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The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused huge losses and massive damage to socio-economic development around the globe, which might even potentially evolve into a humanitarian crisis as it continues to spread. In response to the further resulting public threats, collaborative research, rapid production, and efficient and just distribution of vaccines have been given a top priority. However, there exists a serious inefficiency and injustice in the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines among different countries, regions, and social classes currently. Richer countries and regions have acquired far more vaccines than needed, further exacerbating the severity of the epidemic in underdeveloped and marginalized countries and regions. From a perspective of critical global justice, we explore the causes of the inefficient and unjust global distribution of vaccines and comprehensively examine the shortcomings of the current distribution frameworks, such as COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility (COVAX). Then, under the framework of critical global justice, we propose a multi-phase fair priority model that improves the existing proportional distribution mechanism. This solution to the global injustice reoptimizes the cross-border and domestic vaccine distribution and aims to resolve the pandemic more efficiently. The proposed framework and methodology of vaccine distribution could be taken as an opportunity to consistently promote the development of the global socio-economic structure towards global justice more broadly and systematically.

The water supply system in the city of Pune is affected due to the fast and chaotic development in and around the city. The quantity of per capita water supply and hours of supply per day varies substantially across the city. Some central parts of the city benefit from a large availability of water as compared to peripheral areas. This research employed Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) Regression, Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR), and the new version of GWR termed Multi-scale Geographically Weighted Regression (MGWR) models to better understand the factors behind observed spatial patterns of water supply distribution and to predict water supply in newly merged and proposed villages in the Pune city's periphery. Results showed statistical significance of slope; distance from service reservoirs; and water supply hour. MGWR and GWR models improved our results (adjusted R2: 0.916 and 0.710 respectively) significantly over those of the OLS model (adjusted R2: 0.252) and proved how local conditions influence variables. The maps of GWR display how a particular variable is highly important in some areas but less important in other parts of the city. The results from the current study can help decision-makers to make appropriate decisions for future planning to achieve Sustainable Development Goal number 6 (SDG #6), which focuses on achieving universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all.

Equality of opportunity is about leveling the playing field so that circumstances such as gender, ethnicity, place of birth, or family background do not influence a person's life chances. Success in life should depend on people's choices, effort and talents, not to their circumstances at birth. 'Measuring Inequality of Opportunities in Latin America and the Caribbean' introduces new methods for measuring inequality of opportunities and makes an assessment of its evolution in Latin America over a decade. An innovative Human Opportunity Index and other parametric and non-parametric techniques are presented for quantifying inequality based on circumstances exogenous to individual efforts. These methods are applied to gauge inequality of opportunities in access to basic services for children, learning achievement for youth, and income and consumption for adults.

Lacustrine blue spaces provide benefits to the urbanites and wildlife habitat. Their availability varies depending on the city in which they are established and intra-urban social interactions. We analyzed the presence, distribution, and size of lentic water bodies in Mexico’s 145 most populated cities. We searched for patterns in their distribution concerning demographic, socioeconomic, and geographic data, aiming to understand their socio-ecological interactions in cities. We digitized lacustrine spaces to obtain their number per city, total surface, area of blue space per inhabitant, and surface as a percentage of the city’s total area. We tested for relationships between their number and surface and city population, hydrological regions, and urban marginalization index through linear and generalized linear models. We delimited 1834 lacustrine blue spaces, finding almost two-thirds of them artificial. Their presence and surface in Mexican cities were generally low, except for hydrological regions close to the Gulf of Mexico. Their number and surface decreased as the urban marginalization index increased. The lack of equitable provision of lacustrine space at the national level has implications for urban planning and land management. Blue spaces should maximize their ecosystem services’ provision for the whole society to promote cities’ sustainability and resilience.

Background Globally, the nursing profession faces shortages, high turnover, and inequitable distribution. These problems are particularly acute in South East Asia. The present paper describes the design and initial findings of the Thai Nurse Cohort Study (TNCS). Methods The TNCS is a longitudinal prospective cohort study comprising multiple age cohorts, initiated in 2009 and expected to run until 2027. Cohorts comprise registered nurses (RN) holding professional licenses granted by the Thailand Nursing and Midwifery Council. Follow-up is at 3-year intervals, with new (younger) TNCS cohorts introduced and older, no-longer eligible members checked out. This maintains the cohort size as representative of the Thai RN population. The first survey round (2009) used a self-administered mailed questionnaire. The second round (2012) provided follow-up of the initial cohort and formed the baseline survey of new entries. Results The sampling frame for the first round was 142,699 licensed RN; 50,200 age-stratified participants were randomly selected and mailed the questionnaire, and 18,198 questionnaires were returned owing to incorrect addresses. Of the remaining 32,002 participants, 18,756 (58.6 %) responded (average age 43.7 ± 9.8 years). About 15.4 % (equivalent to 20,000 of the current RN population), reported an intention to leave their nursing career. The second round achieved a follow-up rate of 60.2 %. This round included 3020 participants randomly selected from 6402 new RN (response rate, 38.3 %; mean age 23.1 ± 3.5 years). In this round, 11.2 % reported they intended to leave nursing in the next 2 years. Conclusions These two survey rounds have highlighted that Thailand is facing critical nurse shortages. A high rate of nurses expressed an intention to leave the profession; the capacity to replace these potential losses is much lower.

