Governance and health in the Arab world.

Since late 2010, the Arab world has entered a tumultuous period of change, with populations demanding more inclusive and accountable government. The region is characterised by weak political institutions, which exclude large proportions of their populations from political representation and government services. Building on work in political science and economics, we assess the extent to which the quality of governance, or the extent of electoral democracy, relates to adult, infant, and maternal mortality, and to the perceived accessibility and improvement of health services.

Considerations in assessing the evidence and implications of aid displacement from the health sector.

Eran Bendavid and Rajaie Batniji provide a perspective on the ongoing debates about aid displacement - whether giving development aid to governments leads to reductions in their own domestic health financing.

Does development assistance for health really displace government health spending? Reassessing the evidence.

Rajaie Batniji and Eran Bendavid dispute recent suggestions that health aid to developing countries leads to a displacement of government spending and instead argue that current evidence about aid displacement cannot be used to guide policy.

Mental health, social distress and political oppression: the case of the occupied Palestinian territory.

This paper presents a brief history of Palestinian mental health care, a discussion of the current status of mental health and health services in the occupied Palestinian territory, and a critique of the biomedical Western-led discourse as it relates to the mental health needs of Palestinians. Medicalising distress and providing psychological therapies for Palestinians offer little in the way of alleviating the underlying causes of ongoing collective trauma. This paper emphasises the importance of separating clinical responses to mental illness from the public health response to mass political violation and distress.

An evaluation of the International Monetary Fund's claims about public health.

The International Monetary Fund's recent claims concerning its impact on public health are evaluated against available data. First, the IMF claims that health spending either does not change or increases with IMF-supported programs, but there is substantial evidence to the contrary. Second, the IMF claims to have relaxed strict spending requirements in response to the 2008-9 financial crisis, but there is no evidence supporting this claim, and some limited evidence from the Center for Economic Policy Research contradicting it.

Reviving the International Monetary Fund: concerns for the health of the poor.

Despite optimism about the potential for a "new economic order," the outcomes of the G20 summit of April 2009 do not deviate from the neoliberal path. The main outcome, the G20's commitment to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), does not change the lending practices and core economic assumptions of the IMF. Further, this new funding commitment will do little to help the poorest countries, as it is not available to them and comes with high interest.

Health as human security in the occupied Palestinian territory.

We describe the threats to survival, development, and wellbeing in the occupied Palestinian territory using human security as a framework. Palestinian security has deteriorated rapidly since 2000. More than 6000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military, with more than 1300 killed in the Gaza Strip during 22 days of aerial and ground attacks ending in January, 2009.

Misfinancing global health: a case for transparency in disbursements and decision making.

To address the gap between health investments and financial flows worldwide, we identified the patterns in allocation of funds by the four largest donors--ie, the World Bank, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), the US Government, and the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria--in 2005. We created a disbursement database with information gathered from the annual reports and budgets. Funding per death varied widely according to type of disease--eg, US$1029.

Barriers to improvement of mental health services in low-income and middle-income countries.

Despite the publication of high-profile reports and promising activities in several countries, progress in mental health service development has been slow in most low-income and middle-income countries. We reviewed barriers to mental health service development through a qualitative survey of international mental health experts and leaders. Barriers include the prevailing public-health priority agenda and its effect on funding; the complexity of and resistance to decentralisation of mental health services; challenges to implementation of mental health care in primary-care settings; the low numbers and few types of workers who are trained and supervised in mental health care; and the frequent scarcity of public-health perspectives in mental health leadership.

Mental and social health in disasters: relating qualitative social science research and the Sphere standard.

Increasingly, social scientists interested in mental and social health conduct qualitative research to chronicle the experiences of and humanitarian responses to disaster We reviewed the qualitative social science research literature in relation to a significant policy document, the Sphere Handbook, which includes a minimum standard in disaster response addressing "mental and social aspects of health", involving 12 interventions indicators. The reviewed literature in general supports the relevance of the Sphere social health intervention indicators. However, social scientists' chronicles of the diversity and complexity of communities and responses to disaster illustrate that these social interventions cannot be assumed helpful in all settings and times.