Improving Health Care in Low And Middle Income Countries

This book examines experiences in resource-limited settings, including Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) and covers a mix of strategies to reduce hospital mortality in these settings. These include population-level and clinical interventions such as health literacy; clinical management guidelines around nutrition; guidelines and protocols for a multi-disciplinary team approach for surgical care; and improving hospital outcomes for elderly patients.

This book is about access to mental health care in South Asia. South Asia consists of eight countries with low and middle-income backgrounds. The region contains a combined population of about 2 billion, making up about a quarter of the global population. The people of this region share common cultures, beliefs, and behavioral patterns regarding physical and mental health. Among them, about 15% (about 300 million) have been suffering from common mental disorders. However, there is a persisting high treatment gap for mental illness in the region. Hence, despite having a mental illness, only a small percentage of the population is able to have access to essential mental healthcare. Though governments are trying to bridge the gap by improving mental health policies and programs, it is still a major challenge delivering mental healthcare to all people in need.

Build skills to improve health & save lives. Learn foundational building blocks of humanitarian program planning, implementation, and evaluation.

The lives of women around the world have improved dramatically, at a pace and scope diffi cult to imagine even 25 years ago. Women have made unprecedented gains in rights, education, health, and access to jobs and livelihoods. More countries than ever guarantee equal rights in property, marriage, and other domains. Gendergaps in primary schooling have closed in many countries, while in a third of all countries girls now outnumber boys in secondary school. And more young women than men attend universities in 60 countries. Women are using their education to participate more in the labor force: they now make up for 40 percent of the global labor force and 43 percent of its farmers. Moreover, women now live longer than men in every region of the world.

by Madelon L. Finkel PhD (Editor)

Current global health priorities, such as the targets of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), are ambitious. Setting an agenda for the next 15 years, targets have been established to drastically reduce maternal mortality and premature mortality from noncommunicable diseases; end the epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and neglected tropical diseases; achieve universal health coverage; and ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health care services, among others.