Lancet
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Review Meta Analysis
Prevalence and risk of violence against children with disabilities: a systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies.
Globally, at least 93 million children have moderate or severe disability. Children with disabilities are thought to have a substantially greater risk of being victims of violence than are their non-disabled peers. Establishment of reliable estimates of the scale of the problem is an essential first step in the development of effective prevention programmes. We therefore undertook a systematic review and meta-analysis to synthesise evidence for the prevalence and risk of violence against children with disabilities. ⋯ WHO Department of Violence and Injury Prevention and Disability.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study
Task shifting of antiretroviral treatment from doctors to primary-care nurses in South Africa (STRETCH): a pragmatic, parallel, cluster-randomised trial.
Robust evidence of the effectiveness of task shifting of antiretroviral therapy (ART) from doctors to other health workers is scarce. We aimed to assess the effects on mortality, viral suppression, and other health outcomes and quality indicators of the Streamlining Tasks and Roles to Expand Treatment and Care for HIV (STRETCH) programme, which provides educational outreach training of nurses to initiate and represcribe ART, and to decentralise care. ⋯ UK Medical Research Council, Development Cooperation Ireland, and Canadian International Development Agency.
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We analyse nine low-income and lower-middle-income countries in Africa and Asia that have implemented national health insurance reforms designed to move towards universal health coverage. Using the functions-of-health-systems framework, we describe these countries' approaches to raising prepaid revenues, pooling risk, and purchasing services. Then, using the coverage-box framework, we assess their progress across three dimensions of coverage: who, what services, and what proportion of health costs are covered. ⋯ However, none of the reforms purely conform to common health-system archetypes, nor are they identical to each other. We report some trends in these countries' progress towards universal coverage, such as increasing enrolment in government health insurance, a movement towards expanded benefits packages, and decreasing out-of-pocket spending accompanied by increasing government share of spending on health. Common, comparable indicators of progress towards universal coverage are needed to enable countries undergoing reforms to assess outcomes and make midcourse corrections in policy and implementation.