Population and Health in Developing Countries: Volume 1. Poulation, health, and survival at INDEPTH sites

As the United States and the rest of the world face the unprecedented challenge of aging populations, this volume draws together for the first time state-of-the-art work from the emerging field of the demography of aging. The nine chapters, written by experts from a variety of disciplines, highlight data sources and research approaches, results, and proposed strategies on a topic with major policy implications for labor forces, economic well-being, health care, and the need for social and family supports.

Current data and trends in morbidity and mortality for the sub-Saharan Region as presented in this new edition reflect the heavy toll that HIV/AIDS has had on health indicators, leading to either a stalling or reversal of the gains made, not just for communicable disorders, but for cancers, as well as mental and neurological disorders.

Over the past decade, several initiatives have been launched to address the major health problems affecting the world's poorest countries, including global efforts to combat HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria. More recently, a millennial challenge has been laid down to root out and confront the links between poverty and health. Using demographic surveillance systems, the INDEPTH researchers aim to contribute both to the empirical knowledge about health equity in developing countries and to report on the application of and innovation in tools and methods. Illustrated with case studies from Africa and Asia, this book puts forward a comprehensive view of the INDEPTH methodologies and findings. It develops and measures concepts and constructs of 'poverty' and 'equity' and relates these to health status. While tools and concepts for measuring health status are more developed, this volume contributes by grappling with new concepts and tools to measure changes in deprivation and disadvantage, adding to this intense theoretical and methodological debate.

"We have a real opportunity now to make progress that will mean longer healthier lives for millions of people.

The process of health care reforms must be based on demographic, epidemiological and economic evidence if it is to achieve the fundamental target of affordable, sustainable and efficient health care services for the entire population. Consequently, costing of health care services has become a frequently used element of health care reforms. This book presents the essentials of costing in a health economic framework and gives examples from successful costing studies done by the author in Tanzania, Vietnam and Burkina Faso. Based on these examples it demonstrates the importance of costing information for the planning and decision-making process in the field of budgeting, resource allocation, setting an insurance premium and strategic planning. The main message of this book is that costing of health care services is a valuable instrument in the fight for better 'health for all'.

In sub-Saharan Africa, older people make up a relatively small fraction of the total population and are supported primarily by family and other kinship networks. They have traditionally been viewed as repositories of information and wisdom, and are critical pillars of the community but as the HIV/AIDS pandemic destroys family systems, the elderly increasingly have to deal with the loss of their own support while absorbing the additional responsibilities of caring for their orphaned grandchildren. Aging in Sub-Saharan Africa explores ways to promote U.S. research interests and to augment the sub-Saharan governments' capacity to address the many challenges posed by population aging. Five major themes are explored in the book such as the need for a basic definition of "older person," the need for national governments to invest more in basic research and the coordination of data collection across countries, and the need for improved dialogue between local researchers and policy makers. This book makes three major recommendations: 1) the development of a research agenda 2) enhancing research opportunity and implementation and 3) the translation of research findings.

The global burden of disease: 2004 update is a comprehensive assessment of the health of the world's population. It provides detailed global and regional estimates of premature mortality, disability and loss of health for 135 causes by age and sex, drawing on extensive WHO databases and on information provided by Member States.--Publisher description.

Forty years ago, the age-old battle against infectious diseases as a major threat to human health was believed close to being won. However, by the late twentieth century, the increase of emerging and reemerging infectious diseases was evident in both low and high income countries. About 30 new infectious diseases have been identified in the last 20 years. Among the "new" diseases, and most importantly, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) epidemic, with 40 million persons infected and 25 million deaths since its first description, presents one of the most significant health, societal and security challenges facing the global community. The interaction of HIV/AIDS with tuberculosis, malaria and bacterial infections have increased HIV-related morbidity and mortality, and in turn, the HIV pandemic has brought about devastating increases in tuberculosis. Understanding the population impact and the dynamics of infection diseases in the most affected region is critical to efforts to reduce the morbidity and mortality of such infections, and for decisions on where to use limited resources in the fight against infections. This book aims to contribute to these efforts by offering a demographic and epidemiological perspective on emerging and reemerging infections in sub-Saharan Africa.

Using INDEPTH's multi-site network to provide new demographic insights into population variables, this book provides a new perspective on migration, health and livelihood's interaction over time. The book starts with providing a conceptual and methodological framework to inform the epidemiological studies that are clustered into two themes, showing the dynamics of migration with either household livelihoods or individual health outcomes. The findings demonstrate the important cross-national regularities in human migration. The contributed chapters also exemplify the fact that the impacts of migration can be either positive or negative for sending and/or receiving communities, depending on the issues at hand and the type of migration under consideration.