What We're Reading: Week of April 29
- In 2016, only 0.4% of health spending globally was in low-income countries, despite these countries comprising 10% of the global population, finds a new study on health financing in The Lancet.
- A new interactive tool from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation explores global health financing trends from 1950 to 2050, depicting spending patterns across issues like maternal health, NCDs and infectious diseases.
- The launch of a drone delivery program in Ghana offers the country a new tool in the fight against high maternal mortality rates and frequent medicine stock outs.
- This week, Ariadne Labs announced Dr. Asaf Bitton will become executive director, succeeding Dr. Atul Gawande. A founding partner of PHCPI, Ariadne Labs works to create scalable solutions that improve health care delivery. It is based out of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
- In response to UHC2030’s six key asks for the UN High-Level Meeting on Universal Health Coverage, Women in Global Health announced a seventh ask: “Commit to gender equality and women’s rights (including SRHR) as foundational principles for UHC.”
- To achieve universal health coverage in high-income countries, the international community must develop a monitoring framework with appropriate indicators to measure progress and improvement.
- Last week’s killing of Dr. Richard Valery Mouzoko Kiboung, an epidemiologist responding to the Ebola outbreak in the DRC, sparked collective action for fellow responders. Nurses and doctors have threatened to strike if the government doesn’t put additional measures in place to improve the security situation.
- New WHO guidelines on physical activity for children under five call for minimizing screen time and “bringing back play for children” to ensure that healthy habits are established early in life.
- The Global Fund launched a new tool to visualize its investments and the impact they achieve around the world.