background: primary health care is the major infrastructure of health care systems. it is clear that making and improving primary health care information systems would not be possible without awareness of their condition. therefore, this comparative study was conducted in order to determine the situation of primary health care information systems in health centers of tehran, iran. methods: this...

BACKGROUND The World Health Organisation’s (WHO) sixty-fourth World Health Assembly in May 2011 adopted a resolution on ‘strengthening national health emergency and disaster management capacities and resilience of health systems’. Disaster management is a topical issue globally and countries are being encouraged to improve their disaster preparedness, along with growing international commitment...

The Global Malaria Action Plan places scaled-up effective malaria control as a necessary prerequisite for malaria elimination. Effective and sustained malaria control depends on vastly strengthened health systems in malaria endemic countries. However definitions of health system strengthening, and the means to achieve it are still lacking. Emerging approaches of system-wide thinking that applie...

The purpose of this study was to describe the state of rehabilitation health information systems (HIS) in different settings, and identify key processes and actions which contribute to the development of HIS which can effectively support low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) allocate resources to health-related rehabilitation to people with disabilities. Nine case studies were conducted acro...

BACKGROUND The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has focused its attention on appraising health development assistance projects and redirecting efforts towards health system strengthening. This study aimed to describe the type of project and targets of interest, and assess the contribution of JICA health-related projects to strengthening health systems worldwide. METHODS We collec...

The North-South Institute (NSI) is working on an innovative project designed to bring a special resource into the picture: health professionals who have emigrated from Africa. Through a project called “The Diaspora Giving Back: Strengthening Health Care Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa”, these professionals will have the opportunity to share their expertise, experience and commitment where it’s ne...

A key dilemma in global health is how to allocate funds between disease-specific "vertical projects" on the one hand and "horizontal programmes" which aim to strengthen the entire health system on the other. While economic evaluation provides a way of approaching the prioritisation of vertical projects, it provides less guidance on how to prioritise between horizontal and vertical spending. We ...

The quest for robust, aff ordable, consistent methods for fi lling global health information gaps is familiar. But frequently the focus is on how the international community can extract population-based data, rather than how countries and communities can use robust methods to understand and act on their own health and disease burdens. This week, researchers are convening in Vancouver, Canada, f...

Growing international concern about the need for improved health systems in Africa has catalyzed an expansion of the health systems literature. This review applies a bibliometric procedure to analyze the acceleration of scientific writing on this theme. We focus on research published during the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) era between 1990 and 2014, reporting findings from a systematic rev...

There is increasing international recognition of the need to build capacity to strengthen mental health systems. This is a fundamental goal of the 'Emerging mental health systems in low- and middle-income countries' (Emerald) programme, which is being implemented in six low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) (Ethiopia, India, Nepal, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda). This paper discusses Emerald...