Global health action
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Global health action · Jan 2015
Historical ArticleFood security and nutrition in the Russian Federation - a health policy analysis.
In the Russian Federation (Russia), an elevated burden of premature mortality attributable to non-communicable diseases (NCDs) has been observed since the country's economic transition. NCDs are largely related to preventable risk factors such as unhealthy diets. ⋯ Policy and economic reforms in Russia were not accompanied by a food security crisis or macronutrient deprivation of the population. Yet, unhealthy diets in contemporary Russia contribute to the burden of NCDs and related avoidable mortality. Food and nutrition policies in Russia need to specifically address nutritional shortcomings and food-insecure vulnerable populations. Appropriate, evidence-informed food and nutrition policies might help address Russia's burden of NCDs on a population level.
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Global health action · Jan 2015
Poverty-related and neglected diseases - an economic and epidemiological analysis of poverty relatedness and neglect in research and development.
Economic growth in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) has raised interest in how disease burden patterns are related to economic development. Meanwhile, poverty-related diseases are considered to be neglected in terms of research and development (R&D). ⋯ The IRF is an intuitive and meaningful metric to highlight shifts in global disease burden patterns. A large shortfall exists in global R&D spending for poverty-related and neglected diseases, with strong variations between diseases.
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According to the latest 2014 UNAIDS report, which was based on the 2012 South African National HIV Prevalence, Incidence & Behavior Survey, there were between 6.3 and 6.4 million HIV infected people in South Africa. Although the number of new infections appears to have declined in the past 5 years, 370,000 new infections were still estimated to occur in 2013. Young, black women were most at risk with a very high incidence of 4.5%. ⋯ Addressing sexual risk behaviors and the gender and sexual norms that influence them to scale requires ensuring communities are provided with skills to reflect on the individual and social mechanisms by which these risk behaviors are generated and normalized. To achieve this, partnerships must be formed between political leaders, researchers, technocrats and affected communities. Considering the severity of the epidemic and the continued high incidence of HIV, it is high time to review the current strategy to HIV control in South Africa and allocate more resources to approaches that emphasize community driven norm and behavior change.
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Global health action · Jan 2015
Intentional injury and violence in Cape Town, South Africa: an epidemiological analysis of trauma admissions data.
Injury is a truly global health issue that has enormous societal and economic consequences in all countries. Interpersonal violence is now widely recognized as important global public health issues that can be addressed through evidence-based interventions. In South Africa, as in many low- and middle-income countries (LMIC), a lack of ongoing, systematic injury surveillance has limited the ability to characterize the burden of violence-related injury and to develop prevention programmes. ⋯ This study provides the basis for evidence-based interventions to reduce the burden of intentional injury. Furthermore, it demonstrates the value of locally appropriate, ongoing, systematic public health surveillance in LMIC.
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Global health action · Jan 2015
'Practice what you preach': Nurses' perspectives on the Code of Ethics and Service Pledge in five South African hospitals.
A recent focus of the global discourse on the health workforce has been on its quality, including the existence of codes of ethics. In South Africa, the importance of ethics and value systems in nursing was emphasised in the 2011 National Nursing Summit. ⋯ Continuing education in ethics and addressing health system deficiencies will enhance nurses' professional development and their ethical decision-making and practice.