The benefits of good health to individuals and to society are strongly positive and improving the health of the poor is a key Millennium Development Goal. A typical health strategy advocated by some is increased public spending on health targeted to favor the poor and backed by foreign...

Vietnam's Health Care Fund for the Poor (HCFP) uses government revenues to finance health care for the poor, ethnic minorities living in selected mountainous provinces designated as difficult, and all households living in communes officially designated as highly disadvantaged. The program, which...

The diffusion of cost-effective life saving technologies has reduced infant mortality in much of the developing world. Income gains may also play a direct, protective role in ensuring child survival, although the empirical findings to date on this issue have been mixed. This paper assembles data...

This paper investigates the extent to which the health systems of the Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and Kosovo) have succeeded in providing financial protection against adverse health events. The authors examine disparities in health status, healthcare...

This paper analyzes the importance of strengthening the relationship of accountability between health service providers and citizens for improving access to and quality of health care. How this is to be achieved, and whether it works, however, remain open questions. The paper presents a...

The 1997 Indonesian financial crisis resulted in severe economic dislocation and political upheaval, and the detrimental consequences for economic welfare, physical health, and child education have been previously established in numerous studies. We also find the crisis adversely impacted...

This paper explores the major challenges to the sustainability of health sector financing in the countries of the Western Balkans - Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and the province of Kosovo. It focuses on how the incentives created...

In the public sector in developing countries, leakage of public resources could prove detrimental to users and affect the well-being of the population. This paper empirically examines the importance of leakage of government resources in the health sector in Chad, and its effects on the prices of...

Tuberculosis is the most important infectious cause of adult deaths after HIV/AIDS in low- and middle-income countries. This paper evaluates the economic benefits of extending the World Health Organization's DOTS Strategy (a multi-component approach that includes directly observed treatment,...

The post-communist transition to social health insurance in many of the Central and Eastern European and Central Asian countries provides a unique opportunity to try to answer some of the unresolved issues in the debate over the relative merits of social health insurance and tax-financed health...