Glossary
Most Common Abbreviations and Technical Terms
Contents
- Absolute Poverty
- Accessibility
- Advocacy / lobbying
- Avoidable blindness
- Blindness
- Cataract Surgical Rate
- Consultation
- CSC
- CSR
- Dignity
- Disability and Impairment
- Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYS)
- Efficiency
- Evaluation
- Health
- HRD
- IAPB
- Impact
- Impairment and Disability
- Incidence
- Inclusion
- INGO
- Integration
- Intervention
- IOL
- Life expectancy
- Mental Health
- Monitoring
- NGDO
- NGO
- Objectives
- Outcome
- Output
- Prevalence
- Public-private Partnership
- Rehabilitation
- Resources
- ROP
- SAFE Strategy
- Situation Analysis
- Social Group
- Stakeholder
- Survey
- Trichiasis
- UN
- UNICEF
- WHO
- Absolute Poverty
- A situation where the per capita income is equivalent to less than one international dollar per day.
- Accessibility
- According to the WHO "Access" to health care is affected by the presence or absence of barriers, including:
- Physical barriers: those related to the general supply of, availability of, and distance to health services.
- Economic or financial barriers: those related to the cost of seeking and obtaining health care, in relation to a patient's or a household's income. An increase in the price of drugs or treatment may reduce access to health care for individuals in that household. Financial barriers also include indirect costs such as transport, time away from work, and childcare costs. Government policies on health financing influence the impact of financial barriers.
- Cultural barriers - those related to social or community perceptions of health services, for example perceived or actual discrimination on the part of health care providers, and language barriers.
The need for promoting greater access as an effective approach to reversing exclusion and enhancing the equalization of opportunities in a sustainable way has been adopted globally through the United Nations’ Standard rules on the equalization of opportunities for persons with disabilities from 1993: „...states should initiate measures to remove the obstacles to participation in the physical environment. Such measures should be to develop standards and guidelines and to consider enacting legislation to ensure accessibility to various areas in society, such as housing, buildings, public transport services and other means of transportation, streets and other outdoor environments...“ - Advocacy/lobbying
- Advocacy is a system of actions directed at changing attitudes, policies, positions, practices or programmes in society. Advocacy refers to any activity that attempts to change mainly government policy, but also attitudes and perceptions within society.
Lobbying is a subset of advocacy that aims to influence specific legislation. Advocacy covers a much broader range of activities which might, or might not, include lobbying. Almost all social change has started with non-lobbying advocacy but ended with major lobbying efforts. Example: the protection of women’s rights, child labour laws: all initially combined a broad spectrum of non-lobbying advocacy activities, with lobbying employed somewhat later to achieve the needed change. - Audiologist
- Audiologists help to prevent and assess hearing disorders, as well as fit and dispense hearing aids.
- Avoidable blindness
- Blindness which could reasonably be prevented or cured within the limits of resources likely to be made available.
- Blindness
- WHO definition: Visual acuity of less than 3/60 (or equivalent) in the better eye with best correction, or visual field in each eye restricted to less than 10 degrees from fixation.
- Cataract Surgical Rate
- Cataract Operations per million population per year.
- Consultation
- A technique of social interaction where opinions of all stakeholders are sought before a decision is made.
- CSC
- Cataract Surgical Coverage: the proportion of people (or eyes) with ‘operable’ cataract who have already received surgery at a certain point in time.
- CSR
- Cataract Surgical Rate: the total number of cataract operations performed per year per million population.
- Dignity
- The right of individuals to be treated with respect as persons in their own right.
- Disability and Impairment
- Disability: The interaction between a person with an impairment or health condition and the negative barriers of the environment (including attitudes and beliefs, etc.).
Impairment: A characteristic and condition of an individuals' body or mind which unsupported has limited, does limit or will limit that individual's personal or social functioning in comparison with someone who has not got that characteristic or condition. Impairment relates to a physical, intellectual, mental or sensory condition; as such it is largely an individual issue. Accordingly, disability is the way(s) in which people with impairments are excluded or discriminated against; as such, it is largely a social and development issue. - Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYS)
- The number of healthy years of life lost due to premature death and disability.
- Efficiency
- A measure comparing achievement with the efforts andresources expended
equality Principle by which all persons or things under consideration are treated in the same way. - Evaluation
- The overall analysis of project achievements at intervals.
- Health
- Health is defined in WHO's Constitution as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. Health is a resource for everyday life, not the object of living. It is a positive concept emphasizing social and personal resources as well as physical capabilities.
- HRD
- Human resources development: all activities aimed to improve people’s abilities to achieve defined objectives and targets.
- IAPB
- International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness
- Impact
- The overall long-term effect of a programme on health and general socioeconomic situation.
- Impairment and Disability
- Impairment: A characteristic and condition of an individuals' body or mind which unsupported has limited, does limit or will limit that individual's personal or social functioning in comparison with someone who has not got that characteristic or condition. Impairment relates to a physical, intellectual, mental or sensory condition; as such it is largely an individual issue. Accordingly, disability is the way(s) in which people with impairments are excluded or discriminated against; as such, it is largely a social and development issue.
