Decision makers and the public are in need of information to guide their decisions about how to strengthen health services. This book pulls together available evidence concerning strategies to improve health services delivery in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), using current methods to...

This case study aims to identify how Ethiopia has adopted and implemented strategies to improve health services, including the factors that enabled and inhibited success across a meaningful range of health services for the period 1996-2006. Particular emphasis has been given to the impact of...

The health workforce plays a key role in increasing access to health services for the poor in developing countries. Recent evidence has demonstrated an important link between staffing levels and both service delivery and health outcomes. Various global and country-level estimates have also shown...

The supply of nurses in the English-Speaking Caribbean is insufficient to meet the demand with growing shortages fuelled by the health needs of a rapidly aging population and tremendous losses of human capital occurring at multiple points in the markets. In defining the scope of commitments of a...

India faces significant challenges in attracting qualified health workers to rural areas. In 2010 the authors conducted a Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE) in the Indian states of Uttarakhand and Andhra Pradesh to understand what health departments in India could do to make rural service more...

The paucity of qualified health workers in rural areas is a critical challenge for India's health sector. Although state governments have instituted several mechanisms, salary and non-salary, to attract health workers to rural areas, individually these mechanisms typically focus on single issues...

This case study analyzes the reasons for adoption and the implementation process of a key policy in Chhattisgarh state, India, to create a rural cadre of trained physicians in order to address the acute shortage of doctors in the state's primary health facilities. It documents the experience...

In the past thirty years, Sub-Saharan African countries have made remarkable improvements in health conditions and status. However, they still suffer from some of the worst health problems in the world, and AIDS is making conditions much worse than they will be otherwise. This study, health...

This paper summarizes empirical findings from recent World Bank financed analysis on the use of health services by the poor in India (Mahal et al 2000) and some additional analysis conducted with the same data. Three factors motivate the choice of approach taken here and in the background paper....

This report focuses on four areas of the health system in which reforms, and innovations would make the most difference to the future of the Indian health system: oversight, public health service delivery, ambulatory curative care, and inpatient care (together with health insurance). Part 1 of...