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Underdevelopment in Africa
Access to health care
Underdevelopment in Africa
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Since World War II, Sub-Saharan Africa has seen notable improvements in child survival; however, childhood mortality conditions continue to lag behind. Ghana is said to be “an island of peace and stability” in the volatile landscape of Sub-Saharan West Africa; a success story of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (Atakpu, 2004). Its success has put Ghana as the leader in human development among the countries in that region. Although, the infant mortality rate and mortality rate of children under the age of five is still rather high compared to the rest of the world. This problem has ranked the country as 135th out of 177countries studied for human development by 2007-2008 United Nations Human Development Report. Since child mortality continues to be a major public health concern in this region, implementations of efficient programs, cooperation of health agencies and through the highest quality support of the World Health Organization, the goal of reducing childhood mortality can be efficiently and steadily accomplished.
History of the development problem and the root causes
Ghana’s development as a country has been on the rise in the last decade, with a democratic government in place, peaceful elections and a growing economy. However, when it comes to the healthcare of the country there is much needed room for improvement. Budgets allocations to the health sector have increased significantly according to some sources but despite the improvements maternal and child mortality appear not to have changed very much. Reduction in infant and child mortality during the 1970s through the early 1990s have either stagnated or reversed. Ghana’s relative success in economic development has made it one of the more favore...
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...was established to provide routine and mass immunization exercises within the country. This program has had substantial progress but with large geographical variations as far as coverage is definitely a concern (Policies to Reduce Child Mortality, 2007). However, to increase the pace of policy implementation and reduce child mortality will need to be expanded with the addition of other interventions which need to be established under the national development policy framework. Some of the interventions include introducing high impact strategies for dealing with malnutrition, providing outreach services and clinics to deprived rural area, developing close to client services for the poor, getting a handle on malaria control, improving access to maternal and child services and improving access to reproductive health services (Policies to Reduce Child Mortality, 2007).
Malawi is one of the world’s poorest countries, ranking 160th out of 182 countries on the Human Development Index. Malawi has extremely low life expectancy and high infant mortality which couldn’t be controlled yet. It’s one of least developed nations in the world; however, some of improvements have
Health care policies are put into place regarding childhood immunization requirements for schools, along with information on obtaining religious exemptions. Each state and/or country develops their own individualized guidelines through interactions with federal and state government agencies. One in five babies around the world are missing out on basic vaccines and may die from weak health systems and insufficient funding. UNICEF and its partners are working to change these numbers and ensure that all children are successfully protected with vaccines.
By calculating data identifying inequalities alongside the Ministry of Health in random regions throughout Brazil, in 2012, Barufi, Haddad, and Paez, found numerous problems: Previous health care expansion was ineffective due to its inaccessibility, few socioeconomic improvements have restricted many impoverished people in Brazil to obtain any social mobility, and lastly without the proper infrastructure, there is little that can be done to reduce the infant mortality rate (p. 6-8). In relation, Narayan Sastry found through her studies of studying urban and rural child infant mortality in 1997 that, those community characteristics have a strong impact but do not directly have an effect Infant mortality in Brazil (p. 999-1001). In simpler terms, there are SDH that are not examined that have greater impacts but are not implemented due to its lack of studying. Though her numbers did not openly infer this, if a community has such an important impact, imagine what preventative care specified to each community could do to influence the IMR for those regions. As presented, infant mortality is clearly a problem but is often hard to precisely identity the greatest contributing factor. In the next section, the causes and effects of infant mortality will be
The American continent is divided in 3 regions: North America, Central America and South America. This last region counts with many countries that have a high adult and child mortality rate. For the purpose of this paper I selected Ecuador has the country with one of the highest number in mortality rate. According to the World Health Organization (WHO, 2011), the mortality rate for child under 5 years old was 23 per 1000 births and for adults the probability of dying between 15 to 60 years old was for males 162 and females 89 per 1000 births.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has listed immunizations as the number one greatest public health achievement in the 20th century. This attainment towards the goal of health and safety is a huge success for not only our country but from the global perspective as well. Immunizations help to prevent illness and death from vaccine-preventable diseases. The World Health Organization states that global vaccination coverage has remained consistent for the past few years; for example, the percentage of infants fully vaccinated against diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis has held secure at 83%. Programs for population-wide vaccinations have helped with the annihilation of polio in America since the late 1970’s, the eradication of smallpox, and the control of numerous other infectious diseases in the United States and other parts of the world.
Every day, 370,000 babies are born into this world- each having the potential to live a prosperous and productive life. Unfortunately, some of these tiny, fragile humans do not live until their first birthday. The death of infants within the first year of life is known as infant mortality. There are many contributing factors as to why infant mortality may be high or low in a specific area. In order to measure the amount of deaths that occur in a particular region, the number of newborns that die before the age of one year old per 1,000 live births are recorded and is known as the infant mortality rate in that society. Generally, the infant mortality rate of a country directly reflects on the health-care system provided. Unfortunately, in today’s world, a child dies every four seconds.
In many parts of the world that are considered lower or middle-class countries, health disparities are cause of major concern that leads to unnecessary disease and possible death. Many variables affect how and why many citizens of lower and middle-class countries struggle to obtain adequate healthcare. One region of the world classified as a lower socio economic territory is Ethiopia. Many factors contribute to the lack of health care in Ethiopia such as access to care, high cost of care, and being uneducated, to name a few. One idea that hinders many citizens in Ethiopia to attain healthcare is the access to the healthcare system. This research project will entail the issue of access to the health care system; ways it is affecting the lives of those living in Ethiopia, and measures that can be taken to possibly increase the availability and attainment of healthcare.
