In contrast to the vortex core, ozone loss in the weakly mixed broad ring is not complete. The reasons are twofold. First, warmer temperatures in the broad ring prevent continuous polar stratospheric cloud (PSC) formation and the associated chemical processing (i.e., the conversion of unreactive chlorine into reactive forms). Second, the isolation prevents ozone-rich air from the broad ring mixing with chemically processed air from the vortex core. If the stratosphere continues to cool, this will lead to increased PSC formation and more complete chemical processing in the broad ring. Despite the expected decline in halocarbons, sensitivity studies suggest that this mechanism will lead to enhanced ozone loss in the weakly mixed region, delaying the future recovery of the ozone hole