scholarly journals South-to-south mentoring as a vehicle for implementing sustainable health security in Africa

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Marie Norlock ◽  
Patrick W. Okanya ◽  
Anastasia Trataris ◽  
Michael E. Hildebrand ◽  
Jean de Dieu Baziki ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Global Health ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Animal Health ◽  
African Continent ◽  
Global Health Security ◽  
Health Security ◽  
Mentorship Program ◽  
Frontline Workers ◽  
Peer Mentorship ◽  
Program Cycle

Abstract Background While sustainability has become a universal precept in the development of global health security systems, supporting policies often lack mechanisms to drive policies into regular practice. ‘On-paper’ norms and regulations are to a great extent upheld by frontline workers who often lack the opportunity to communicate their first-hand experiences to decisionmakers; their role is an often overlooked, yet crucial, aspect of a sustainable global health security landscape. Initiatives and programs developing transdisciplinary professional skills support the increased bidirectional dialogue between these frontline workers and key policy- and decisionmakers which may sustainably narrow the gap between global health security policy design and implementation. Methods The International Federation of Biosafety Associations’ (IFBA) Global Mentorship Program recruits biosafety and biosecurity champions across Africa to provide local peer mentorship to developing professionals in their geographic region. Mentors and mentees complete structured one year program cycles, where they are provided with written overviews of monthly discussion topics, and attend optional virtual interactive activities. Feedback from African participants of the 2019–2020 program cycle was collected using a virtual Exit Survey, where aspects of program impact and structure were assessed. Results Following its initial call for applications, the IFBA Global Mentorship Program received considerable interest from professionals across the African continent, particularly in East and North Africa. The pilot program cycle matched a total of 62 individuals from an array of professional disciplines across several regions, 40 of which were located on the African continent. The resulting mentorship pairs shared knowledge, skills, and experiences towards translating policy objectives to action on the front lines. Mentorship pairs embraced multidisciplinary approaches to harmonize health security strategies across the human and animal health sectors. South-to-South mentorship therefore provided mentees with locally relevant support critical to translation of best technical practices to local capacity and work. Conclusion The IFBA’s South-to-South Global Mentorship Program has demonstrated its ability to form crucial links between frontline biosafety professionals, laboratory workers, and policy- and decision-makers across several implicated sectors. By supporting regionally relevant peer mentorship programs, the gap between health security policy development and implementation may be narrowed.

Feminist Global Health Security

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clare Wenham
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Global Health ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Global Health Security ◽  
Health Security ◽  
Global Health Policy ◽  
Stratified Reproduction ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Disease Focus ◽  
Term Response

Feminist Global Health Security highlights the ways in which women are disadvantaged by global health security policy, through engagement with feminist concepts of visibility; social and stratified reproduction; intersectionality; and structural violence. The book argues that an approach focused on short-term response efforts to health emergencies fails to consider the differential impacts of outbreaks on women. This feminist critique focuses on the policy response to the Zika outbreak, which centred on limiting the spread of the vector through civic participation and asking women to defer pregnancy, actions that are inherently gendered and reveal a distinct lack of consideration of the everyday lives of women. The book argues that because global health security lacks a substantive feminist engagement, policies created to manage an outbreak of disease focus on protecting economies and state security and disproportionately fail to protect women. This state-based structure of global health security provides the fault-line for global health security and women. Women are both differentially infected and affected by epidemics and, the book argues: it was no coincidence that poor, black women living in low quality housing were most affected by the Zika outbreak. More broadly, it poses the question: What would global health policy look like if it were to take gender seriously, and how would this impact global disease control sustainability?

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 165-190
Author(s):  
Clare Wenham
Keyword(s):  
Global Health ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
The State ◽  
Third Wave Feminism ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
Global Level ◽  
Structural Failure ◽  
Global Health Security ◽  
Health Security ◽  
Referent Object

This chapter reconceptualises the findings from Zika to the global level to understand what global heath security can learn from unpacking this health emergency and how global health security policy can be made more gender inclusive. It also readdress the state-centric focus of the global health security narrative, which has systematically excluded women, through repositioning women as the referent object of securitisation. The chapter suggests that women’s needs and lived reality should be taken into consideration and that policy might be developed which makes tangible approaches to counteracting the risks posed to women, rather than focusing on broader systems, economies or societies. Finally, it considers that the book has not done justice to women’s agency within outbreaks, and painting them as victims of a broader structural failure within third wave feminism overlooks the activities that women have undertaken to protect themselves from disease or its effects.