Intermittent water supply systems (IWSSs) are unable to meet customer demands due to water scarcity from the sources or due to economic or/and technical scarcity. Conversion to continuous water supply as a means of tackling IWSSs’ inherent problems of inequitable water distribution, limited water supply hours, high non-revenue water, system operation and maintenance costs, and poor water quality is essential for sustainable water supply. Modelling and optimisation techniques have been used to aid the conversion process, optimisation of the operation of these systems, and guiding leakage reduction actions. However, modelling IWSSs have several challenges. These include the lack of accepted existing modelling techniques that include leakage modelling and the lack of comprehensive methodology for calibrating IWSS hydraulic models under limited calibration data. This study proposes a methodology for calibrating IWSS hydraulic models that include leakage modelling. The proposed methodology involves distinct steps to mitigate the problem of data scarcity, it eliminates the trial-and-error procedure of determining the leakage emitters' coefficients by using optimisation and it presents an approach for estimating the lower and upper bounds of the emitters' coefficients. The methodology was applied to a case study in Zambia. The calibration procedure gave accurate results given the limitation of data.

Indonesia has made improving the access to health workers, especially in rural areas, and improving the quality of health provider's key priority areas of its next five-year development plan. Significant steps and policy changes were taken to improve the distribution of the health workforce, in particular the contracted doctors program and later the contracted midwives program, but few studies have been undertaken to measure the actual impact of these policies and programs. This book is part of the inputs prepared at the request of the government of Indonesia's national development agency, Bappenas, to inform the development of the next national development plan 2010-14. Other inputs include reports on health financing, fiscal space for health, health public expenditure review, and assessments of maternal health and pharmaceuticals. Study findings highlight the importance not only of improving the supply of health care, but also of improving quality, so as to improve health outcomes. Over the period studied, important gains in the determinants of health outcomes have occurred in Indonesia. At the same time, however, the study shows that Indonesia, despite the significant gains, continues to suffer from serious challenges in the number and distribution, and in particular the quality, of its health workers.

Drawing on an eclectic array of research and evaluative studies culled from a mix of sources, this volume analyzes Brazilian hospital performance along several policy dimensions including resource allocation and use within hospitals, hospital payment mechanisms, organizational and governance arrangements, management practices, and regulation and quality. An agenda for hospital reform is proposed which synthesizes priorities that are integral to improving hospital performance—and which should be considered for implementation in the near and medium term.

The Ethiopian health sector faces a number of challenges related to human resources, including geographical imbalances in the distribution of health workers, problems with job satisfaction, and a high willingness to migrate abroad. To address these challenges with appropriate policies, more empirical evidence is needed. The Ethiopian Health Workers Cohort Study was set up to produce evidence as input to policy design. To generate insights on health workers' career choices, preferences, and job satisfaction, the study followed the same health workers over time. The first wave of the study was conducted in April 2004 and surveyed 219 nursing students and 90 medical students who were in their final year of study. In the second wave of the survey, which took place between May and September 2007, researchers re-interviewed the nurses and the doctors, who had now entered the labor market. This paper reports the descriptive findings of the second wave as well as changes that were identified between the two survey rounds. The report is structured as follows. This chapter provides an overview of the Ethiopian health sector and a brief description of the survey methodology. Chapter two presents data on the health professionals' current activities, including the distribution of job functions across locations, sectors, and facilities. Chapter three summarizes the findings on job characteristics such as salaries and nonmonetary benefits; it also provides information about health professionals' level of satisfaction with job and life of and its evolution over time. Chapter four reports the results regarding health workers' willingness to work in rural areas, including an analysis of the evolution of reservation wages for work in a rural area, obtained from responses to contingent valuation questions. Chapter five focuses on the health worker's likelihood of migrating abroad in the near future, again using specially designed questions. Each chapter after chapter two starts with a summary of the pertinent results.

Es menester ser conscientes de la necesidad de construir una sociedad intercultural, conciencia que ha de asumirse en todas las esferas sociales, donde se destaca el papel que ha de jugar la educación. Un papel trascendental, pues ha de promover espacios pedagógicos que apunten a formar personas con virtudes y competencias que les permitan vivir juntas en los contextos multiculturales y en las diversidades sociales (muchas veces desiguales), en un mundo cada vez más globalizado e interconectado, y propiciar el desarrollo de sentimientos de pertenencia cívica compartidos en el barrio, la ciudad, la región y el país, posibilitándoles preocupación y juicio crítico ante la marginación, pobreza, miseria e inequitativa distribución de la riqueza, causas de la violencia estructural, pero, a la vez, ganas de trabajar por el bienestar y transformación de esos escenarios. Desde estos presupuestos es importante conocer los enfoques y modelos de educación intercultural que se han desarrollado hasta ahora, analizando sus incidencias en los contextos socioeducativos donde se aplican.