Disability: The interaction between a person with an impairment or health condition and the negative barriers of the environment (including attitudes and beliefs, etc.). - Incidence
- The number of new cases with a defined characteristic occurring in a defined area in one year.
- Inclusion
- Inclusive development: Inclusive Development refers to the planning and implementation of policies, programmes, projects and actions for the human and socioeconomic development. It ensures and makes feasible the ideal of equal opportunities and the exercise of rights -civil, political, economic, social and cultural- for every person, regardless of his/her social status, gender, physical or mental condition and ethnic filiation. CBM strives for the inclusion of the disability perspective into all development activities.
Inclusion in the context of education: Inclusion refers to the educational process that wishes to extend to the maximum the opportunity of children with disabilities to attend regular classrooms. It involves providing necessary special education services under the responsibility of the general classroom teacher. Inclusion does not mean to take children with special needs to regular classes without the assistance of a special education teacher, or to ignore the specific needs of the child. - INGO
- International Non-governmental organisation
- Integration
- In the context of education, integration is the selective placement of a child with a disability in a regular classroom, requiring that this student has the ability to participate in the school programme.
- Intervention
- An activity or set of activities aimed at modifying a process, course of action or sequence of events, in order to change one or several of their characteristics such as performance or expected outcome.
- IOL
- Intra-Ocular Lens
- Life Expectancy
- The number of years of life that can be expected on average in a given population.
- Mental Health
- According to the U.N. Rules on Equalisation of Opportunities for People with Disabilities, mental illness is “a disorder, illness or disease that affects thought processes, perception of reality, emotions or judgement, or that results in disturbed behaviour”. In reality, WHO does not use the word mental “illness”, but more precisely considers two categories of disorders under the title of “neuropsychiatric disorders”:
- Mental and behavioural disorders, which include unipolar and bipolar affective disorders, psychoses, dementia, alcohol dependence, post-traumatic stress disorders, panic disorders, etc., and
- Neurological disorders, which include epilepsy, Parkinson’s Disease, multiple sclerosis, etc.
- Monitoring
- Day-to-day assessment of project activities and progress
- NGDO
- Nongovernmental development organisation
- NGO
- Nongovernmental organisation
- Objectives
- A measurable and time-bound statement of what has to be achieved.
- Outcome
- In general the results of an intervention programme, more specifically visual acuity or visual function after cataract surgery.
- Output
- The total amount of work done under an intervention strategy, e.g. number of cataract operations, trichiasis operations done.
- Prevalence
- The number of cases of a clearly-defined condition in a defined area at a defined point in time.
- Public-private Partnership
- According to WHO the term means partnerships between public or governmental entities, private or commercial entities and civil society. Public-private partnerships cover a wide variety of ventures involving a diversity of arrangements. They range from small, single-product collaborations with industry to large entities hosted in United Nations agencies or private not-for-profit organizations.
- Rehabilitation
- The term "rehabilitation" refers to a process aimed at enabling persons with disabilities to reach and maintain their optimal physical, sensory, intellectual, psychiatric and/or social functional levels. Thus providing them with the tools to change their lives towards a higher level of independence.
Rehabilitation may include measures to provide and/or restore functions, or compensate for the loss or absence of a function or for a functional limitation. The rehabilitation process does not involve initial medical care. It includes a wide range of measures and activities from more basic and general rehabilitation to goal-oriented activities, for instance vocational rehabilitation. - Resources
- Any source of information from which students are able to learn, e.g. library, teaching materials, human resources (other students, teachers, etc.). All these are referred to as “learning resources” -Funding, staffing, equipment, anything required to accomplish one's goals, e.g. conduct a training course, upgrade a health care facility, etc.
- ROP
- Retinopathy of prematurity
- SAFE Strategy
- A strategy adopted by WHO for the control of trachoma:
- Surgery
- Antibiotics
- Facial Cleanliness
- Environmental change
- Situation Analysis
- Assessment of all aspects of the present status of a health programme: its needs, the current output, unmet needs, constraints, available resources, costs, barriers, etc.
- Social Group
- Any set of persons within society that differs from other sets due to demographic, economic or social characteristics such as age, sex, education level, race religion, income level, lifestyle, beliefs, etc.
- Stakeholder
- Any party which has particular interests.
- Survey
- Systematic examination of a few individuals from a defined population in order to know more about the entire population.
- Trichiasis
- One or more eyelashes rubbing on the globe of the eye.
- UN
- The United Nations (UN) was established on 24 October 1945 by 51 countries committed to preserving peace through international cooperation and collective security. Today, nearly every nation in the world belongs to the UN: membership totals 191 countries.
- UNICEF
- United Nations Children’s Fund
- WHO
- The World Health Organization (WHO) is the United Nations specialized agency for health. It was established on 7 April 1948. WHO's objective, as set out in its Constitution, is the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health. WHO is governed by 192 Member States through the World Health Assembly. The Health Assembly is composed of representatives from WHO's Member States.
