India is on a fast-track growth path and the health care market is opening up with new opportunities. However, impressive growth with inadequate social protection may lead to newer vulnerabilities, inequalities, and health related poverty. The study focused on one Indian state (West Bengal) to explore the link between health, poverty, and equity against this dynamic backdrop. Primary data - from households and different types of providers - were collected from three districts of the state.
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There has been growing concern about the inequities in the utilization of health care services by the socially disadvantaged in any setting. Health programme personnel always aim to increase the level of utilization of the services they provide to people from all segments of society.the present exercise applied benefit incidence, LQAS and sequential sampling methods in monitoring the utilization of health services by the poorest section of the population in two upazilas in Bangladesh. The practical challenges in adopting the methods and the consistency in the conclusions made by using the three methods have been examined and their possible use has been discussed.
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Despite a strong infrastructural base of the public health care facilities in many Indian states, the majority of outpatient services, especially in the rural areas, are provided by private health care providers, most of whom practice modern allopathy without any formal training. This research brief attempts to present some recent evidences to help understand the role and relevance of rural medical practitioners (RMPs) in the context of West Bengal's health care system.
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Tikki Pang wrote a very welcome editorial that discusses what evidence is needed to strengthen the linkages between evidence generation and action in the developing world. Dr Pang highlights several critical areas of exploration that we would like to further clarify and share our views on.
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This study seeks to better understand the role played by PMVs in the provision of AMDs in Nigeria, and to explore ways to improve the regulation and delivery of AMDs.
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The success of China in its transition has received a great deal of attention from economists. At the same time, public health experts have accumulated evidence on setbacks within the Chinese health sector, particularly in rural areas. This paper puts these two bodies of knowledge together.
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This paper provides a review of the research-policy interface in low-income countries and proposes a conceptual framework, followed by directions for empirical approaches.
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China and Vietnam have adopted market reforms in the health sector in the context of market economic reforms. Vietnam has developed a large private health sector, while in China commercialization has occurred mainly in the formal public sector, where user fees are now the main source of facility finance.
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There is renewed interest in the potential contribution of community health workers to child survival. Community health workers can undertake various tasks, including case management of childhood illnesses (eg, pneumonia, malaria, and neonatal sepsis) and delivery of preventive interventions such as immunisation, promotion of healthy behaviour, and mobilisation of communities.
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Medicine sellers are widely used for fever and malaria treatment in sub-Saharan Africa, but concerns surround the appropriateness of drugs and information provided. There is increasing interest in improving their services, so we reviewed the literature on their characteristics, and interventions to improve their malaria-related practices.
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The present study attempts to develop a simple tool to measure poverty in its multidimensionality where it views poverty as an inadequate fulfillment of basic needs, such as food, clothing, shelter, health, education, and social involvement.
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This paper compared the performance of the lot quality assurance sampling (LQAS) method in identifying inadequately-performing health work-areas with that of using health and demographic surveillance system (HDSS) data and examined the feasibility of applying the method by field-level programme supervisors.
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