World Health Report, an African View of the Post 2015 and Ground Level Panels

Hello everyone and welcome to this week in review. Among this week’s highlights:

• Reflecting the Realities, Needs and Priorities in Monitoring Human and Social Development in Africa Beyond 2015 by UNECA’s African Centre of Statistics contributes to the debate around the post-2015 development framework by addressing the limits of the current Millennium Development Goals Framework and by its formulation of an African perspective of what should be the focus after their due date.

•  The 2013 Global Food Security Index by the Economist Intelligence Unit, the 2013 Global Food Security Index shows that Sub-Saharan African nations made progress this past year, with the top three most improved Sub-Saharan countries - Ethiopia, Botswana and Niger - rising an average of eight places in the index. Improvements were attributed to greater food availability and income growth. Of the 10 countries whose scores improved the most, five were in Sub-Saharan Africa, including two of the top three.

• The Service Delivery Indicators Initiative: Monitoring Health and Education performances in Africa. This blog addresses the main contribution of the recently launched Service Delivery Indicators in the monitoring of health and education policies in Africa and its potential impact of governance and transparency through the collection, management and availability of data in these two sectors. The video below shows how healthcare provision is improved in three Nigerian states 

•   Ground Level Panels offer reality check to UN High Level Panel’s (HLP) proposals for development by Catherine Setchell of the Institute of Development Studies gives voices to the different minorities of the world such as disabled people, urban slum dwellers, people living in conflict or disaster-hit areas through four Ground Level Panels  that took place in Egypt, Brazil, Uganda and India. Different goals, such as rule of law, equity, or a “global life plan” were promoted in these participatory panels, which gives an interesting view of the world’s people’s expectations for the post 2015 development framework.

• The 2013 World Health Report was published this August 15th by the World Health Organization. The World Health Report: Research for Universal Health Coverage focuses on the importance of research in advancing progress towards universal health coverage. In addition, it identifies the benefits of increased investment in health research by low- and middle-income countries using case studies from around the world, and proposes ways to further strengthen this type of research.

We hope you enjoyed this review. Stay tuned the same time next week for another riveting read on the week that was.

Yours in progress,

Ousmane Aly Diallo