healthcare

REQUEST FOR EXPRESSION OF INTEREST FROM GENERAL PRACTITIONERS TO PROVIDE CLINICAL SERVICES IN PUBLIC PRIMARY HEALTH CARE CLINICS WITHIN THE 10 NHI PILOT DISTRICTS

The National Department of Health has embarked on an initiative to improve and expand access to healthcare services through the contracting of private General Medical Practitioners (GPs) to render sessional service in Primary Healthcare facilities. This initiative is in support of the National Health Insurance (NHl) pilot that aims to improve access to high quality public sector health care services. The initial phase of GP contracting for sessional services will take place in the 10 NHI pilot Districts, which are:

Background

The World Health Organization’s recommendations on optimizing the roles of health workers aim to help address critical health workforce shortages that slow down progress towards the health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). A more rational distribution of tasks and responsibilities among cadres of health workers can significantly improve both access and cost-effectiveness – for example by training and enabling ‘mid-level’ and ‘lay’ health workers to perform specific interventions otherwise provided only by cadres with longer (and sometimes more specialized) training.

The primary goal of the guideline is to improve the quality of care and the outcome in people with type 2 diabetes in low-resource settings. It recommends a set of basic interventions to integrate management of diabetes into primary health care. It will serve as basis for development of simple algorithms for use by health care staff in primary care in low-resource settings, to reduce the risk of acute and chronic complications of diabetes. The guideline was developed by a group of external and WHO experts, following the WHO process of guideline development. GRADE methodology was used to assess the quality of evidence and decide the strength of the recommendations.

The global health expenditure database that WHO has maintained for the past ten years, provides internationally comparable numbers on national health expenditures. WHO updates the data annually, taking, adjusting and estimating the numbers based on publicly available reports (national health account reports, reports from the Ministry of Finance, Central Bank, National Statistics Offices, public expenditure information and reports from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, etc). The estimates are sent out to the Ministries of Health for validation prior to publication but users are advised that country data may still differ in terms of definitions, data collection methods, population coverage and estimation methods used.

Entries now open for the EPHPA 2013!

Published since 1995, the South African Health Review (SAHR) provides a South African perspective on prevailing local and international public health issues. It has rapidly become a flagship product that is widely read, used and quoted as an authoritative reference work in South Africa and abroad.

The field of global health is witnessing a shift in focus from disease-driven initiatives to projects aimed at increasing the sustainability and strengthening of health systems. A crucial component to this is universal health coverage (UHC), which seeks to address financing schemes for health, separate from efforts to provide both adequate numbers of health workers and structures for health-care delivery. UHC may be provided by government or through a combination of private insurance schemes, public-sector planning, and employer-based programs. Countries across the world, from China and India to Rwanda and Mexico, are beginning to implement different universal health coverage schemes, marking a rise in interest and political will for universal health coverage.

Has the process of developing human resource's been geared towards making Primary Health Care a priority?" This is a question to which the previous edition of HST Update drew attention. We continue the debate by focusing on a cadre of health workers operating at the community level of health care.

The theme of this month's "Update" is greater integration of the public and private health sectors in South Africa. It explores ways in which convergence of public and private health care in South Africa can be used to increase people's access to health care, and to ensure both greater efficiency and equity in the provision of health care. Some of the suggested mechanisms are complex, controversial and may take time to implement. Other steps may be simpler and should be introduced now - if only to prevent the situation described above happening again.

To research this report, the Economist Intelligence Unit surveyed the literature and data available on Africa’s current healthcare systems. We also conducted 34 in-depth interviews with leading experts in the different professional roles that make up the healthcare sector: academics, clinicians, healthcare providers, policymakers, medical suppliers, and think tanks. The data and interview comments were then analysed to define trends likely to have an impact on the direction of healthcare over the next decade. Finally, bearing in mind these trends, we developed five extreme scenarios, each a distillation of a possible outcome of the trends identified.