Uganda

Review of the Equity Watch work in East and Southern Africa

Published by: 
EQUINET

From 26-28 April 2012, EQUINET held a regional methods workshop in Cape Town, South Africa. It gathered the lead institutions of country teams in the Equity Watch work, the EQUINET steering committee, regional and international agencies and networks involved in work on health equity. The workshop aimed to: provide training on equity analysis and discuss future approaches to capacity building on equity analysis; review Equity Watch work at country level and the learning and implications from the work for future monitoring of health equity within countries; and review and discuss the draft regional Equity Watch and the follow up and dissemination.

Policy brief 12: Better information for better mental health: Developing Mental Health Information Systems in Africa

Published by: 
Department for International Development (DFID)
The Mental Health and Poverty Project (MHaPP) is a 5- year study of mental health policy development and implementation in 4 African countries: Ghana, South Africa, Uganda and Zambia. Following broad situation analyses in each of the four countries, three areas of intervention were identified:
1. improving policies, plans and legislation for mental health
2. mental health information systems (MHIS) and

Achieving sexual and reproductive health and rights for women and girls through the HIV response

Published by: 
UNAIDS

The case studies that follow, from across sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Europe and Central
Asia, Latin America and North America, highlight the rich diversity of community initiatives that
bridge sexual and reproductive health and rights and HIV. The report has a strategic emphasis
on the innovation that is being led by women living with HIV and features pioneering endeavours
that reflect community and key stakeholder interpretation and understanding of how this
intersection is defined. It profiles initiatives that have emerged from within the HIV sector as it
broadens out to encompass a sexual and reproductive health and rights approach, as well as

Medical Male Circumcision: thinking through the impact for a feminised epidemic

Series Name: 
Nursing Update
Published by: 
Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa
Marion Stevens of the Health Systems Trust focuses on the recent meetings and discussion around medical male circumcision.

There has been a lot of discussion and a lot of resource mobilisation (donors setting money aside) on medical male circumcision. This has been so given recent research findings and the desperate need to find 'something' to do to increase real results in the prevention, treatment and care, and support arena. However, concerns have been expressed about the real implications. The World Health Organization (WHO) held a meeting in Mombasa last month to discuss this issue and the Aids Vaccine Advocacy Coalition held a meeting prior to this to particularly focus on growing concerns regarding the impact of medical male circumcision on an epidemic in which women are mostly infected and affected. I include a background document and a consensus statement from the meeting.

Telemedicine

Series Name: 
HST Update
Published by: 
Health Systems Trust
Technology has developed in leaps and bounds in the last century, and health has always sought to make use of these advances in delivering better health care services. A new initiative worldwide is Telecommunications. Telemedicine, according to Dr. Salah H. Mandil, Director of Health Informatics and Telematics at the World Health Organisation, is the practice of medical care using audio, visual and data communications: this includes medical care delivery, consultation, diagnosis, treatment, education and the transfer of medical data. Education covers both the education of the patient and the continuing education of the health care staff. South Africa has embarked on its telemedicine project in April 1999. This issue looks at the pilot implementation of telemedicine in the Northern Cape, the Eastern Cape and at Kimberley Hospital. There are at present 30 pilot sites in the country, where community or district hospitals are linked to larger central hospitals. Services that are being offered include radiology, pathology, ultrasound and antenatal screening. How effective has this new service been? Positive responses have been received by doctors doing their community service in the country, but there are still technical challenges facing implementation of the project. Telemedicine is regarded as a tool to complement the current health care delivery in South Africa. It's full impact has still to be determined.