• 2009 Small Grants Competition

    to adopt a cross-learning and iterative approach that will enable all researchers to learn from each other across different types of bio-innovation throughout the region.

  • Overview of the Project

    to enhance biological innovative capabilities, policies & institutions to support just, equitable & sustainable social & economic development in developing countries.

  • Bio-innovations in the NEWS

    Policy briefs and articles on relevant dimensions of bio-innovation.

Enabling bioinnovation for poverty allevation in Asia.

Health

KNOTS Research - Childhood Vaccination: Science and Public Engagement

An International Perspective

Vaccines for children are currently high on international policy, aid and funding agendas, as a major promised means to meet the Millennium Development Goals. Yet major challenges have emerged in ensuring effective coverage and dealing with public anxieties. As a point where globalised technologies meet the personal, social and cultural worlds of infant care, vaccines offer a highly illuminating lens on how people are engaging with science. IDS, together with a range of co-researchers and collaborating partners, has recently completed two linked, comparative projects concerning the changing relationships between science, technology and society in Britain and West Africa, focusing on the issue of childhood vaccination. Details of the first project follow. For details of the second project, see the Childhood Vaccination: West Africa project page.



Ensuring Health Care for the Rural Poor: alternative approaches in China and Vietnam

An IDS coordinated project.

A comparative study of rural health care services undertaken in collaboration with partners in Vietnam and China.

Economic reforms in China and Vietnam have resulted in strong economic growth and in both countries most people are enjoying rising incomes. However, for a sizeable minority of the populations benefits have been limited, inequalities in income have increased between both regions and households and many people still live in poverty.



Realising Rights: improving sexual and reproductive health for poor and vulnerable populations

IDS is part of the Realising Rights Research Programme Consortium, which brings together researchers from several disciplines to focus on populations in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia with the greatest access and entitlement problems in sexual and reproductive health (SRH): the very poor, young people - especially girls and young women, and other hard-to-reach groups such as migrants and those most vulnerable to stigma.

The main objectives of the programme are to:



Protecting the rural poor against the economic consequences of major illness: A challenge for Asian transitional economies (POVILL)

An IDS coordinated project.

Major illness in the family has become an important cause of household impoverishment in China and the ex-command economies of Southeast Asia, as these countries have managed the transition to a market economy. This is related to the low levels of government funding of health care and the rising cost of medical care. The Governments of China and Cambodia have recently announced major policy initiatives to address this problem and the government of Laos is considering similar action. The purpose of this project is to support these initiatives and assess their performance, whilst contributing to international knowledge about how to help households cope with major illness. The study will take place in rural areas in Cambodia, Laos and Hubei and Sichuan provinces in Central China.



2008-2013 Action Plan for the Global Strategy for the Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases

©World Health Organization 2008

This document is written primarily for the community of international development partners, as well as those in government and civil society concerned with urgent action to address the rapidly increasing burden of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) in low- and middle-income countries and its serious implications for poverty reduction and economic development.
This document:

  • makes the case for urgent action between 2008-2013 which, when performed collectively in accordance with the Action Plan for the Global Strategy for the Prevention and Control of NCDs, will tackle the growing public health burden imposed by NCDs.

  • provides the Action Plan's political framework endorsed in May 2008 by delegations fromall 193 Member States, including requirements to report on global progress in 2010 and 2012.

  • presents the overriding Global Strategy for the Prevention and Control of NCDs which urges Member States to develop national policy frameworks, establish programmes, share their experiences and build capacity to address NCDs.

To access the Full Document go to: http://www.who.int/nmh/Actionplan-PC-NCD-2008.pdf



m-Health can strip 10kgs off the Village Health Nurses

by Nuwan Waidyanatha February 20, 2009

The village Health Nurse (VHN) is a rural last mile primary health care worker - duties ranging from holding medical camps in schools to running a Health Service Center (HSC) in the village providing primary health care to walking door-to-door providing antenatal and post natal care. These mobile services require proper documentation; the paper work is later converted to statistics that is reviewed by the district and state Health Officials. An idea Sir Gee is to replace the 2 heavy bags with a 100gram mobile phone with built in applets to capture the same data.

The Real Time Biosurveillance Program, an m-Health pilot carried out by Indian Institute of Technology Madras’s Rural Technology and Business Incubator in the Thirupathur block, to begin with, will be field testing the mobile concept of capturing the necessary and sufficient morbidity data for aggregate reports and disease surveillance. Lessons from this pilot will provide enough insight to develop the remaining applets to replace the heavy bags. The same pilot is simultaneously being conducted in the district of Kurunegala in Sri Lanka too.

 



Health Portals & Resource for Policymakers & International Development Agencies

Source: infoDev.org



Improving the Health of the World's Poorest People

Policy brief published by the Population Reference Bureau, 2004

To download Full Document click here

In developing countries, millions of people suffer from avoidable health problems—such as infectious diseases, malnutrition, and complications of childbirth—simply because they are poor. Wide differences in health status between poorer and better- off people are often avoidable and unfair, reflecting different socio-economic constraints and opportunities rather than different individual choices. And while governments have made strides in improving public health over the last several decades, many initiatives to improve the health of the poorest people have been unsuccessful.

In recent years, new research has become available on health inequalities in developing countries. These studies shed light on how the world’s poorest people are faring, demonstrating for the most part how persistent and pervasive health inequalities are. Other research has assessed a variety of approaches to reducing health inequalities, including reforms in the way health care is financed and organized, improvements in the quality and accessibility of services, and broader community development.

This policy brief, based on a longer report by the Population Reference Bureau, highlights the extent of the rich-poor health divide, the factors that play a role in health disparities, and approaches for improving the health of the poor.