In addition to “essential money,” “the right policies, government commitment and citizen accountability” are needed to decrease child mortality and improve other global health indicators, “[b]ut the sine qua non for effective health care delivery is health workers. Whether it’s prevention, treatment or care, it’s all about health workers,” Jonathan Glennie, a research fellow at the Overseas Development Institute, writes in a post on the Guardian’s “Poverty Matters Blog.”

A “refocusing of international public funds on a public workforce is a welcome rebalancing of decades of pro-market ideology and underfunding of health professionals for supposedly sound financial reasons,” Glennie says, adding that the biggest challenge now is for an active civil society to “get our governments to make this a priority” and remain accountable and transparent (9/23).