15 May 2008, 11:10 Comments

A focused, local and innovative programme for preventing HIV/AIDS in young people is proving helpful to teenagers displaced by conflict in Colombia. Funding is coming to an end, but a demonstration project could prove its worth for future donors – and other countries.

15 May 2008, 08:37 Comments

Developing countries tell EAGLES, the European Action on Global Life Sciences, and RealHealthNews, the research that’s really needed.

14 May 2008, 17:39 Comments

The aromatic herb Artemisia is the sole source of artemisinin, which is the essential ingredient of WHO-recommended treatments for malaria. Diversification is the key to improving quality sources of artemisinin supplies, hence stabilizing the market and making ACTs more affordable. The Artemisinin Enterprise is a collaboration of three projects seeking new sources of artemisinin and antimalarial compounds.

14 May 2008, 14:19 Comments

Carissa Etienne, WHO Assistant Director General for health systems, stresses the need for evidence, information and research to make cost-effective health policies in developing countries. Specifically, and with passion, she calls for a systematic review of all research on primary health care since Alma Ata to provide real evidence on what works and fails. Community health workers should also be studied, she says – all against a measure of health outcomes.

7 May 2008, 15:50 Comments

Reporting from the old Portuguese maritime state of Goa, in Western India, our correspondent Rupa Chinai asks what health care looks like from the patients’ perspective. She identifies major problems that need to be solved, both by researchers and by policy-makers, and offers a way forward. Her report is an indicator for all of India – and for many other countries with challenged primary health care systems.

28 April 2008, 13:00 Comments

Multiple health programmes – as many as 68 in Nigeria alone – are using unpaid or low-paid community volunteers, and other sectors such as environment, water and agriculture are doing the same. A new study of reimbursement of health volunteers is revealing the need for an internationally agreed strategy

28 April 2008, 12:00 Comments

The WHO research strategy team has just finished its global consultations, in a democratic approach to setting a new focus and role for WHO in health research: leadership and convening power to help other bodies set agendas, and an internal focus on ‘making a difference’ – getting care to where it’s most needed. RealHealthNews talked to team leader Robert Terry.

1 March 2008, 06:45 Comments

A war of words over AIDS vaccines can determine whether you are an optimist or a pessimist.

23 February 2008, 16:37 Comments

US$350 million over five years to control seven neglected tropical diseases, which might be eliminated from 30 high-burden countries if G8 in July comes up with another US$650 million. That’s what the US is promising in a new Presidential Initiative for NTD control”. And – it is science-based, even though the research was done on the cheap.

24 October 2007, 18:54 Comments

China is undergoing a radical shift in its health policy towards the poorest, particularly in rural areas, and research is playing a major role. Here Gerald Bloom, visiting Professor at Beijing Normal University, co-chair of the China Health Development Forum, and Fellow of the Institute of Development Studies in Sussex, UK, tells the story, with lessons for the world about the relation between research and policy-making.

23 October 2007, 15:59 Comments [2]

The Ministry of Health and health services in Kenya have received a refreshing boost from the Minister of Health, past Presidential candidate Charity Ngilu. But it hasn’t been easy. Here she puts health, and research for health, into its full political context.

23 October 2007, 10:17 Comments

Norway’s ‘Global Business Plan’ will put countries in control of reaching the Millennium Development Goals – but funding will depend on success measured by ‘evaluation research’. On 26 September 2007 Jens Stoltenberg, Prime Minister of Norway, announced plans for a radical transformation of international development funding, with a ‘Global Campaign for the Health MDGs’. Developing countries will prepare their own national plans to achieve Millennium Development Goals 4, 5 and 6 to reduce child and maternal mortality, and combat AIDS and other diseases, while donors will relate their support to the countries’ plans; and support will depend on measured results. The Campaign could be extended to the whole of health, and even development, and become each country’s truly Global Business Plan. We talk to the plan’s principal architect, Tore Godal.