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Beyond the targets : ensuring children benefit from expanded access to HIV/AIDS treatment

INTERNATIONAL SAVE THE CHILDREN ALLIANCE
2004

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This report explores the connections between tackling AIDS and tackling poverty and draws attention to the fact that millions of children affected by HIV and AIDS are in need of care and protection. There is an equally important and parallel agenda of expanding support for the millions of people needing access to treatment for HIV/AIDS. ARV treatment represents a crucial gateway to supporting millions of children yet it is rarely attempted. The report aims to examine the implications of expanded access to HIV/AIDS treatment, as exemplified by the 3 x 5 initiative, for prevention of HIV in children and young people and expanding support and care for orphans and other children made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS. Achieving the 3 by 5 goal set by WHO would mean that millions fewer children would lose their parents. Community based, NGO and governmental work could be pre-emptive in supporting children who do become orphaned rather than responding to mitigate impact. There are examples of programme good practice which illustrate the feasibility of developing effective treatment and care programmes and key findings and recommendations are made in the concluding section

Too poor to be sick : coping with the costs of illness in East Hararghe, Ethiopia

RUSSELL, Steven
ABDELLA, Kunuz
2002

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Examines the effects of a decade of health sector reforms in Ethiopia. Identifies the high cost of drugs as the major barrier to healthcare for the vast majority. Findings include the fact that most people do not use the public healthcare system, largely due to drug shortages, which mean people buy drugs from private pharmacies. The potential of 'Special Phramacies' however, has been overstated, since they exclude the majority, contributing to a two-tier health system. Exemption mechanisms are weak or not working in most places, so do not protect the poor. Roughly one-third of households sacrifice other essential spending to seek treatment, contributing to further indebtedness. Recommendations include: the need to increase levels of public funding of the health sector (Ethiopia would have to spend 100-133 per cent of its total budget to meet World Bank and WHO minimum health funding targets). Invest more heavily in alternative sources of funding through a range of risk pooling and health insurance initiatives - particularly look at the feasibility of community health insurance schemes, possibly linked to local savings societies. Strengthen equity priorities within a national user fee policy, with a priority to strengthen exemption systems or differential charging, perhaps using livelihood based assessments of ability to pay

Measuring child poverty and health : a new international study

HARPHAM, Trudy
2002

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This paper describes the early work of the Young Lives project and how the research is changing the way various factors behind child poverty are understood. "Measures of poverty are rarely applied in a child-centric fashion and have solely focused on income. Increasingly, however, poverty is being recognised as encompassing low achievement in education and health, vulnerability and exposure to risk. Both subjective and objective measures of well-being need to be used to create a multi-dimensional picture of childhood poverty"

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