Jonathan Crush and Wade Pendleton
The paper presents the results and discusses the implications of a national survey of South African health professionals which found extraordinarily high levels of dissatisfaction…
Abstract
The paper presents the results and discusses the implications of a national survey of South African health professionals which found extraordinarily high levels of dissatisfaction with working and living conditions in the country. Emigration potential is very high, and retention strategies have been largely unsuccessful. The survey findings suggest that remedial efforts within South Africa will not slow the brain drain. This has serious negative repercussions for the quality and level of health care available to patients in the country. The only workable retention strategy is for Western countries to stop issuing immigration and work permits to South African health professionals, a policy that would be consistent with their attitude to most other South African workers. However, as long as health professional shortages continue in Western countries and their immigration policy remains divorced from their international development policy, this scenario seems unlikely.
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Most of the literature on the World Bank struggles to understand precisely how effective are the Bank’s projects and policies, emphasizing at the same time as reaffirming certain…
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Most of the literature on the World Bank struggles to understand precisely how effective are the Bank’s projects and policies, emphasizing at the same time as reaffirming certain universal parameters with which to measure the good and the bad. This article, by contrast, argues for a different way of seeing the World Bank, that is, for scholarship that interrogates the political rationalities which underlie these distinctions and categories and which make these parameters and measures viable, necessary, and enduring. Indeed, most writings – including the innumerable self‐evaluations carried out by the Bank – simultaneously note the enormity of the Bank’s past misdeeds as well as its unique position as the only global institution up to the monumental task of translating global truths into global plans of action. Because of its unique role as the global development expert, the Bank is always two steps ahead of the pack, always re‐assessing and re‐tooling for improvement in ways that most national and international institutions cannot. Who else can respond so quickly to catastrophes around the globe – appearing one month in Thailand, the next in Argentina, and, in a bomb’s flash, in Afghanistan and Iraq? In a world in which global crises routinely erupt and “require” global experts of development to resolve them, the Bank and its affiliates in the World Bank Group have no rivals. But, rather than ask why the Bank’s responses are ultimately insufficient or flawed, we must first ask how problems get defined in terms of global crises and their solutions in terms of global development institutions in the first place? How did these ideas and institutions become so influential? What power dynamics do they embody?
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Asylum seekers, refugees and immigrants’ access to healthcare vary in South Africa and Cape Town due to unclear legal status. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the…
Abstract
Purpose
Asylum seekers, refugees and immigrants’ access to healthcare vary in South Africa and Cape Town due to unclear legal status. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the source of this variation, the divergence between the 1996 South African Constitution, the immigration laws, and regulations and to describe its harmful consequences.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on legal and ethnographic research, this paper documents the disjuncture between South African statutes and regulations and the South African Constitution regarding refugees and migrants’ access to healthcare. Research involved examining South African jurisprudence, the African Charter, and United Nations’ materials regarding rights to health and health care access, and speaking with civil society organizations and healthcare providers. These sources inform the description of the immigrant access to healthcare in Cape Town, South Africa.
Findings
Asylum-seekers and refugees are entitled to health and emergency care; however, hospital administrators require documentation (up-to-date permits) before care can be administered. Many immigrants – especially the undocumented – are often unable to obtain care because of a lack of papers or because of “progressive realization,” the notion that the state cannot presently afford to provide treatment in accordance with constitutional rights. These explanations have put healthcare providers in an untenable position of not being able to treat patients, including some who face fatal conditions.
Research limitations/implications
The research is limited by the fact that South African courts have not adjudicated a direct challenge to being refused care at healthcare facility on the basis of legal status. This limits the ability to know how rights afforded to “everyone” within the South African Constitution will be interpreted with respect to immigrants seeking healthcare. The research is also limited by the non-circulation of healthcare admissions policies among leading facilities in the Cape Town region where the case study is based.
Practical implications
Articulation of the disjuncture between the South African Constitution and the immigration laws and regulations allows stakeholders and decision-makers to reframe provincial and municipal policies about healthcare access in terms of constitutional rights and the practical limitations accommodated through progressive realization.
Social implications
In South Africa, immigration statutes and regulations are inconsistent and deemed unconstitutional with respect to the treatment of undocumented migrants. Hospital administrators are narrowly interpreting the laws to instruct healthcare providers on how to treat patients and whom they can treat. These practices need to stop. Access to healthcare must be structured to comport with the constitutional right afforded to everyone, and with progressive realization pursued through a non – discriminatory policy regarding vulnerable immigrants.
Originality/value
This paper presents a unique case study that combines legal and social science methods to explore a common and acute question of health care access. The case is novel and instructive insofar as South Africa has not established refugee camps in response to rising numbers of refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants. South Africans thus confront a “first world” question of equitable access to healthcare within their African context and with limited resources in a climate of increasing xenophobia.
