Document(s) 9 of 10

AFI: Acute febrile illness

Alma-Ata Conference: Alma-Ata International Conference on Primary Health Care, held 6­12 September 1978, in Alma-Ata, USSR. The first such international conference, it was sponsored by the World Health Organization and UNICEF and attended by delegates from 134 countries. It presented the manifesto to attain global health for the 21st century by providing basic health care aimed at the urban and rural poor of the developing world.

AMMP: Adult Morbidity and Mortality Project. A joint project of the Tanzania Ministry of Health and the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, funded by the Department for International Development, United Kingdom.

BCG: Bacillus of Calmette-Guérin vaccine, administered by injection to protect against tuberculosis.

Burden of Disease Profile: An annual document used in planning and priority setting that graphically presents population health information from a sentinel Demographic Surveillance System in easily understood computer-generated charts and tables. It presents results not in terms of individual diseases,
but in terms of aggregated intervention-addressable shares of the burden of disease.

Child survival revolution: An initiative launched by James Grant, Executive Director of UNICEF, in its December 1982 State of the World's Children report. The initiative later included child development. Through this initiative, UNICEF proposed to vanquish common infections of early childhood using simple, low-cost technologies: growth monitoring, oral rehydration therapy for diarrhoea, breastfeeding, and immunization against the 6 vaccine-preventable childhood killers: tuberculosis, diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, polio, and measles.

CIDA: Canadian International Development Agency

Community voice tool: An approach known as participatory action research that can assist in bringing the demands of the community into the district planning process.

Cost-effectiveness: The cost to avert the loss of a Disability Adjusted Life Year.

DALY: Disability Adjusted Life Years. The DALY extends the concept of potential years of life lost due to premature death to include years of "healthy" life lost by virtue of being in states of ill-health. DALYs for a disease or risk factor are calculated as the annual sum of the years of life lost due to premature mortality in the population and the "years lived with disability" for incident cases of the health condition.

DANIDA: Danish International Development Agency

Declaration of Alma-Ata: A manifesto issued at the close of the September 1978 Alma-Ata Conference on Primary Health Care, which stated that "This conference strongly reaffirms that health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity ... A major social target of governments, international organizations and the whole world community in the coming decades should be the attainment by all people of the world by the year 2000 of a level of health that will permit them to lead socially and economically productive lives."

DHMT: District Health Management Team. A key component
of Tanzania's health sector reforms was the establishment of DHMTs in each of the country's 123 districts. Comprised of members with complementary skills and multiple areas of expertise, DMHTs are responsible for health planning, managing, and monitoring. (Now called Council Health Management Teams in Tanzania.)

District Cost Information System: A custom database managed at the district level and used to store information from the Health Management Information System (HMIS), including the sex, age group, in/out patient status, repeat patient status, and diagnosis, as well as the drugs, surgical procedures, and laboratory tests prescribed. Its primary purpose is to identify technical efficiency in the delivery of essential clinical and public health interventions.

District Health Accounts Tool, also known as the District Health Expenditures Mapping Tool: A customized Microsoft Excel application designed to help CHMTs analyze their budgets and expenditures by providing a one-page analytical summary and several graphical "pictures" of key aspects of their annual plan.

District Health Service Mapping Tool: A simplified "point and click" geographic information (GIS) software application designed by WHO. Called HealthMapper, it is used to facilitate entry of HMIS data into a district level database and its graphical display on local maps of the district.

DOTS: Directly Observed Treatment -- Short Course.

DSS: Demographic Surveillance System. A method of continuously monitoring a geographically defined population to provide timely data on all births, deaths, causes of deaths, and migrations.

EDP: Essential Drugs Program

EHIP: Essential Health Interventions Project, precursor of TEHIP.

EPI: Expanded Program on Immunization

Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria: A fund established in January 2002 to dramatically increase resources to fight three of the world's most devastating diseases, and to direct those resources to areas of greatest need. An outgrowth of work undertaken by the G-8 group of countries, leaders of African states, and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, it is a partnership between governments, civil society, the private sector, and affected communities.

G-8: Group of 8. An informal group of 8 countries -- Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Each year, G-8 leaders and representatives from the European Union meet to discuss broad economic and foreign policies.

HealthMapper: See District Health Service Mapping Tool.

HMIS: Health Management Information System. A system to collect routine data from hospitals and community health facilities.

