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The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has caused major health system problems and has fueled the emergence of various misinformation regarding preventive measures. The current study was conducted to evaluate the effect of media on raising the level of health awareness of Saudi Arabian populations regarding the medical misinformation about the use of natural remedies against COVID-19. This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted anonymously in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia between May 1st and June 30, 2020. The sample size was calculated using version-3.0 of OpenEpi. An 11-item questionnaire was designed to assess the effect of media on raising the level of health awareness of the population regarding the medical misinformation about the use of natural remedies during this pandemic. Among 1300 participants, nearly half (55.4%) reported having watched the Saudi Ministry of Health's (MOH) broadcasted awareness videos. Social media (78.9%) was the main media platform on which they accessed these videos, followed by television (14.9%), and the Internet (6.2%). The MOH's awareness videos had a positive effect on 69.5% of participants, who reported a change in their attitudes toward natural remedies and discontinuing the use of them as preventive medicine. The most discontinued natural remedies after watching the awareness videos were gargling with salt water (32.1%), followed by myrrh (17.6%), and garlic (12.9%). Positive effects were greater among participants with a low than high education level. The findings of the current study indicate that the Saudi MOH's usage of social media channels has had a positive effect on the level of public health awareness concerning the reliability of natural remedies used during the pandemic. However, more research is needed to validate how social media networks can be used in a cross-cultural context to enhance health awareness and adaptation to healthy behaviors.

This paper is a reflection on the word, “ministry” within the ministry of public health, and draws attention to the religious connotation to enunciate the breadth and depth of the ministry mandate in public health service, education and practice in developing countries.

Health systems in Sub-Saharan Africa have changed profoundly over the last 20 years. The economic crisis of the 1980s and 1990s rattled public health care systems, which were largely holdovers from the colonial and postcolonial eras. The later wave of structural adjustments and public sector reforms wrought further change. As African economies opened to market based approaches, the private sector became a sizable source of health care service. Today about half the health expenditures in Africa are private, and private providers play a major role in the delivery of outpatient services. This is draws on the lessons, knowledge, and data gathered by the World Bank's Africa Region Human Resources for Health Program. For the first time, the various complexities of Human Resources for Health (HRH) labor markets are addressed comprehensively in one volume. Given the increasing demand in countries for strong health workforces that can help achieve universal health coverage; we hope this book will be beneficial to researchers, policy makers, and practitioners who are trying to develop evidence-based HRH interventions to achieve this end.

'Reforming China's Rural Health System' examines the performance and workings of China's rural health system leading up to the reforms of the 2000s, outlines the reforms, and presents some early evidence on their impacts. The authors outline ideas for building on these reforms to further strengthen China's rural health system, covering health financing and health insurance, service delivery, and public health. The authors conclude by using the experiences of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries to gaze into China's future, asking not only what China's health system might look like, but also how China might get there from where it is today. 'Reforming China's Rural Health System' will be of interest to health care policy makers, public health officials, university researchers, and others working to improve rural health and health service delivery in China and in other countries especially those in East and South Asia.

Countries have implemented a range of reforms in health financing and provision to advance towards universal health coverage (UHC). These reforms often change the role of a ministry of health (MOH) in traditionally unitary national health service systems. An exploratory comparative case study of four upper middle-income and high-income countries provides insights into how these reforms in pursuit of UHC are likely to affect health governance and the organisational functioning of an MOH accustomed to controlling the financing and delivery of healthcare. These reforms often do not result in simple transfers of responsibility from MOH to other actors in the health system. The resulting configuration of responsibilities and organisational changes within a health system is specific to the capacities within the health system and the sociopolitical context. Formal prescriptions that accompany reform proposals often do not fully represent what actually takes place. An MOH may retain considerable influence in financing and delivery even when reforms appear to formally shift those powers to other organisational units. MOHs have limited ability to independently achieve fundamental system restructuring in health systems that are strongly subject to public sector rules and policies. Our comparative study shows that within these constraints, MOHs can drive organisational change through four mechanisms: establishing a high-level interministerial team to provide political commitment and reduce institutional barriers; establishing an MOH ‘change team’ to lead implementation of organisational change; securing key components of systemic change through legislation; and leveraging emerging political change windows of opportunity for the introduction of health reforms.

'Healthy Development: The World Bank Strategy for Health, Nutrition, and Population Results' updates the Bank's contribution to improving health outcomes, including the 2015 Millennium Development Goals, at a time when new and existing multilateral organizations, bilateral partners, and foundations are increasing their commitment to global health.

