The dangers of disease specific programmes for developing countries

Exceptional Suffering? Enumeration and Vernacular Accounting in the HIV-Positive Experience

“…As Peter Piot, the former head of UNAIDS, argued: ''This pandemic is exceptional because there is no plateau in sight, exceptional because of the severity and longevity of its impact, and exceptional because of the special challenges it poses to effective public action'' (2005:2). The exceptional status accorded to HIV, along with the large amount of funding for HIV-specific projects, has produced the largest vertical program in history with its own staff, systems, and structure (England 2007b(England , 2008aPisani 2008). Health economists and health systems experts openly question such programs, often relying on numerical incongruence to state their case and downplaying vernacular accounts that privilege HIV's uniqueness.…”

International health policy and stagnating maternal mortality: is there a causal link?

“…61 • The administration of scores of disease-specific programmes opened up avenues for the practice of "vote-catching" and nepotism. [62][63][64] • The centralisation of aid structures does not permit morbidity-specific epidemiological problems (e.g. the high incidence of eclampsia in Mauritania and other West African countries) to receive funds that match the extent of the problem.…”

Modeling the Impact of Integrating HIV and Outpatient Health Services on Patient Waiting Times in an Urban Health Clinic in Zambia

“…This vertical approach to scaling up HIV services has facilitated quick establishment and quality-assured implementation of a complicated medical service in high prevalence settings with typically weak service delivery systems [7]. Nonetheless, concerns have been raised regarding the long-term feasibility and sustainability of these separate services [8,9,10], whose rapid growth has strained coverage and quality of existing primary health care services [7,11].…”