PAHO News – November 13, 2003

 

In this issue:

- PAHO DIRECTOR CALLS ON CARIBBEAN HEALTH MINISTERS TO ENSURE SOCIAL
PROTECTION

-ASSESSING STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP: THE PARTNERSHIP ASSESSMENT TOOL

-THE LANCET SERIES: CHILD SURVIVAL

-CEH DECLARATION BY LEADERS OF SOUTHERN CONE PEDIATRIC SOCIETIES 

-FOLLOW-UP: TRAINING WORKSHOP ON CHILDREN'S ENVIRONMENT HEALTH

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PAHO DIRECTOR CALLS ON CARIBBEAN HEALTH MINISTERS TO ENSURE SOCIAL
PROTECTION

The Director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), Dr. Mirta
Roses, during a visit to Barbados this week, called on health ministers
and senior personnel in their ministries to ensure that their leadership
was responsive to the region's changing environment where the focus was
on promoting equity and access to services for individuals, families and
communities. 

 

"Improving health status is the ultimate goal to which societies expect
their health systems to contribute," she said, noting that the countries
of Latin America and the Caribbean were at a crossroads in their effort
to develop their health systems and in tackling health sector reform. 

 

Roses spoke at the opening of a workshop on hospital governance,
attended by Ministers of Health and senior health officials, at PAHO's
Caribbean Program Coordination office.  The workshop was designed to
build on public sector reform initiatives undertaken by the countries,
with technical assistance by PAHO in recent years, by sensitizing health
officials to the role of the ministries in decentralized systems.  

 

For the full media release, contact in Barbados: Clare Forrester,
Media/Communications Advisor, Caribbean Program Coordination (CPC)
office, E-mail: [log in to unmask]; or in Washington: Daniel Epstein,
Area of Public Information, PAHO, e-mail: [log in to unmask] 

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ASSESSING STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP: THE PARTNERSHIP ASSESSMENT TOOL

The purpose of this tool is to provide a simple, quick and
cost-effective way of assessing the effectiveness of partnership
working. It enables a rapid appraisal (a quick 'health check') which
graphically identifies problem areas. This allows partners to focus
remedial action and resources commensurate with the seriousness and
urgency of the problems. Using the Tool thus avoids exhaustive, lengthy
and costly investigations of partnership working in general. And for
those just setting up partnerships, the Tool provides a checklist of
what to ensure and what to avoid. It has been designed explicitly as a
developmental tool rather than as a means for centrally assessing local
partnership performance. 

 

The Strategic Partnering Taskforce at the Office of the Deputy Prime
Minister of the United Kingdom commissioned the Nuffield Institute for
Health to develop this Assessment Tool. This current version has been
revised and adapted in the context of Strategic Partnering arrangements
for public/public, public/private, public/voluntary and
public/private/voluntary partnerships.

 

Available online as PDF [49p.] at:
www.nuffield.leeds.ac.uk/downloads/pat.pdf 

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THE LANCET SERIES: CHILD SURVIVAL

This year, 10.8 million children younger than five years will die.
Nearly all of these deaths will be concentrated in the world's poorest
countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Within each country,
children from the poorest families are most likely to die. Effective
low-cost interventions are available that can prevent two-thirds of
these deaths. The challenge is how to deliver these interventions to
children who need them most, children who are bypassed by existing
health services' delivery strategies. A group of global child health
experts met several times over the past few years, culminating in a
workshop sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation in Bellagio, Italy, in
February 2003. These scientists, speaking as individuals concerned with
child health, produced a series of five articles published in The Lancet
in June and July 2003. For more information, see WHO's Child and
Adolescent Health and Development Web site:
http://www.who.int/child-adolescent-health/publications/pubCNH.htm

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CEH DECLARATION BY LEADERS OF SOUTHERN CONE PEDIATRIC SOCIETIES

On September 30, 2003, the presidents of the Southern Cone pediatric
societies from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and
Uruguay met in Mar del Plata, Argentina, to discuss children's
environmental health issues. The outcome of the meeting was the
commitment--announced in the form of a declaration--to further
collective and national work on children's environmental health.
Specific joint activities were planned for Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay
with the participation of Argentinean professionals. Presidents of the
pediatric societies will launch CEH activities in their countries and
will report on these at the World Congress on Pediatrics in Cancun,
Mexico (August 2004). View the declaration: 

Spanish- http://www.aamma.org/surdec.htm. 

English-
http://www.who.int/heca/infomaterials/hecanetesfr/en/index2.html

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FOLLOW-UP: TRAINING WORKSHOP ON CHILDREN'S ENVIRONMENT HEALTH

With an attendance of nearly 500, the First International Training
Workshop on Children's Environmental Health was held October 1, 2003 in
Mar del Plata, Argentina. Topics discussed in the context of the
workshop included Why

children?: A new pediatric morbidity - the need to consider CEH; The
special vulnerability of developing fetus, infant, child and adolescent;
Chemical, physical and biological risks in the child/adolescent's
environments; Air, water and food pollution; Toxichemicals in
neurodevelopment; Exposure to heavy metals and pesticides; Endocrine
disruptors; Environmental risk for hospitalized children; The Pediatric
Environmental History, a tool for pediatricians; Advocacy needs: raising
awareness and motivating action; and Environmental Pediatric Units.
Experts from the following organizations delivered presentations: the
Argentine Society of Doctors for the Environment (AAMMA); the
Argentinean Society of Pediatrics (SAP); the Environmental Pediatric
Units of Mount Sinai Hospital and George Washington University; the
International Network on Children's Health, Environment and Safety
(INCHES); the International Pediatric Association (IPA), the
International Society of Doctors for the Environment (ISDE), and WHO.
For more information, please

see: http://www.aamma.org/consap.htm. 

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