scholarly journals Catching the flu: Syndromic surveillance, algorithmic governmentality and global health security

2016 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen L Roberts ◽  
Stefan Elbe
Keyword(s):  
Global Health ◽  
Syndromic Surveillance ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Emerging Diseases ◽  
Outbreak Detection ◽  
Significant Shift ◽  
Surveillance Systems ◽  
Global Public Health ◽  
Global Health Security ◽  
Health Security

How do algorithms shape the imaginary and practice of security? Does their proliferation point to a shift in the political rationality of security? If so, what is the nature and extent of that shift? This article argues that efforts to strengthen global health security are major drivers in the development and proliferation of new algorithmic security technologies. In response to a seeming epidemic of potentially lethal infectious disease outbreaks – including HIV/AIDS, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), pandemic flu, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), Ebola and Zika – governments and international organizations are now using several next-generation syndromic surveillance systems to rapidly detect new outbreaks globally. This article analyses the origins, design and function of three such internet-based surveillance systems: (1) the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases, (2) the Global Public Health Intelligence Network and (3) HealthMap. The article shows how each newly introduced system became progressively more reliant upon algorithms to mine an ever-growing volume of indirect data sources for the earliest signs of a possible new outbreak – gradually propelling algorithms into the heart of global outbreak detection. That turn to the algorithm marks a significant shift in the underlying problem, nature and role of knowledge in contemporary security policy.

Taiwan’s Participation in the World Organisation for Animal Health (oie): Modalities, Utility, and Challenges

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
Vincent Rollet
Keyword(s):  
Global Health ◽  
Health Management ◽  
Animal Health ◽  
Global Health Security ◽  
International Organisations ◽  
Health Governance ◽  
Health Security ◽  
The World ◽  
Health Related ◽  
World Organisation

Abstract This article explores the utility of membership in international organisations for states with specific status within the international community, focusing on Taiwan’s surprisingly neglected involvement in the World Organisation for Animal Health or oie (Office International des Épizooties). The paper shows that in addition to its contribution to the legitimisation of Taiwan’s identities, such participation has also enabled Taiwan to shape international norms in the field of animal health, increase international cooperation opportunities, strengthen domestic and global health security, and facilitate the trade of animal health-related products. Additionally, it has contributed to the domestic implementation of international animal health norms and helped increase the accountability of Taiwanese authorities in the domain of animal health management. Despite tremendous challenges, Taiwan still has plenty of opportunities to enhance its participation in global health governance through its membership in oie.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Clare Wenham
Keyword(s):  
Global Health ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Global Health Security ◽  
Health Security ◽  
State Security ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Based Medicine ◽  
Term Response

This chapter introduces the book’s proposal that Zika offers a window for analysing broader themes in global health security: those of perpetuating global-local inequalities and silencing of women in securitised policy, governed by Westphalian and domestic politics. It outlines how the global health security narrative promoted a path dependency which reproduced state security-focused policies of masculine evidence based medicine and short-term response efforts and rendered the everyday lives of those (women) most at risk of the disease invisible. The chapter analyses the lack of gender considerations in global health security policy and further justifies the need for a feminist global health security, through highlighting the ways in which women are differentially infected and affected by infectious disease.

scholarly journals Pandemics on the Radar Screen: Health Security, Infectious Disease and the Medicalisation of Insecurity

2011 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 848-866 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Elbe
Keyword(s):  
Global Health ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
International System ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Global Health Security ◽  
Health Security ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Radar Screen ◽  
Contemporary Practice

How is the rise of global health security transforming contemporary practices of security? To date the literature on global health security has sought to trace how the securitisation of global health is affecting the governance of diseases in the international system; yet no-one has analysed – conversely – how the practices of security also begin subtly to change when they become concerned with a growing number of contemporary health issues. This article identifies three such changes. First, health security debates endow our understandings of security and insecurity in contemporary world politics with an important medical dimension. Second, the rise of global health security enables a range of medical and public health experts to play a greater role in the formulation and analysis of contemporary security policy. Finally, health security debates have also encouraged attempts to secure populations through recourse to a growing array of pharmacological interventions and new medical countermeasures. Drawing upon a rich literature in medical sociology, these three transformations in the contemporary practice of security collectively constitute the ‘medicalisation of security’. This novel perspective on the rise of global health security also reveals new limitations inherent in the emerging health–security interface – limitations associated not so much with the processes of ‘securitisation’ already noted in the global health literature, but rather with wider social processes of ‘medicalisation’. Awareness of the additional limitations renders the threat of a future pandemic even more serious than is commonly thought.

