Focused on international development, global health and health policy, Doctors with Africa CUAMM’s magazine Health and Development is published in Italian and English. It views health as critical to sustainable development, and features articles on our work in the field and good practices learned as well as commentary by international experts.
An online edition of the magazine is also available. It includes further pieces on these topics in addition to the articles offered in the print edition.
Wars, economic and political crises, and instability have put the right to health to a severe test, with repercussions on individuals and communities. This is why CUAMM continues to focus on the most vulnerable people so that, in these turbulent times, they may also have that state of physical, mental, and social well-being that we call health.
While Italy and the rest of Europe are aging and seem to be losing the future orientation of their history in the 20th century, Africa is alive with energy and resources that will define future global scenarios. Despite its many problems, Africa is now a key player with which to forge new relationships.
This global phenomenon undermines the physical and mental health of those subjected to it wherever it occurs. In some low-resource countries, many in Africa, already afflicted by humanitarian emergencies and conflicts, gender-based violence takes on even more critical levels, aggravated by surrounding socio-cultural, behavioral, and environmental factors.
Thoughts on a tendency to a certain fanaticism of ideas – creeping but no less damaging – in some of our “Western world.” This is an invitation, especially for doctors, to not lose sight of the moral necessity that people are always more important than absolute ideas and health is a right for everyone, without exception.
The situation for civilians in Gaza is worsening by the day. The level of conflict with Israel is rising, and international institutions seem unable to act decisively to bring a resolution to the conflict.
How can research in the field be best integrated with health planning in developing countries? How can we bring the different actors in this area into dialogue? CUAMM talked about these questions with its international partners at an event on the occasion of CPHIA 2023, the International Conference on Public Health in Africa.
The spread of non-communicable diseases in sub-Saharan Africa has reached levels similar to those in higher-income countries. However, the amount of resources allocated to health in these two different worlds – the poor and rich – are still vastly unequal, which has major health, socio-economic, and political consequences.
The WHO defines health as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being. Gender-based violence deeply damages all of these aspects. Gender-based violence is a widespread phenomenon whose levels are still dire, especially in low-resource countries where they often intertwine with conflicts and social situations that aggravate its severity and spread.
The rise of NCDs (Non-Communicable Diseases) is a new phenomenon with a growing impact in Africa, as well as the number of patients and premature deaths. In Tanzania, CUAMM manages health centers that treat patients with chronic diseases, acting both on clinical and structural aspects and improving the population's awareness of NCDs.
In the province of Cabo Delgado in Mozambique, which is beset by conflict and persistent humanitarian and structural crises, a CUAMM experience combines operational research and field actions to provide psychological support (MHPSS) and integrated clinical and legal assistance to victims of gender-based violence (GBV).