The incidence of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) has been steadily increasing worldwide. AD is a serious disease that has both societal and economic impacts. The greatest risk factor for AD is aging. Thus, because of the rapidly aging population in Japan, the development of new, effective drugs for AD is urgently needed. The goal of the present article was to analyze the status, clarify the problems, and discuss the scientific and political challenges of disease-modifying drug development for AD. Public data, official documents, literature, and news releases were surveyed and discussed. Compared with diabetes mellitus drugs, there is a lack of quantitative surrogate end points among AD drugs. Much AD drug development has focused on amyloid-β and its associated pathways; however, these drugs have not shown efficacy in Phase III clinical trials. Thus, the US Food and Drug Administration has appealed for a new draft industrial guidance for the development of AD drugs, including those for early-stage AD. In Japan, the Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare and the Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency have also taken action, including the publication of potential new guidelines for clinical evaluation and development of new AD therapeutics, including drugs. Moreover, scientific initiatives to develop novel AD drugs are ongoing. The development of quantitative surrogate end points remains necessary to improve the development of AD drugs. Therefore, collaboration among industry, government, and academia should be encouraged. Following the principles of regulatory science, strategies to develop drugs for illnesses with unmet needs can be framed by investigating the effects of past, current, and future AD drug development initiatives.

Studies including adolescents and young people (AYP) enhance the relevance of research results, benefit stakeholders, and inform future research. There exists a mental health gap in services for AYP living in low and middle-income countries. This study aims to identify mental health challenges faced by adolescents and young people in Kenya, develop practical recommendations to mitigate these issues, and reduce the mental health burden among this population. We convened an AYP-led meeting that involved 41 participants. The meeting objectives were to (1) identify efforts to support existing national and regional strategic priorities and review goals for addressing mental health needs among AYPs, (2) develop immediate action plans for strengthened mental health services, (3) review and strengthen country-level coordination mechanisms, and (4) identify how participating county experiences can inform mental health services in Kenya. Ministry of Health (MoH) officials from national and county levels, academic experts, and implementing partner agencies involved in mental health services participated in the meeting. The team, including AYP representatives, identified various mental health challenges among the AYA and recommended interventions aimed towards improving their mental health situation in the country. The challenges were clustered into three themes and comprehensively reviewed to establish the precipitating factors to mental health outcomes among AYPs in Kenya and provide recommendations. The themes included (1) legislative, (2) service provider/Ministry of Health, and (3) adolescent/individual-level factors. To bridge the mental health gap in the country and scale up mental health outcomes, the stakeholders recommended interventions within the context of the three clusters. The key suggestions included an increase in insurance financing, acceleration of community health interventions, the establishment of adolescent-friendly spaces, the training of adolescent youth champions, interactive service provision models, implementation of the existing mental health policies and structures, the development of comprehensive assessment tools, well equipped mental health departments in health facilities, the enhancement of telehealth services and digital villages, the mobilization of a functional mental health response team, and the development of a mental health database.

Background Given Japan’s rapidly aging population, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare's policy of reducing hospital beds and replacing medical care with nursing care requires the establishment of a coordinated system of medical and care services tailored to regional characteristics. To gain useful knowledge for the development of such a system, this study aimed to identify differences in the structure of the relationship between medical and care resources due to differences in regional characteristics. Methods Initially, regional characteristics were used to group all 334 secondary medical areas (SMA) in Japan by principal component analysis. Subsequently, the related structure of the distribution of medical and care resources for each group were compared. For these　comparisons, first, the related structure of the distribution of medical and care resources nationwide was modeled using structural equation modeling. Secondly, multigroup analysis was conducted to investigate differences among the models across groups. Results The nationwide SMAs were grouped largely based on urbanicity and middle-density regionality. The groups with high urbanicity and high middle-density regionality consisted of SMAs with a high and medium population density. By contrast, the low middle-density regionality group consisted of SMAs containing large cities with a high population density and depopulated areas with a low population density. The model of the related structure of the distribution of medical and care resources differed among these groups. In the non-urbanicity and middle-density regionality groups, nursing care abundance tended to increase acute care abundance. In addition, in all groups, nursing care abundance tended to increase long-term hospitalization care abundance and clinic care abundance (with beds). Conclusions The key finding of this study was that the government’s objective of reducing hospital beds may not be achieved solely by expanding nursing homes. This is because many of the models did not show a tendency that higher nursing care abundance reduces the values of the factors which increase more hospital beds. This finding was particularly relevant in middle-density regionality groups. This finding suggests that the location of nursing homes should be monitored because of concerns about the oversupply of nursing homes and sprawl in those areas.

Bridging the Gap: Addressing Health Worker Imbalances in Sub-Saharan Africa This working paper tackles the critical issue of geographical imbalances in the health workforce across Sub-Saharan Africa. It analyzes labor market dynamics and their impact on urban-rural inequities, offering a fresh perspective on why these imbalances persist. Discover effective policy options for improving health resource allocation and achieving better health outcomes. This is for researchers, policy analysts, and policymakers seeking to understand and address health workforce challenges in the developing world. Learn how to: * Analyze health labor markets using economic principles * Evaluate the effectiveness of different policy interventions * Improve health system efficiency and reduce poverty