iDSI caught up with Patric Landin, regional advisor for Sida’s (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency) Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights team, ahead of the Global Symposium on Health Systems Research (HSR) in Liverpool next week. A HSR 2018 satellite session, which will focus on health financing towards Universal Health Coverage (UHC), has received funding from Sida, working on behalf …
Health Technology Assessment proves a hit as almost 100 delegates attend sustainable resource allocation event in Accra
Almost 100 delegates policy representatives from across Africa and Europe gathered in Accra, Ghana this month for a special event that focused on sustainable resource allocation policies for low and middle income countries (LMICs), co-hosted by iDSI and Health Technology Assessment international (HTAi). The two-day ‘Setting Priorities Fairly: Sustainable Policies for Effective Resource Allocation’ event, opened Ghana’s Deputy Minister for …
60 seconds with…Dr Yogan Pillay
iDSI caught up with Dr Yogan Pillay, Deputy Director-General for Communicable and Non-communicable Disease, Prevention, Treatment and Rehabilitation in the National Department of Health in South Africa, ahead of the Global Symposium on Health Systems Research (HSR) symposium in Liverpool next month. 1. You are a panel member in the sub-session, ‘Design of Health Benefit Packages’ during the HSR 2018 …
Five key points on Modicare: India’s soon to be rolled-out National Health Insurance Scheme
As India gets ready for the introduction of Modicare, reported to be the largest government-sponsored insurance scheme in the world with a target population of 500 million, we highlight five key points about the revolutionary health scheme. 1. The poor are the primary beneficiaries of this scheme Modicare’ s predecessor, the government-run health insurance programme Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), …
Implementing Diabetic Foot Quality Standards in Mumbai
The implementation of diabetic foot quality standards (QS) within primary care in Mumbai, supported by iDSI, has resulted in the identification of patients at risk of neuropathy who may have otherwise gone undetected. Between April-October 2017 842 diabetes patients that attended Dispensary 9 at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre had their feet examined once by physicians that had received additional …
Improving detection and control of hypertension in Kerala, India
A risk factor left unmonitored Hypertension is a leading risk factor for mortality in India with more than 200 million people in the country estimated to have high blood pressure (BP). There is, however, very little awareness about this silent killer with 75% of the rural and 60% of the urban Indian population unaware of their hypertensive status. BP control in …
7 key messages from the new iDSI report “Improving the quality and efficiency of healthcare services in Ghana through HTA”
In Africa, the burden of communicable diseases, maternal and child morbidities and mortalities is fast shifting towards chronic non- communicable diseases, giving rise to a phenomenon known as “double burden of illness”. Given that few domestic resources are allocated to health, and externally provided funds are committed to siloed disease programmes, there is an urgent need to develop practical and …
iDSI’s vision: everyone should have access to quality healthcare
In our final installment of posts that highlights the new features of the iDSI website, Dr. Ryan Li introduces the Resources section – focusing on the principles for developing clinical quality standards in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs). I remember very vividly two of the hospitals I visited in Vietnam, during my first field trip as a global …
More money is not always the answer to the ills of global health
Increasing the amount of money spent on health isn’t always the answer, especially in the absence of a system that can readily and effectively absorb additional funds. Laura Downey discusses this in the context of India in the following blog. According to an IndiaSpend analysis of 2017 Reserve Bank of India data on state budgets, nine of India’s poorest states …
iDSI at HTAi: bringing India closer to UHC
How will India achieve its target of Universal Health Coverage for its 1.25 billion population? Last month Laura Downey, GHD, convened a panel at The panel was chaired by Kalipso Chalkidou, GHD, and speakers alongside Laura included representatives from the Department of Health Research (DHR), Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India and the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), …