HIV/AIDS: Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome

IDRC: International Development Research Centre, Canada

IEC: Information, education, and communication

IMAI: Integrated Management of Adolescent and Adult Illness. A health care strategy that focuses on the main clinical conditions that account for most adolescent and adult deaths and disability across the world, and integrates the prevention of illness and care of the adolescent and adult in a single health care package. This includes pneumonia, malaria, sexually transmitted infections, key women's health issues, mental health disorders, and the detection and care of priority chronic conditions that can be prevented or treated with cost-effective measures, such as epilepsy, tuberculosis, and HIV.

IMC: Integrated Management Cascade. A hierarchical communications and supervisory structure that allows delegation of responsibilities from the DHMT level down to the lower levels of the district health system.

IMCI: Integrated Management of Childhood Illnesses: A health strategy developed by WHO and UNICEF that targets children under 5 and addresses 5 leading causes of death -- malaria, pneumonia, diarrhoea, measles, and malnutrition.

INDEPTH Network: An international network of field sites with continuous demographic evaluation of populations and their health. This umbrella organization embraces 40 field sites in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Oceania. Their focus includes data analysis and capacity strengthening, technical support to field sites, comparative assessments of mortality, and equity with and emphasis on applications to policy and practice.

Intervention-addressable shares of burden of disease: A method of expressing burden of disease data in terms of the aggregated percentage of disease burden addressed by available, cost-effective interventions (for example, IMCI would address the combined burden of disease in children under 5 years of age caused by malaria, pneumonia, diarrhoea, malnutrition, and measles).

ITNs: Insecticide-treated mosquito netting.

MDGs: United Nations Millennium Development Goals. A set
of 8 goals adopted in September 2000 that bind countries to do more and join forces in the fight against poverty, illiteracy, hunger, lack of education, gender inequality, child and maternal mortality, disease, and environmental degradation. The goals set targets to be achieved by 2015.

MoH: Ministry of Health

NGO: Nongovernmental organization

PAR: Participatory action research

Plausibility design: A rigorous method of summative evaluation of health interventions or programs, as delivered in real-life health systems, that assesses the program's utilization, coverage, or impact. The objective is to provide plausible inferences to decision-makers and policymakers. The approach may use historical, internal or external control groups and places a heavy emphasis on contextual factors. It answers the question: did the program have an effect above and beyond what may have been caused by other external factors?

Population health: The health, well-being, and functioning of a clearly defined population. "The health outcomes of a group of individuals, including the distribution of such outcomes within the groups" (Kindig and Stoddart 2003).

Roll Back Malaria Partnership: A global initiative -- made up of more than 90 partners -- whose goal is to halve the burden of malaria by 2010. The partnership was launched in 1998 by the World Health Organization, UNICEF, UNDP, and the World Bank to provide a coordinated international approach to fighting malaria.

SAPs: Structural adjustment programs. Created in the late 1970s, SAPs are aimed at changing the structure of a developing country's economy to correct underlying problems that lead to economic declines. Initiated by the World Bank, structural adjustment programs aim to increase developing countries' ability to service their international debt and have generally increased privatization of government functions and increased support for export production of agriculture commodities.

SMI: Safe Motherhood Initiative

STD: Sexually transmitted disease

SWAp: Sector-wide approach. A SWAp is a process in which funding for the sector -- from both government and donor partner -- is conducted in partnership as a means to increase donor-government collaboration, consolidate local management of resources, and undertake the policy and systems reform necessary to achieve a greater impact on health issues.

TEHIP: Tanzania Essential Health Interventions Project

TZS: Tanzanian shilling (in 2004, 1 USD = 1 094 TZS )

UNAIDS: Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS

UNESCO: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

UNICEF: United Nations Children's Fund

Verbal autopsy: A method of assigning the cause of death based on an interview with next of kin or other caregivers.

Village health account: An account established by villages to fund health-related activities and to which villagers contribute through local taxes on their products.

WDR93: World Development Report 1993: Investing in Health, published by the World Bank.

WHO: World Health Organization

YLLs: Years of life lost. A measure of time lost due to premature death.

ZTC: Zonal Training Centre (also known as Zonal Continuing Education Centre) A number of institutions set up and run by the Ministry of Health distributed across the country, to provide continuing health education to the various levels of health managers and health personnel.

Document(s) 9 of 10