This volume analyzes Ghana s health system performance and highlights the range of policy options needed to improve health system performance and health outcomes.

This volume analyzes Ghana s National Health Insurance Scheme and highlights the range of policy options needed to assure its financially sustainable transition to universal coverage.

This open access book introduces the theoretical frameworks and academic debates concerning sexual cultural practices and HIV/AIDS in Africa. It shows how these frameworks have been applied in a practical sense in Africa to investigate sexual cultural practices and their link with HIV/AIDS. The author provides an overview of both the field of study and the methods used during fieldwork. Finally, it assesses the implications of the findings for the conceptualization and provision of current and future HIV/AIDS policies and programs in Africa. This monograph will appeal to policy makers and practitioners working in the field of HIV/AIDS in the Global South as well as academics and students.

HIV/AIDS continues to take a tremendous toll on the populations of many countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. In some countries with high HIV prevalence rates, life expectancy has declined by more than a decade and in a few cases by more than two decades. Even in countries with HIV prevalence of around 5 percent (close to the average for sub-Saharan Africa), the epidemic can reverse gains in life expectancy and other health outcomes achieved over one or two decades. This volume highlights work conducted under the umbrella of a World Bank work program on “The Fiscal Dimension of HIV/AIDS,” including country studies on Botswana, South Africa, Swaziland, and Uganda. It covers four aspects of the fiscal dimensions of HIV/AIDS: First, it aims for a comprehensive analysis of the fiscal costs of HIV/AIDS, with a wider scope than a costing analysis focusing on only the policy response to HIV/AIDS. Second, it embeds the analysis of HIV/AIDS costs in a discussion of the fiscal context, and interprets these costs as a quasi-liability, not a debt de jure, but a political and fiscal commitment that binds fiscal resources in the future and cannot easily be changed, and very similar to a pension obligation or certain social grants or services. Third, it develops tools to assess the (fiscal dimensions of) trade-offs between HIV/AIDS policies and measures that take into account the persistence of these spending commitments. Fourth, most of the fiscal costs of HIV/AIDS are ultimately caused by new infections, and this study estimates the fiscal resources committed (or saved) by an additional (or prevented) HIV infection. Building on these estimates, the analysis here is able to assess the evolving fiscal burden of HIV/AIDS over time.

While much progress has been made on achieving the Millenium Development Goals over the last decade, the number and complexity of global health challenges has persisted. Growing forces for globalization have increased the interconnectedness of the world and our interdependency on other countries, economies, and cultures. Monumental growth in international travel and trade have brought improved access to goods and services for many, but also carry ongoing and ever-present threats of zoonotic spillover and infectious disease outbreaks that threaten all. Global Health and the Future Role of the United States identifies global health priorities in light of current and emerging world threats. This report assesses the current global health landscape and how challenges, actions, and players have evolved over the last decade across a wide range of issues, and provides recommendations on how to increase responsiveness, coordination, and efficiency â€" both within the U.S. government and across the global health field.

HIV/AIDS is a catastrophe globally but nowhere more so than in sub-Saharan Africa, which in 2008 accounted for 67 percent of cases worldwide and 91 percent of new infections. The Institute of Medicine recommends that the United States and African nations move toward a strategy of shared responsibility such that these nations are empowered to take ownership of their HIV/AIDS problem and work to solve it.