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US funding to address brain drain in Africa
Washington Post -- The United States will fund training for 140,000 African health care workers in an initiative to "transform and dramatically increase" medical education on the continent, the top U.S. AIDS official announced Tuesday. Ambassador Eric Goosby said the plan will bring partnerships between African and U.S. medical schools by "really fostering and strengthening a collegial network" to empower medical professionals on the continent that shoulders the worst of the world's HIV-AIDS epidemic and its heaviest load of other chronic diseases. He said he hoped it also would help stem, and even reverse, the brain drain of doctors and nurses who receive expensive, subsidized training in Africa, only to be recruited to work overseas amid a worldwide shortage of health professionals...

North and South Sudan make ‘significant’ progress on steps for separation
UN News -- North and South Sudan have made “significant” progress on a wide range of follow-up arrangements between the two States following the southern region’s vote for independence, the top United Nations envoy in the country said today. “Much of the ground work has already been completed. Both parties are engaging seriously and making progress,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Special Representative Haile Menkerios told the Security Council, citing agreement in principle on open borders, good neighbourly relations, non-interference in each other’s affairs, a framework for non-aggression and military cooperation, citizenship, residency and property ownership. The two sides are also working towards mutually beneficial arrangements on oil revenue sharing and other economic matters, he said...

Don't copy Ghana's health insurance
Oxfam -- A major health insurance program in Ghana that the World Bank is pushing as a success model for other developing countries is severely flawed and not working for most Ghanaians, according to a new report by international agency Oxfam and Ghanaian NGOs. Rather than two-thirds of the population being covered by the program, as the Ghanaian National Health Insurance Authority and World Bank have claimed, in reality fewer than one in five Ghanaians could be benefiting. The report 'Achieving a Shared Goal: Free universal health care in Ghana’, launched today in Accra, says instead that most people are having to continue to pay out-of-pocket for their health care in a parallel "cash-and-carry" system. Or else they turn to unqualified drug peddlers or even give birth at home without any qualified care at all...

Why foreign aid matters to women
Huffington Post -- Each year on International Women's Day, I take time to reflect on the many inspiring and courageous women I've had the privilege to meet in my travels as president of American Jewish World Service (AJWS), an international development and human rights organization that supports grassroots projects in 36 countries in the Global South. The communities I visit are often ravaged by hunger, violence and disease, all of which are byproducts of gut-wrenching poverty. And, from community to community, it always seems that the common thread I see is the marginalization of women, who are oftentimes barred from working or exploited by employers, forced to marry before reaching adulthood and have little if any access to education or information about reproductive health. Because of the latter, the global HIV/AIDS pandemic continues to hit women in poor communities especially hard...