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This paper reviews the human behaviour and risk communications which occurred during a number of major fires (Beverly Hills Supper Club, Summerland, Woolworth’s, Bradford, King’s…
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This paper reviews the human behaviour and risk communications which occurred during a number of major fires (Beverly Hills Supper Club, Summerland, Woolworth’s, Bradford, King’s Cross) and a crowd crush (Hillsborough). The paper draws on official Inquiry reports and related research, including a series of five underground station evacuation studies modelled on the King’s Cross fire scenario. The pattern of delay in warning the public is considered in terms of misconceptions about “panic” and the performance of public facilities as a communication system consisting of design, technology, management and occupancy (setting in use). The paper advocates performance‐based design, warning system technology and facilities management (organisational and occupant response) criteria, allied to minimally sufficient early warning of the public on a risk communication timeline. The latter needs to address and accommodate the timing and duration of occupant response, shelter and escape behaviour from different locations as an emergency unfolds.
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Nigel Lawson, Ian Douglas, Stephen Garvin, Clodagh McGrath, David Manning and Jonathan Vetterlein
In England and Wales, the construction industry produces 53.5 Mt of construction and demolition waste (C&D waste) annually, of which 51 percent goes to landfill, 40 percent is…
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In England and Wales, the construction industry produces 53.5 Mt of construction and demolition waste (C&D waste) annually, of which 51 percent goes to landfill, 40 percent is used for land reclamation and only 9 percent is crushed for future use or directly recovered. C&D waste may be contaminated, either through spillage from industrial processes or contact with contaminated land. There are no guidelines on how to classify C&D waste as contaminated or on risk management for contaminated C&D waste. Research at the UK Building Research Establishment and the University of Manchester has shown that new taxes are making disposal of C&D waste to landfill uneconomic, that low grade “land‐modelling” recycling is increasing, and that disposal on‐site is preferred. Sampling spatially of structures before demolition and temporally of processed C&D waste emerging from crushers is enabling sources of contamination and exceedance of guideline values to be compared with natural background levels. Improved sampling procedures and recommendations for risk assessment for the re‐use of C&D waste are being prepared.
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David Norman Smith and Eric Allen Hanley
Controversy has long swirled over the claim that Donald Trump's base has deeply rooted authoritarian tendencies, but Trump himself seems to have few doubts. Asked whether his…
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Controversy has long swirled over the claim that Donald Trump's base has deeply rooted authoritarian tendencies, but Trump himself seems to have few doubts. Asked whether his stated wish to be dictator “on day one” of second term in office would repel voters, Trump said “I think a lot of people like it.” It is one of his invariable talking points that 74 million voters supported him in 2020, and he remains the unrivaled leader of the Republican Party, even as his rhetoric escalates to levels that cautious observers now routinely call fascistic.
Is Trump right that many people “like” his talk of dictatorship? If so, what does that mean empirically? Part of the answer to these questions was apparent early, in the results of the 2016 American National Election Study (ANES), which included survey questions that we had proposed which we drew from the aptly-named “Right-Wing Authoritarianism” scale. Posed to voters in 2012–2013 and again in 2016, those questions elicited striking responses.
In this chapter, we revisit those responses. We begin by exploring Trump's escalating anti-democratic rhetoric in the light of themes drawn from Max Weber and Theodor W. Adorno. We follow this with the text of the 2017 conference paper in which we first reported that 75% of Trump's voters supported him enthusiastically, mainly because they shared his prejudices, not because they were hurting economically. They hoped to “get rid” of troublemakers and “crush evil.” That wish, as we show in our conclusion, remains central to Trump's appeal.
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HONG ZHANG, JONATHAN J. SHI and CHI‐MING TAM
This paper presents some simulation‐oriented techniques, particularly the resource allocation point (RAP) heuristic rule, for an activity‐based construction (ABC) simulation that…
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This paper presents some simulation‐oriented techniques, particularly the resource allocation point (RAP) heuristic rule, for an activity‐based construction (ABC) simulation that requires only one kind of element to model construction operations. RAP heuristic rule provides the simulation with the decision‐making ability for allocating limited resources during simulation. Predefined entity management strategies control the movements of simulation entities so as to model some complex features of construction operations. An activity object‐oriented (AOO) simulation strategy based on object‐oriented approach for the implementation of the ABC simulation by regarding activities as objects controls the mechanism of the ABC simulation by checking only relevant activities at certain time, other than checking all activities for each simulation time unit. An easy‐to‐use animation aims at enhancing understanding of simulation and assisting modellers in verifying and validating model.
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Among the major problems identified by Organisational Behaviour Scientists in Africa today are those of a highly organised formal and a highly centralised management of…
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Among the major problems identified by Organisational Behaviour Scientists in Africa today are those of a highly organised formal and a highly centralised management of organisation crushing the Organisation‐Man under the dead weight of uniformity. Formal organisations have become large and complex and highly organised, and the basis of their organisation is production efficiency. In this system, an Organisation‐Man is essentially looked upon as a producer and, because the formal organisation in which he is carrying on his role is so vast and complicated, personal relations seem to have lost all meanings. Formal organisation is relatively affluent. The output of goods is enormous, but entrepreneurs, and sometimes management continues to exploit the situation in their own interest, and the Organisation‐Man is engaged all the time in nothing but the exacting task of trying to, or worrying in order to, improve his economic status. The Organisation‐Man has to remain so busy in the pursuit of his vocation that he hardly gets time to look within himself and think of the quality of his life pattern. Meeting each other in factory or workshop or a crowd, commuting or agitating, he finds himself more and more isolated and alienated from the formal organisation.