USAID/KENYA Evaluation Services and Program Support (ESPS)
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has a solid track record of supporting health and development initiatives in Kenya. AIDS, Population, and Health Integrated Assistance (APHIA) is the agency’s flagship hea...lth initiative in the country. APHIA is currently in its third iteration, APHIAPlus, which began in January 2011 and is slated to end in December 2015. APHIAPlus was designed to contribute to Result 3 (“Increased use of quality health services, products, and information”) and Result 4 (“Social determinants of health”) of USAID/Kenya’s implementation framework. The main technical areas of focus are HIV/AIDS; malaria; family planning (FP); tuberculosis (TB); maternal, newborn, and child health (MNCH); and water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH).
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The overall goal of the programme, to reduce the malaria morbidity and mortality by 75% (using 2012 as baseline) by the year 2020, continued to be pursued in 2014. The following areas were identified as some of the priorities for the year: Malaria Case Management under which we have Malaria in Pregn...ancy (MIP), Home Based Care and Diagnostics.
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An attempt has been made to map the incidence of uni-dimensional and multi-dimensional poverty simultaneously arguably for the first time in Pakistan. While multi-dimensional poverty map is calculated using PSLM 2010-11; small area estimation technique is utilized to map uni-dimensional poverty usin...g both nationally representative HIES (Household Integrated Economic Survey) and district-level representative PSLM (Pakistan Standard of Living Measurement) for the same year of 2010-11. The result indicates the existence of spatial distribution of poverty pockets in each of the four provinces of Pakistan. Furthermore, it is also observed that these pockets of poverty are more concentrated in the desert and mountains regions of the country.
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Everyday experience shows that there is a commonality between spirituality and medical practice. A text message I received from a friend recently read, "Please pray for me. I've been getting a mysterious headache for some days now. I will be seeing the doctor today." This clearly speaks of a relatio...nship: asking for prayer so as to be relieved of a "mysterious headache", yet going to see a doctor whose job is not to cure mysterious headaches. Even though both areas of human experience have their peculiar and largely unrelated methodologies, this paper argues that any extreme separation of the two is injurious to the teleology of both disciplines in relation to human well-being, which forms the core of spirituality and medicine.
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The principle Life and Dignity of the Human Person is one of the seven themes of Catholic social teaching (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) . We believe that God created man and woman in his image (Genesis 1:26–27) and because of this all people have inherent dignity . There is nothin...g anyone can do to gain or take away their human dignity, since it is God given, not earned . Because of this, we believe that every life is sacred and that no life—born or unborn—is disposable . All of the principles of Catholic social teaching flow from the core belief that every person has inherent dignity that must be respected .
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The Journal of Catholic Social Thought and Secular Ethics
Volume 1, Issue 1, Article 4 Res
Community-based strategies play a significant role in many health systems in low- and middle-income countries, especially in light of critical shortages in the health workforce. The term community health worker has been used to refer to volunteers and salaried, professional or lay health workers wit...h a wide range of training, experience, scope of practice and integration in health systems. In the context of this study, we use the term community-based practitioner (CBPs) to reflect the diverse nature of these cadres of health workers.
CBPs provide preventive, promotive, curative and palliative services across a range of areas, including reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health, HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, control of other endemic diseases, and noncommunicable diseases. Significant evidence has emerged over the past two decades on their effectiveness, which has triggered interest in the potential to use their services to expand access to care, in particular in rural and underserved areas where deployment and retention of more qualified health workers is problematic. Calls have been made to integrate CBP programmes in human resources and health strategies, and to scale up rapidly the extent and coverage of CBP initiatives.
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