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Beneath the rhetoric: Policy to reduce the mental health treatment gap in Africa

COOPER, Sara
2015

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In this paper I problematize knowledge on reducing the ‘gap’ in treatment produced by 14 national mental health policies in Africa. To contextualize this analysis, I begin with a historic-political account of the emergence of the notion of primary health care and its entanglement within decolonization forces of the 1960s. I unpack how and why this concept was subsequently atrophied, being stripped of its more revolutionary sentiments from the 1980s. Against this backdrop, I show how, although the 14 national mental health policies are saturated with the rhetoric of primary health care and associated concepts of community participation and ownership, in practice they tend to marginalize local meaning-systems and endorse a top-down framework heavily informed by colonial medicine. The policies thus end up reproducing many of the very Eurocentric assumptions that the original primary health care notion sought to transcend. More specifically, the paradigms of evidence-based research/practice and individualised human rights become the gatekeepers of knowledge. These two paradigms, which are deeply embedded within contemporary global mental health discourse, are legislating what are legitimate forms of knowing, and by extension, valid forms of care. I argue that a greater appreciation of the primary health care concept, in its earliest formulation, offers a potentially fruitful terrain of engagement for developing more contextually-embedded and epistemologically appropriate mental health policies in Africa. This in turn might help reduce the current ‘gap’ in mental health care treatment so many countries on the continent face.

 

Disability and the Global South (DGS), 2015, Vol. 2 No. 3

Violence free zone : end school-related violence, prevent HIV/AIDS

SALTER, Nick
SCHECHTMAN, Lisa
September 2007

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The objective of this call to action is to review the extent to which national education plans, the Fast Track Initiative, donor countries, and established international NGOs recognise and comprehensively combat school-related violence (SRV) in a review of 10 African countries. The brief contains five main sections and two Appendices. It outlines the details and consequences of school-related violence; and the major findings and broader trends from the country review process; it focuses on a discussion of models and programs employed to effectively counter SRV and highlights overall best practices; it reviews and critiques donor governments and international agencies in relation to their work on SRV; and it outlines the recommendations and call to action for going to scale with programmes to counter SRV

Vaccine anxieties : global science, child health and society

LEACH, Melissa
2007

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"This book explores how parents understand and engage with childhood vaccination in contrasting global contexts. This rapidly advancing and universal technology has sparked dramatic controversy, whether over MMR in the UK or oral polio vaccines in Nigeria. Combining a fresh anthropological perspective with detailed field research, the book examines anxieties emerging as highly globalized vaccine technologies and technocracies encounter the deeply intimate personal and social worlds of parenting and childcare, and how these are part of transforming science-society relations"

Mapping malaria risk in Africa

MAPPING MALARIA RISK IN AFRICA / ATLAS DU RISKE DE LA MALARIA EN AFRIQUE (MARA/ARMA)
December 2004

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This site presents maps of malaria risk and endemicity (the presence of malaria) in Africa, drawing on published and unpublished data, and through spatial modelling of malaria distribution, seasonality and endemicity. Many factors, especially endemicity, affect the choice of control methods. In the absence of such data it is impossible to rationalize the allocation of limited resources for malaria control. This site presents an opportunity to rethink endemicity and how we may map malaria risk in order to better support planning and programming of malaria control

Disability and rehabilitation status : review of disability issues and rehabilitation services in 29 African countries

GIANNELLLI, Massimo
DEEPAK, Sunil
Eds
December 2004

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This report provides information related to disability issues and rehabilitation services, provided by 29 countries of Africa, and includes demographics, the presence of national policies and NGOs. The report is divided into the following three parts: a global review of information, the country profiles and a summary table of the information provided in individual countries. This report is useful for people interested in disability and rehabilitation services in Africa

Ethics and the Internet in west Africa : toward an ethical model of integration|Les enjeux éthiques d’Internet en Afrique de l’Ouest : vers un modèle éthique d’intégration

BRUNET, Patrick
TIEMTORE, Oumarou
VETTRAINO-SOULARD, Marie-Claude
2002

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This book focuses on ethical questions related to the use of the Internet in west Africa. It examines the manner in which the spread of the Internet in Africa raises serious ethical issues; issues that should be identified to ensure that, in the future, the adaptation and integration of Internet technology will be compatible with the development of Africa's nations. The book is based on field suveys in five west African countries, two anglophone and three francophone. For each country, a portrait of Internet users' ethical behaviours was created. The book demonstrates how the Internet, by virtue of its content and how the technology is uses, is creating upheaval in the practices and modes of communication within African communities. The book culminates with a proposed ethical model for the assimilation of the Internet that could serve as a reference for development policies in each of the respective countries and, more broadly, throughout Africa

A participatory approach in practice : understanding fieldworkers' use of participation rural appraisal in ActionAid The Gambia

HOLMES, Tim
June 2001

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This paper uses a case study to argue that participatory approaches emerge from a complex process of negotiation where fieldworkers are subject to unique combinations of competing influences from the organisations they work for, the communities they work with, and their own personal characteristics. It suggests that fieldworkers can actively pursue personal agendas and can also be involved in changing the structures that condition their actions. However, the paper concludes that elements of the organisational structure can leave little room for fieldworkers to use their agency positively, and that managers need to address this in order to reduce the gap between the policy and practice of participatory approaches

Participatory monitoring and evaluation

February 1988

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One of the PLA Notes special editions, includes articles on: tracking change together; monitoring and evaluating in the Nepal-UK Community Forest Project; particpatory self-evaluation of World Neighbors, Burkino Faso; institutional issues for monitoring local development in Ecuador; growing from the grassroots: building participatory planning, monitoring and evaluation methods in PARC; ELF - 3 year impact evaluation: experiences and insights; Participatory monitoring and evaluation in flood proofing pilot project, CARE-Bangladesh

The Africa campaign on disability and HIV & AIDS

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The Africa Campaign is a unifying umbrella under which disabled people's organisations, organisations of people living with HIV & AIDS, non-governmental organisations, AIDS services organisations, researchers, activists, and other citizens work collectively to achieve two main objectives: a coordinated response involving persons with disabilities in African countries to achieve inclusive national HIV & AIDS policies and programmes; and equal access for persons with disabilities in Africa to information and services on HIV & AIDS. This website contains information about the campaign and key documents

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