LDCs

Franchising of health services in low-income countries

Dominic Montagu
2002

Where do the poor go for health care? The answer may surprise you. It is not the government-sponsored public sector; it is usually the private sector. In doing so, the poor pay more for health products and services than many richer people. But, in resource-poor settings, it is often their only option.

Grouping existing providers under a franchised brand, supported by training, advertising and supplies, is a potentially important way of improving access to and assuring quality of some types of clinical medical services. While franchising has great potential to increase service...

Meeting the contraceptive and AIDS prevention needs of people living on a dollar a day

Malcolm Potts
2001

The new millennium sees the largest cohort of young people in history entering its fertile years. Many of these people are too poor to pay the full cost of modern contraception, but the money available for subsidizing their needs is exceedingly limited. The AIDS pandemic is placing additional, unprecedented demand on already overstretched resources. Existing methods of contraception that are well established and off-patent can be produced in bulk at low cost, and will remain the backbone of future programmes. The use of misoprostol as an abortifacient is likely to spread rapidly. New...

Revisiting community-based distribution programs: are they still needed?

Ndola Prataa
Farnaz Vahidniaa
Malcolm Pottsa
Ingrid Dries-Daffnerb
2005

Community-based distribution (CBD) programs are the optimum way of reaching people in rural areas of developing countries where conventional methods of delivery do not exist or fail. CBD programs are needed to meet the needs for contraception in rural communities and isolated city neighborhoods in developing countries.

Community-based distribution (CBD) programs are the optimum way of reaching people in rural areas of developing countries where conventional methods of delivery do not exist or fail. This paper reviews findings and experiences from over 30 years of efforts to...

Population and environment in the twenty-first century

Malcolm Potts
2007

Abstract: In the past 50 years global population grew by 3.7 billion. There is a large unmet need for family planning and wherever women have been given the means and the information to decide if or when to have the next child, then family size has fallen, often rapidly. However, since the UN 1994 Cairo conference on population and development, support for international family has collapsed and fertility declines in many of the poorest countries have stalled. Amongst some of the most vulnerable groups family size has risen. The investment made in voluntary family planning will largely...

A global overview of ongoing misoprostol studies

Ndola Prata
2006

Clinical research has the potential to advance knowledge in the use of a technology and to help inform the decision-making process involving the public health benefits of such technology. In the last decade, one of the most important advances in maternal health, with special significance for developing countries, was the research on the gynecological indications of the use of misoprostol. Numerous studies have shown misoprostol’ s efficacy in the management of postpartum hemorrhage (PPH), pregnancy termination, labor induction, and cervical ripening. Its multiple non-parenteral routes of...

Cost-effectiveness of misoprostol to control postpartum hemorrhage in low-resource settings

S Bradley
N Prata
N Young-Lin
D Bishai
2007

Objective: To test the cost-effectiveness of training traditional birth attendants (TBAs) to recognize postpartum hemorrhage (PPH) and administer a rectal dose of misoprostol in areas with low access to modern delivery facilities.

Method: A cost-effectiveness analysis, modeling two hypothetical cohorts of 10,000 women each giving birth with TBAs: one under standard treatment (TBA referral to hospital after blood loss ≥ 500 ml), and one attended by TBAs trained to recognize PPH and to administer 1000 μg of misoprostol at blood loss ≥ 500 ml.

Result: The misoprostol strategy...

Return of the Population Growth Factor

Martha Campbell
John Cleland
Alex Ezeh
Ndola Prata
2007

This Policy Forum explains how the Millenium Development Goals set by the United Nations cannot be achieved unless family planning is made easily available in the lowest-income countries.

Published in Science, March 16 2007, 1501-2

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Cut to the chase: quickly achieving high coverage male circumcision

David Griffith
Benjamin Bellows
Malcolm Potts
2007

This article argues that it is now high time to make MC available to the poor in countries with high HIV prevalence.

Published in Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. 2007 Jul;61(7):612

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Population growth and the Millennium Development Goals

Malcolm Potts
J Fotso
2007

Comment in the Lancet about the Return of the Population Growth Factor: its impact on the Millennium Development Goals, a report of hearings held in the UK Parliament.

Return of the Population Growth Factor: its impact on the Millennium Development Goals, a report of hearings held in the UK Parliament in 2006, focuses on the devastating impact of population growth on the Millennium Dev elopment Goals (MDGs). The report was released on Jan 31. The Inquiry Chairman, Richard Ottaway, Mem ber of Parliament (MP), concludes: “The evidence is overwhelming: the MDGs are difficult or...

Letter: Effect of Contraceptive Access on Birth Rate

Malcolm Potts
Martha Campbell
2008

Letter in response to the Perspective “REPRODUCING IN CITIES” by Mace published in Science February 2008 in Science

Published in Science, May 16 2008, 874

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