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Reflections on Health Workers at AIDS 2010

Sarah DwyerThe main hallway at the AIDS 2010 conference is a barrage of banners, notices, and signs—yet a few things jump out and demand to be noticed. One large photo shows an erect penis with a bejeweled hand grasping its base. Posters ask, “Will you be spanked between sessions?”

These got my attention. AIDS activists are good at such tactics, and they need to be—it’s a matter of life and death.

Death and dying are what many health workers confront every day, noted Yogan Pillay of South Africa’s National Department of Health. Showing some sobering data, he pointed out that “if we don’t take care of health workers, they will not take care of patients.” And in a session on supporting health workers to deliver care, Masamine Jimba of the University of Tokyo described how the Japanese character for “busy” literally means “losing heart.” Read more »

A World of Difference: Global Health on I Street and in India

As the daughter of a diplomat, my life has been characterized by an endless cascade of people, places, opportunities, experiences, and contrasts. The theme of my past two summers has been global health, but my current internship working in monitoring and evaluation at CapacityPlus is almost the antithesis of my volunteer work in a rural eye hospital in India last year.

Two very different summers
Although I shiver in the hyperactively air-conditioned Washington DC office, I enjoy my own cubicle complete with a laptop and phone and big swirling chair, and I appreciate immensely the opportunity to interact with colleagues who’ve led incredible lives. I take lots of notes, work on compiling an indicator compendium to measure the state of human resources for health, and am starting to learn how global health is affected on a policy level. Read more »

Nursing Education Partnership Initiative Tackles the Global Nursing Shortage

Kate TulenkoAround the world nurses are often the front line of the formal medical system, providing care to underserved areas and filling in where and when doctors are in short supply. Yet it has been estimated that sub-Saharan Africa needs 600,000 additional nurses just to meet the Millennium Development Goals.

The Nursing Education Partnership Initiative (NEPI)—the US Government’s unified program to address the underproduction of nursing professionals in developing countries—convened its partners for the first time in a meeting in June in Washington, DC. NEPI’s goal is to assist in the nursing component of the US Government’s commitment to training 140,000 additional health workers in developing countries by 2015.

NEPI is led by PEPFAR with government partners USAID and the Department of Health and Human Services. Other partners include CapacityPlus led by IntraHealth International, Columbia University, the World Health Organization, and the Clinton Health Access Initiative. Read more »

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