Historical Perspectives On The State Of Health And Health Systems In Africa Volume Ii

This book focuses on Africa’s challenges, achievements, and failures over the past several centuries using an interdisciplinary approach that combines theory and fact and evidence-based practices and interventions in public health, and argues that most of the health problems in Africa are not a result of scarce or lack of resources, but of the misconceived and misplaced priorities that have left the continent behind every other on the globe in terms of health, education, and equitable distribution of opportunities and access to (quality) health as agreed by the United Nations member states at Alma-Ata in 1978.

This book examines the historical and current state of health and the health of the African people, including the Arab North, impacted by such factors as geography and natural elements, cultural and colonial traditions, and competing biomedical and traditional systems. It also looks at technological advances, poverty and health disparities, utilization of resources, and international presence, as reflected by the work of the World Health Organization, and structural adjustments imposed by the IMF and the World Bank.

In this book, Rebekah Lee offers a critical introduction to the diverse history of health, healing and illness in sub-Saharan Africa from the 1800s to the present day. Its focus is not simply on disease but rather on how illness and health were understood and managed: by healthcare providers, African patients, their families and communities. Through a sustained interdisciplinary approach, Lee brings to the foreground a cast of actors, institutions and ideas that both profoundly and intimately shaped African health experiences and outcomes. This book guides the reader through a wide range of historical source material, and highlights the theoretical and methodological innovations which have enriched this scholarship. Part One delivers a concise historical overview of African health and illness from the long 'pre-colonial' past through the colonial period and into the present day, providing an understanding of broad patterns – of major disease challenges, experiences of illness, and local and global health interventions – and their persistence or transformation across time. Part Two adopts a 'case study' approach, focusing on specific health challenges in Africa – HIV/AIDS, mental illness, tropical disease and occupational disease – and their unfolding across time and space. Health, Healing and Illness in African History is the first wide-ranging survey of this key topic in African history and the history of health and medicine, and the ideal introduction for students.

The success of any preventive healthcare programme is reliant on a functional healthcare system. Within this system of care, healthcare professionals, including audiologists, can only practice safely and effectively if they possess an appreciation of the complexities and challenges that exist in that context. Where healthcare professionals have such awareness that aids them to recognise opportunities for errors that can cause patients harm and where they take steps to prevent these mistakes is where preventive audiology is positioned. This edited book, Complexities and Challenges in Preventive Audiology: An African Perspective, is a sequel to another book by the current editor titled Preventive Audiology: An African Perspective. While in the process of editing that book, the editor identified that a lacuna of contextually relevant collation of evidence on complexities and challenges faced by the field of audiology within the African context in implementing preventive audiology existed. The goal of this book is to delve into these complexities and challenges for various key areas in audiology. All chapters deliberate on evidence-based perspectives grounded in the African context, with deliberate and preferential reliance on contemporary locally relevant evidence that allows for accurate reflection of current complexities and challenges in ear and hearing care delivery within the African context. Contributors were encouraged to be as comprehensive as possible in their review of the literature within the African context, where available. Complexities brought about by context, such as cultural and linguistic diversity as well as traditional and alternative healthcare, on preventive audiology within the South African context, are also covered in this book. As each chapter explores prevailing complexities and challenges, potential solutions and recommendations for all challenges identified are also offered, having carefully and deliberately engaged with local evidence, local context, and local policies and regulations to ensure an Afrocentric contribution to the world of evidence. All chapters in the book have a goal of ensuring that increased efforts are directed towards the provision of clinical services that are driven through best practice by contextually relevant and responsive evidence.

Patient safety and quality improvement in health care remain a global priority. Subpar performance in health care, however, is still common more than a decade after the christening of patient safety in Africa. The core principle of safety and quality improvement systems is to identify and assess the root cause of failures in order to learn from them and devise a means to improve and to avoid recurrence. This book is designed to encourage, facilitate and empower healthcare workers in the development and implementation of strategically driven patient safety and quality improvement initiatives for safer healthcare systems and healthcare facilities in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) of Africa. It also highlights some of the profound challenges and barriers to designing and implementing patient safety and quality improvement interventions or programmes in the region and reiterates the need to remain focused and determined to work out solutions with confidence and overcome these barriers. In the book, chapters highlight six essential components crucial for achieving evolutionary progress in safety and quality improvement in a healthcare system: Standard operating procedure Audit Research Safety management Quality management Evaluation Practical steps in planning and conducting these six essential components are outlined with some specific features to aid learning and facilitate their implementation. The authors have experience and expertise in the medical practice gained in Africa and a decade of knowledge and experience from consultancy work in safety and quality improvement in health care within and outside the region. Essentials for Quality and Safety Improvement in Health Care: A Resource for Developing Countries is authored for both medical professionals and those from other professions who are interested in and enthusiastic about patient safety and healthcare quality and therefore willing to build a career in this field. It is relevant to all health institutions, health and non-health workers, and can be used as a checklist while rendering quality and safe health care.

The book is very policy-oriented and fills an important gap in the literature on policies related specifically to the dialogue of civilisation in a globalized world. Deals with cross-cutting issues in economic integration, conflict management, human rights and sustainable development. Addresses challenges such as religious extremism, environmental problems, and political unrest.

Why do millions of African children die before their fifth birthday? In African Children in Peril, Brian Waller takes his enormous experience in working with children and families, both home and overseas, and looks critically and boldly at why enormous numbers of infant children in sub-Saharan Africa die so young. This is a mortality rate of up to thirty times greater than in the West. It hasn’t been an accident of climate or corruption or geography. It has happened because of the West’s systematic subjugation and exploitation of the region over the centuries without regard to how this might impact on the region’s families and very young children. African Children in Peril shows emphatically and meticulously how Britain has been at the centre of this catastrophe involving many millions of child deaths as a consequence of its involvement in the slave trade and its Imperial and colonising history. It goes on to describe both America's indifference to African children's health needs and its readiness to profit from the continent at every turn. But there can be hope. Alongside this tragic detailing of research and conclusions, Brian Waller explores Africa’s positive responses to these events and suggests how the West, and particularly the United States and Britain, might now assist African leaders in helping them to make the curse of child malnutrition and early deaths history. The time is now.