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Is robbing Peter to pay Paul worth worrying about?

Submitted by Amy Taye

Few health systems topics received more attention at the IAC than the question of whether we should blame the advent of the AIDS virus as the cause of funding and resources being channeled away from the general health system (into vertical programs) or applaud the arrival of AIDS as the catalyst for the activism needed to identify the inadequacies of health care systems. Of course, as you would expect from persons attending an AIDS conference, just about everyone agreed that AIDS advocacy and funding efforts were strengthening health systems in general.

I tend to agree with those who were not concerned about how we arrived here, or the merits of one catalyst for change over another, but who were anxious to move forward. Various health systems and funding systems exist. There will always be vertical and horizontal funding streams. There will always be competing priorities. We should stop wasting time and resources discussing which one works better or which priority is more important. We need to move forward the best we can. As Sigrun Mogedal, Ambassador for AIDS and Global Health Initiatives Norway and Chair of GHWA said: We are in the midst of competing priorities and voices… We have to work across all sectors… We cannot wait until all these things are fixed. We have to live with the complexity and be involved under several streams of activity at the same time.

Health systems versus AIDS programs: A new discussion on a familiar topic

Submitted by Luis Morales

Thirty years ago a similar discussion happened in relation to Family Planning programs. At that time there was an important concern about the apparently opposite approaches to the so called “vertical health programs” versus “comprehensive health programs,” the latter related today to the modern expression “health systems.” Probably everybody remembers the end of this story: vertical programs were a good idea in the short term but in the long term they necessarily had to be integrated into the national health systems for many reasons. Probably the most important reason was to guarantee they were sustainable. The other lesson learned was that vertical and comprehensive health programs were not really opposite approaches. The programs were inseparable parts of the system.

What’s love got to do with it

Submitted by Catherine Connor

A study of 700 sero-positive adolescents in Uganda revealed them to be an ignored yet high risk group. As they entered adulthood, both young women and men expressed the desire to have a loving relationship and raise a family.

Photos from the IAC

Submitted by Doug Kerr

At the 2008 IAC:

Tags: photos

Welcome!

Submitted by Barbara Seligman

Welcome to the "The Systems View on HIV/AIDS: A Health Systems 20/20 Blog". This forum was launched on the occasion of the XVIIth International AIDS Conference to stimulate discussion and debate on how best to bring a health systems approach to the HIV/AIDS topic area; going beyond what Ambassador Dybul has called the "sterile" debate of vertical vs. horizontal programming to take in a view of the entire health system. With such a view, it is possible that we will conduct planning and implementation such that the global HIV/AIDS effort strengthens the systems for quality interventions in prevention, care, and treatment - not just for HIV/AIDS, but for all the diseases and conditions that cause morbidity and mortality in the developing world.

Tags: welcome