I first considered a public health career when I interned at the Ghana Health Service Family Health Department as an undergraduate student. Participating in national meetings focused on strategies to reduce maternal mortality in Ghana, I recognized that, in order to create sustainable advances, it is crucial to address the underlying social inequalities that exacerbate adverse health outcomes. To advance this goal, I am seeking admission into the Global Health and Population Doctoral Program at the Harvard School of Public Health.
May 9, 2001 African Networks for Health Research and Development; retrieved Dec. 9, 2003 http://www.afronets.org/archive/200105/msg00035.php.
Management at The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) must have a strategic plan which serves as the framework to build “A World Fit for Children.”(UNICEF [UNICEF], 1998) To plan strategically management must take into account UNCEF vision and mission and there strengths, weakness and threats to accomplish their goals.(World Health Organization [WHO], 2003, 1) An example of this is UNICEF working with all those who share their commitment to the rights of every child. Organizations such as World Health Organization (WHO) who have been working with UNICEF on a strategy to fight vaccine-preventable diseases called The Global Immunization Vision and Strategy (GIVS) goal is to fight vaccine-preventable diseases, which kill more than two million people every year, two thirds of those killed are children. WHO and UNICEF will assist governments in designing, financing and implementing national immunization programs while also taking into account ethics involving culture and religious beliefs of those who do not believe in immunizations.
The most important indicators of a community’s overall health are maternal, infant and child health. It deals with the health of women of childbearing age from pre-pregnancy, labor, delivery and the postpartum period and the health of the child prior to birth up the adolescence (McKenzie & Pinger, 2015, p.192). The health data that is collected towards maternal, infant and child health are used to see the effectiveness of disease prevention and health promotion services in a community. Prenatal health care is one of the fundamentals of a safe pregnancy. An infant’s health mostly depends on the mother. A child’s during the ages of one to nine are very important to the child’s development and the future (McKenzie & Pinger, 2015, p.217). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends vaccinating children against most vaccine-preventable diseases early in life. One of the community programs for Women, Infants and Children are maternal and child health bureau, which is in charge with the responsibility for promoting and improving the health of our nations mothers and children. Another is woman, infants and children program, which is a clinic-based program designed to provide a variety of nutritional health related goods and services to pregnant, postpartum and breastfeeding women, infants up to
The Millennium Development Goal Report 2013 states that the progress towards achieving the target of reducing maternal mortality by two thirds between 1990 and 2015 significantly falls short of the set goal and the indices are still poor in the developing countries especially sub-Saharan Africa (United Nations, 2013). The People’s Health Movement (PHM), through its WHO Watch clearly identifies the huge omission of Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs) in the WHO’s revised strategy on traditional medicine (PHM WHO Watch, 2013). The magnitude of this omission appears to be puzzling owing to the fact that in just about three decades ago the WHO aimed to reduce death of women associated with child bearing through the training of TBAs and promoted their integration into the orthodox health care system. The WHO calls for a collaborative effort in achieving the goal of reducing maternal deaths. Yet, one can insinuate that the TBAs are no longer seen as a resource to be harnessed by public health professionals in addressing the issues associated with childbearing (Langwick, 2011). The ‘friend or foe’ mentality can clearly be observed in a statement made by one of Nigeria’s chief leaders in the fight towards reducing maternal mortality published in Nigeria’s foremost editorial daily newspaper magazine, the Punch. He said that ‘it was no longer acceptable for women to give birth in TBA centres, TBAs were no longer required in labour and delivery because of the availability of enough trained or skilled personnel, and he promised to jail any TBA involved in a maternal death’ (Punch, 2013). As such, it is important for us to critically analyse and evaluate the relevance of TBAs in promoting health from a contemporary global health perspective. I...
...tly should attend to the most urgent and highest needful problems to reduce the risk of developing those issues. Health priorities include reduction of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), decrease the road traffic accidents rate, reduce the infectious disease and vaccine preventable diseases, prevent transmit of HIV infections and reduce the poverty by minimizing gap between rich and poor. In addition, this health problems should be addressed in accordance to WHO guidelines, Millenniums development goals and according to other international health reporting standards. Moreover understanding the burden of disease is important where it helps to measure weightage of disease in a specific nation with that of the global situation. So supportively this will help to prioritize the urgent health problems in the country which will support the prevention of those health issues.
A large amount of people in poverty live on the streets of Ghana. The economy is steadily increasing about 7 percent each year. Poverty continues to be a consistent problem in specific areas of Ghana. The poverty rate in urban areas at 10.6 percent is nothing related to 37.9 percent in rural areas. Almost four million children continue to live below the poverty line, and the poverty reduction is not keeping up with the population growth. The population in Ghana is 28.21 million. A child in Ghana is about 40 percent more likely to be in poverty than a Ghanaian adult. The main causes of poverty in Ghana are lack of education, poor environment, bad character or morals, ignorance, greed and selfishness. Poverty in Ghana is also politically, culturally, and religiously driven. At least 45 percent of the population in Ghana lives on less than $1.25 a day. The highest proportion of food in households is in the upper east region, where 27 percent of households are at risk of hunger. Many of the major
According to a survey conducted by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) (2014) on the poverty profile in Ghana between the years 2005 and 2013 the Ghana Living Standard Survey reveals, that one-third of the population of Ghana are poor and one-tenth are extremely poor. To assess this fact, GSS used conditions such as