Category: World health

Collaborating globally for better healthcare


Healthcare is for all.

Here at the Institute of Global Health Innovation, we know there’s no better way to make progress towards this than working together.

Global collaboration allows us to learn from each other’s experiences and successes and can result in unique solutions which carefully consider cultural and systemic differences.

To mark World Health Day, we’re shining a light on five IGHI projects, where working with international partners has brought tremendous benefits when creating innovative responses to healthcare challenges.

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COVID-19 reveals the injustices that underlie health inequities: what are the implications?

Person receiving vaccine

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the social injustices that are holding back equity in health and care.

People living in poverty and deprivation are some of the hardest to reach and easiest to leave behind.

This means poor people are absorbing much of the brunt of the pandemic’s impacts, faced with challenges that leave them among the worst affected by the virus and exacerbating the struggles they already carry. (more…)

Tackling the global burden of road traffic injuries

Traffic jam

According to the Department for Transport, between June 2017-18, 1,770 people lost their lives due to a road traffic collision in Great Britain.

But this isn’t an issue that only affects developed countries. It’s a global problem with many low-and-middle-income countries having even higher numbers of victims. Road traffic incidents can result in the loss of loved ones for families and friends, and for those who do survive, they can mean sustaining life-changing injuries and trauma. These impacts stretch beyond the individual, affecting economies and put pressure on health systems.

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How nurses and midwives are essential to achieving universal health coverage

Two female nurses laughing and smiling.

By Nicolette Davies, IGHI’s Head of Operations

Universal Health Coverage (UHC) is a basic human right. The WHO’s Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom, continues to highlight the importance of UHC by focusing its World Health Day on this topic. Dr Tedros’ top priority is equity for health for all, but how will we achieve the World Health Assembly’s ambitious target of 1 billion more people benefiting from UHC within five years? (more…)

Where are the ‘Toyotas of healthcare’ we need for universal health coverage?

A globe surrounded by a stethoscope.

By Jonty Roland, IGHI Honorary Research Fellow and Independent Health Systems Consultant.

By dedicating this World Health Day to universal health coverage (UHC), the WHO is continuing to relentlessly bang the drum for ‘health for all’ under its charismatic Director-General. This is a beat that more and more countries are now marching to, with dozens of governments having announced UHC-inspired reforms since Dr Tedros took office two years ago. (more…)

International Migrants Day: A time to reflect on health, human rights and mobility

migration queue
“International Migrants Day, offers a rallying point for everyone across the world who is concerned with the protection of migrants”

By Professor Stephen A. Matlin, Visiting Professor, Institute of Global Health Innovation, Imperial College London

The 2001 UN General Assembly Resolution proclaiming 18 December each year as International Migrants Day recalls the obligation to respect the rights of all individuals as set out in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It invites Member States and intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations to observe the day by providing information on the human rights and fundamental freedoms of migrants, sharing experiences and designing actions to ensure their protection, among a myriad of other activities.

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Improving blood transfusion systems using an evidence-based approach

By Chris Bird, MSc Health Policy student at Imperial College and Project Manager in the System Engagement Programme at NICE

Today mark’s World Blood Donor Day – an event to celebrate and thank volunteers the world over, who generously donate blood to support life-saving care and to raise awareness of the continued need for donations of blood and blood products to support high quality safe care for patients who need it most.

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Taking part in the UHC conversation

By Dr Ryan Li, Adviser, Imperial College London, Global Health and Development Group

Universal health coverage is about ensuring all people can get quality health services, where and when they need them, without suffering financial hardship. No one should have to choose between good health and other life necessities.

As part of World Health Day, Dr Ryan Li from the Global Health & Development Group who is an advisor for the International Decision Support Initiative (iDSI), which supports countries to get the best value for money from health spending, reflects on a visit to Vietnam and the principles for developing clinical quality standards in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs):

I remember very vividly two of the hospitals I visited in Vietnam, during my first field trip as a global health advisor for iDSI. In a central hospital in Hanoi, I saw an acute stroke centre that was spotlessly clean and gleaming with the latest equipment, with specialised stroke clinicians offering a range evidence-based treatments matching Western standards. In contrast, in a district hospital a mere two hours away from the capital city, I saw an elderly woman with suspected stroke who had been hospitalised for two weeks, seemingly not getting any better and not receiving any meaningful treatment (and there was no way to confirm the diagnosis as no brain imaging could be done). There was no question as to which hospital I would choose, if I could, if a relative or I were unfortunate to have a stroke.

The reality is that for most people, there is no choice – those who have the means to access the better hospitals, perhaps simply because they live closer to the city, likely get better treatment. This is unfair. Universal health coverage (UHC) is only truly universal if everyone has fair access to good quality health services, irrespective of where they live, what facilities they have access to, their education, income, religion or ethnic background.

Variation in quality is not a phenomenon unique to Vietnam, but is a reality in health systems across the world – even in relatively well-resourced and well-performing UHC systems such as the UK National Health Service. Some variation in quality may be acceptable, but one reason why unacceptable variation occurs is that there is a lack of clarity across the system about what is best practice.

Quality standards

In a bid to address this variation, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in the UK introduced Quality Standards (QS): concise sets of statements that describe what is best practice in a given disease area (drawn from existing evidence based guidelines). For instance, what kinds of and how many antenatal checks a pregnant woman should ideally receive; sets out the practical steps required to achieve improvement; and most importantly quantifies the improvement. In essence, QS brings everyone together to identify the top five or 10 things that need improving nationally; and focus efforts towards raising standards in those areas.

Since 2012, iDSI has been working with India, China, Vietnam and Thailand to develop and implement QS as ways of tackling inequalities in healthcare quality; and to raise overall standards in key areas such as antenatal and maternal health, non-communicable diseases (stroke, hypertension, and diabetes) and antimicrobial resistance. We have drawn on our UK and international experience to create a guide to QS, which is now available in the resources section of the iDSI website and on our iDSI Knowledge Gateway.

Thailand, long seen as a success story of UHC, also recognises unacceptable variation in quality among public healthcare providers. In particular, there is now a push to raise and standardise quality in health promotion and disease prevention, beginning with QS in antenatal care. I was privileged to be invited as an international expert to observe and advise on this process. The discussions I heard among policymakers, clinicians and grassroots health volunteers were so rich that I can already anticipate insights and lessons that will go into the next version of the QS guide.

The enthusiasm and expertise of the stroke clinicians I met in the central hospital in Vietnam was unquestionable; the challenge is to sustain those excellent standards of practice and to ensure that all healthcare services across a country can reach those standards. iDSI’s vision is that everyone has fair access to quality healthcare, and we hope that our efforts in introducing and localising the QS model is a small step in the right direction.

Ideabatic – where we are now…

By Kitty Liao and Abellona U of IdeabaticIGHI’s 2017 Student Challenges Competition winners

Kitty in the community where a vaccine campaign was being carried out

So much has happened since we won the Student Challenges Competition last year. The prize from the competition has been very helpful for us to secure our UK patent. Following that, we have recently submitted our global patent.

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