scholarly journals Viral Zoonoses of National Importance in Ghana: Advancements and Opportunities for Enhancing Capacities for Early Detection and Response

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Richard D. Suu-Ire ◽  
Evangeline Obodai ◽  
J. H. Kofi Bonney ◽  
Samuel O. Bel-Nono ◽  
William Ampofo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Early Detection ◽  
Global Health ◽  
One Health ◽  
Animal Health ◽  
Zoonotic Disease ◽  
Shared Environment ◽  
Global Health Security ◽  
Health Security ◽  
National Importance ◽  
The One

Zoonotic diseases have devastating impacts on human and animal health, livelihoods, and economies. Addressing the complex web of interrelated factors leading to zoonotic disease emergence and spread requires a transdisciplinary, cross-sectoral approach, One Health. The One Health approach, which considers the linkages between the health of people, animals, and their shared environment, presents opportunities to reduce these impacts through a more holistic coordinated strategy to understanding and mitigating disease risks. Understanding the linkages between animal, human, and environmental health risks and outcomes is critical for developing early detection systems and risk reduction strategies to address known and novel zoonotic disease threats. Nearly 70 countries across the world, including Ghana, have signed on to the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA), which is facilitating multisectoral approaches to strengthen country capacities in the prevention and early detection of and respond to infectious disease threats. Currently, Ghana has not yet formalized a national One Health policy. The lack of a clearly defined multisectoral platform and limited collaboration among key Ghanaian Ministries, Departments, and Agencies has impacted the country’s ability to effectively mitigate and respond to emerging and reemerging zoonoses. Many of these emerging zoonoses are caused by viruses, which, because of their diversity and evolutionary properties, are perceived to pose the greatest threat to global health security. Here, we review viral zoonoses of national importance and priority in Ghana, highlight recent advancements in One Health capacities, and discuss opportunities for implementing One Health approaches to mitigate zoonotic disease threats.

scholarly journals An evaluation of the global health security agenda steering group governance interventions

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
N E DeShore ◽  
J A Johnson ◽  
P Malone ◽  
R Greenhill ◽  
W Wuenstal
Keyword(s):  
Global Health ◽  
Health System ◽  
System Performance ◽  
Health System Performance ◽  
Global Health Security ◽  
Member States ◽  
Health Security ◽  
Governance Indicators ◽  
Positive Effect ◽  
Global Health Security Agenda

Abstract Background Member States lack of compliance with 2005 IHR implementation led to the launched of the Global Health Security Agenda. This research will provide an understanding of how the Global Health Security Agenda Steering Group (GHSA SG) governance interventions impact health system performance and global health security. This will enhance the understanding of a Steering Group's governance interventions in complex Global Health initiatives. Research questions: To what extent have GHSA SG governance interventions contributed towards enabling health system performance of WHO Member States? To what extent have GHSA SG governance interventions contributed towards the implementation of global health security among WHO Member States? Methods Correlational analysis using Spearman's rho examined the relationship between governance, health system performance and global health security variables at one point in time. A convenience non-probability sample consisting of eight WHO Member States was used. SPSS Statistics generated the bivariate correlation analyzes. Results Governance and health system performance analysis indicated a statistically significant strong positive effect size in 11 out of 18 and moderate positive effect size in the remaining seven out of 18 health system performance indicators. Governance and global health security analysis concluded three of the governance indicators had strong and moderate positive coefficients. Global health security variables demonstrated weak effects in the remaining three governance indicators. Conclusions This study presents a case for health systems embedding in global health security. Health system performance is only as effective at protecting populations when countries achieve core capacities of preparedness and response to global health threats. The associations provide stakeholders information about key characteristics of governance that influence health system performance and global health security implementation. Key messages This study provides an argument for the continued support of the GHSA 2024 Framework with implementation of global health security capabilities and meeting 2005 IHR requirements. The GHSA SG governance role remains profoundly important in establishing sustainable efforts internationally towards achieving the objectives of the GHSA in support of the 2005 IHR standards.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document