A forthcoming report by the World Health Organization (WHO) on evidence for policy is already fuelling passionate debate, especially among scientists. Opinions are divided: some scientists believe strongly in the systematic assessment of evidence on the effectiveness of health system...

Low-income countries face numerous challenges in the health sector. Resources currently dedicated to health services are insufficient and there is a need for an increase in the efforts from the North. Yet, a reflection on the way health systems are organised in the South is required as well. A...

To assess the impact on equity and effectiveness of introducing targeted subsidies for the poor into existing voluntary health insurance schemes in Low Income Countries with special reference to cross-subsidisation.

The treatment outcomes for large-scale public antiretroviral therapy (ART) programs in developing countries, although promising, are still preliminary. The scaling-up of ART in resource-limited settings is inevitably hampered by human resource shortages. Therefore, community support for ART...

Scaling-up antiretroviral treatment (ART) to socially meaningful levels in low-income countries with a high AIDS burden is constrained by (1) the continuously growing caseload of people to be maintained on long-term ART; (2) evident problems of shortage and skewed distribution in the health...

Public providers have no financial incentive to respect their legal obligation to exempt the poor from user fees. Health Equity Funds (HEFs) aim to make exemptions effective by giving NGOs responsibility for assessing eligibility and compensating providers for lost revenue. We use the geographic...

Reaching out to the poor and the informal sector is a major challenge for achieving universal coverage in lesser-developed countries. In Cambodia, extensive coverage by health equity funds for the poor has created the opportunity to consolidate various non-government health financing schemes...

This discussion paper resulted in an article in <I>Journal of Health Economics</I> (2013). Volume 32, issue 6, pages 1180-93.<P> Public providers have no financial incentive to respect their legal obligation to exempt the poor from user fees. Health Equity Funds (HEFs) aim to make exemptions effective by...</p></i>

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. It...