Preventable and treatable injuries and diseases are overwhelming sub-Saharan Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and other impoverished areas of the world. Why are health outcomes among the world’s poor so dire after the first decade of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and despite a...

COVID-19 mortality has remained low in the poorest countries, exposing the fragile link between prosperity and health. Emerging evidence suggests SARS-CoV-2 did spread widely in low-income countries, but infections were largely asymptomatic. We suggest the demographic transition, the...

Global health scholarship has failed to adequately consider the “BRIC” cluster of nations - Brazil, Russia, India and China - particularly in the aggregate. An article search with the keywords “BRIC” and “public health” yields just one publication. But these countries have a unique...

This article examines the impact of theWorld Bank’s Safe Motherhood Project (SMP) on health outcomes for Indonesia’s poor. Provincial data from 1990 to 2005 was analyzed combining a difference-in-differences approach in multivariate regression analysis with matching of intervention (SMP) and...

With the Paul Wolfowitz era behind it and new appointee Robert Zoellick at the helm, it is time for the World Bank to better define its role in an increasingly crowded and complex global health architecture, says Jennifer Prah Ruger, health economist and former World Bank speechwriter

Developing countries, home to 84 percent of the world’s population and 92 percent of the burden of disease, have only 29 percent of global gross domestic product and 16 percent of health spending. In the past three decades, levels of and contributors to global health aid have increased at an...

Background: Microcosting is a cost estimation method that requires the collection of detailed data on resources utilized, and the unit costs of those resources in order to identify actual resource use and economic costs. Microcosting findings reflect the true costs to health care systems and to...

Development aid for health increased dramatically during the past two decades, raising concerns about inefficiency and lack of coherence among the growing number of global health donors. However, we lack a framework for how donor proliferation affects health program performance to inform...

The appointment of Paul Wolfowitz to take over as World Bank chief prompted a barrage of criticism from activists concerned about his role in the Iraq war. But are these protests justified? Health economist and former World Bank speechwriter Jennifer Prah Ruger reviews the evidence

In July 2004 the international community will convene in Bangkok, Thailand, for the 15th international AIDS conference. The gathering occurs at an opportune time in global health as just months earlier, the World Health Organization and UNAIDS launched the quot;3 by 5quot; programme a global...