Bloom G, Wilkinson A and Buckland Merritt G (2017) Antimicrobial resistance and Universal Health Coverage, In Antimicrobial resistance in the Asia Pacific region: a development agenda (pp. 9-21). Manila, Philippines. World Health Organization Regional Office for the Western Pacific. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.
Chapter two highlights priorities for an integrated approach for addressing AMR by strengthening universal health coverage (UHC). It focuses on the use of drugs in outpatient settings. The chapter gives particular consideration to low- and middle-income countries with pluralistic health systems, where government provision and health markets combine and where people seek treatment for a large proportion of common infections in weakly regulated markets.
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Achieving universal health coverage by 2030, as stated in UN Global Goal 3, will require substantial increases in health spending and the proportion funded through taxation or social insurance to make health care affordable for all. Not only will institutions need to be established to ensure sustainable arrangements for social finance, it will also be vital to ensure that health financing is resilient to economic and other shocks if Global Goal 3 is to be realised. This presents a major challenge in Africa, where an economic downturn is projected in a number of resource-dependent countries, such as Mozambique and Guinea Bissau and where countries such as Sierra Leone have weakened health systems. The response to these challenges by governments and development partners, will have important effects on how well people, and the health services on which they rely, cope in the short term and longer-term evolution of health coverage.
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Buckland Merrett GL, Bloom G, Wilkinson A and MacGregor H (2016) Towards the just and sustainable use of antibiotics, Journal of Pharmaceutical Policy and Practice, 9:31, DOI: 10.1186/s40545-016-0083-5
The emergence and spread of antibiotic resistant pathogens poses a big challenge to policy-makers, who need to oversee the transformation of health systems that evolved to provide easy access to these drugs into ones that encourage appropriate use of antimicrobials, whilst reducing the risk of resistance. This is a particular challenge for low and middle-income countries with pluralistic health systems where antibiotics are available in a number of different markets. This review paper considers access and use of antibiotics in these countries from a complex adaptive system perspective. It highlights the main areas of intervention that could provide the key to addressing the sustainable long term use and availability of antibiotics.
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There is a growing appreciation and recognition of the role of the private sector in the development of better health systems and the improvement of healthcare worldwide.
This Health Policy and Planning supplement reflects contributions to a Symposium of the Health Systems Global Private Sector in Health Thematic Working Group during the 9th World Congress on Health Economics, held in Sydney in July 2013. Members of the PSIH TWG that convened the Symposium included FHS members David Bishai (JHBSPH) and Gerry Bloom (IDS), and was generously supported by Rockefeller, Gates, USAID, AusAid (DFAT), and DFID.
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Hafizur Rahman, M, Agarwal, S, Tuddenham, S, Iqbal, M, Bhuiya, A, and Peters, DH (2014) What do they do? Interactions between village doctors and medical representatives in Chakaria, Bangladesh International Health doi:10.1093/inthealth/ihu077
Informally trained village doctors supply the majority of health care services to the rural poor in many developing countries. This study describes the demographic and socioeconomic differences between medical representatives, hired by pharmaceutical companies to provide their products to health providers, and village doctors in rural Bangladesh, and explores the nature of their interactions. The research team used focus group discussions, in-depth interviews, and a quantitative survey to understand practice perceptions. They found that medical representatives have a higher average per capita monthly expenditure compared to village doctors, and that the former are better educated with 98% having bachelor's degrees whereas 84% of village doctors have twelfth grade education or less. Medical representatives are the principal information source about new medications for the village doctors. Furthermore, incentives offered by medical representatives and credit availability might influence the prescription practices of village doctors. Findings suggests that improvements in the quality of health care delivered to the rural poor in informal provider-based health markets require stricter regulations and educational initiatives for providers and medical representatives.
Rural households in India rely extensively on informal biomedical providers, who lack valid medical qualifications. Their numbers far exceed those of formal providers. Our study reports on the education, knowledge, practices and relationships of informal providers (IPs) in two very different districts: Tehri Garhwal in Uttarakhand (north) and Guntur in Andhra Pradesh (south).
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The role for the private sector in health remains subject to much debate, especially within the context of achieving universal health coverage. This roundtable discussion offers diverse perspectives from a range of stakeholders - a health funder, a representative from an implementing organization, a national-level policy-maker, and an expert working in a large multi-national company - on what the future may hold for the private sector in health.
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Given the rapid evolution of health markets, learning is key to promoting the identification and uptake of health market policies and practices that better serve the needs of the poor. However there are significant challenges to learning about health markets. We discuss the different forms that learning takes, from the development of codified scientific knowledge, through to experience-based learning, all in relationship to health markets.
