BACKGROUND Like many other low- and middle-income countries, Guatemala has adopted visual inspection with acetic acid (VIA) as a low-resource alternative to the Pap smear for cervical cancer screening. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) introduced VIA to Guatemala in 2004, and a growing number of NGOs, working both independently and in collaboration with the Guatemalan Ministry of Health, emp...

HIV incidence is rising more rapidly in some areas of Central and Eastern Europe than anywhere else in the world. Carrying out effective HIV prevention programs requires the presence of "bridges" that can reach community populations most vulnerable to the disease. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are in a natural role to conduct HIV prevention programs. The Directors of 29 HIV prevention NG...

The challenges facing efforts in Africa to increase access to antiretroviral HIV treatment underscore the urgent need to strengthen national health systems across the continent. However, donor aid to developing countries continues to be disproportionately channeled to international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) rather than to ministries of health. The rapid proliferation of NGOs has prov...

When former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan was seen leaving a conference in Geneva in November 2005 clutching maps of the south Asia earthquake disaster, it was evidence that satellites – as a key weapon in humanitarian emergencies – had arrived. In the hours and days after the October 8 quake struck killing more than 73 000 people and injuring some 150 000, experts from France, Germany, the U...

Non-Governmental Organizations plays an important role in the development sector through participatory people cooperation. NGOs are widely recognized for filling gaps created by governments' failure to satisfy needs of poorest residents developing countries. The number activities undertaken has widened near future. It may range from awareness creation much broad which includes humanitarian issu...

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are being integrated into U.S. strategies to expand the services that are available during health security threats like disasters. Identifying better ways to classify NGOs and their services could optimize disaster planning. We surveyed NGOs about the types of services they provided during different disaster phases. Survey responses were used to categorize N...

Social capital contributes to the alleviation of poverty but evidence on how to strengthen it remains scarce. This article describes strategies to strengthen social capital developed by a nongovernmental organization (NGO) and women as part of a development programme in rural Bangladesh between 2006 and 2012. The NGO and the women involved leveraged bonding (familial), bridging (peers) and link...