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The rapid evolution and spread of health markets across low and middle-income countries (LMICs) has contributed to a significant increase in the availability of health-related goods and services around the world. The support institutions needed to regulate these markets have lagged behind, with regulatory systems that are weak and under-resourced. This paper explores the key issues associated with regulation of health markets in LMICs, and the different goals of regulation, namely quality and safety of care, value for money, social agreement over fair access and financing, and accountability.
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The bottom of the pyramid concept suggests that profit can be made in providing goods and services to poor people, when high volume is combined with low margins. To-date there has been very limited empirical evidence from the health sector concerning the scope and potential for such bottom of the pyramid models. This paper analyzes private for-profit (PFP) providers currently offering services to the poor on a large scale, and assesses the future prospects of bottom of the pyramid models in health.
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Using data from a household survey in West Bengal, the purpose of this paper is to identify the relative risks of catastrophic healthcare expenditures for different types of health need, and the impact of such expenditure on household coping strategies. It concludes that Catastrophic health spending is an important problem for the population in West Bengal. More attention is needed on the poverty-inducing effects of long-term expenditures on chronic illness, given that existing schemes only address hospitalization.
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Bangladesh has a serious shortage of physicians, paramedics, nurses, and midwives. The available qualified care providers are centred in urban areas, resulting in an inequitable access of the rural and disadvantaged sections of the population to healthcare. Under these circumstances, the use of mHealth meaning provision of healthcare services through mobile devices provides a new opportunity to ensure access to quality healthcare services for the population in general, and for people from poorer sections and hard-to-reach areas in particular. There are currently around 20 mHealth service initiatives in the country which are mostly telephone hotlines for consulting physicians and/or obtaining healthcare information. Effectiveness of these services depends on the evidence-informed development of appropriate programmes designed around people’s perceptions of mHealth and user feedback. To that end, FHS Bangladesh partner, ICDDR,B recently conducted a survey on mHealth in Chakaria, a rural area in the southeast coastal area of Bangladesh. This brief presents the findings from this survey.
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How do we explain the paradox that Bangladesh has made remarkable progress in health and human development, yet its achievements have taken place within a health system that is frequently characterised as weak, in terms of inadequate physical and human infrastructure and logistics, and low performing? We argue that the development of a highly pluralistic health system environment, defined by the participation of a multiplicity of different stakeholders and agents and by ad hoc, diffused forms of management has contributed to these outcomes by creating conditions for rapid change.
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The dynamics of informal health markets in marginalised regions are relevant to policy discourse in India, but are poorly understood. The authors examine how informal health markets operate from the viewpoint of informal providers (those without any government-recognised medical degrees, otherwise known as RMPs) by drawing upon data from a household survey in 2002, a provider census in 2004 and ongoing field observations from a research site in Koppal district, Karnataka, India.
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The world’s poorest pay for professional services and thus are in a “market,” whether the services are provided in the public or private sectors. The associated problems of unequal information are particularly acute in under governed countries, where state regulation is weak. We systematically review the evidence on solutions to these problems in a variety of professions. Payments by clients are more likely to have a positive effect on quality if they are made through locally-managed organizations rather than directly to individual practitioners, particularly if those organizations have an institutionalized history of other—regarding values and incorporate client participation.
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In this correspondence, the authors note that governments and policy-makers are aiming to improve health markets in developing countries as they take up the challenge of last year's United Nations resolution to move towards universal health coverage. We caution that they must do more than simply legislate their way to a more orderly health system.
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Policy-makers, entrepreneurs, academics and funders convened at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center from 10th-14th December 2012 to discuss the changing face of health markets, and in particular to consider future trends in such markets. Their aim was to promote a greater shared understanding and analysis of health market systems, and to consider how markets can better serve the needs of the poor in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This report is an attempt to capture the rich discussions held during the meeting, which reviewed the evolution of health markets, identified key drivers of and gaps resulting from their rapid development, and highlighted critical issues that must be tackled to ensure the poorest have access to safe, affordable, effective and equitable health services. The report concludes with recommendations for shaping future health markets as agreed during the meeting.
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In this commentary in Nature, the authors argue that the rapid expansion of health markets in Asia and Africa has made medicines, information and primary-care services available in all but the most remote areas. But it also creates problems with drug safety and efficiency, equity of treatment and the cost of care. Poorly trained practitioners often prescribe unnecessary pills or injections, with patients bearing the expense and the costs to their health. Counterfeit drugs are rife and drug resistance is growing. Bringing order to unruly health markets is a major challenge.
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Dr Barun Kanjilal of IIHMR gives an overview of the regulatory challenges associated with the rapid spread of health markets in India to the Health System Reform in Asia conference held in Hong Kong in early December 2011. He notes in particular the important role that informal providers have played in delivering health services in the wake of government reforms.
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Dr Gerry Bloom from the Institute of Development studies presents to the M4P (Markets for the Poor) Conference in Brighton, UK, on 8 November 2011.
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