Two fundamental goals of health systems are to maximise overall population health gain (referred to as efficiency) and to minimise unfair health inequalities (equity). Often there is a trade-off in maximising efficiency vis a vis equity and the relative weight given to one goal over the other is...

Background Decentralisation aims to bring services closer to the community and has been advocated in the health sector to improve quality, access and equity, and to empower local agencies, increase innovation and efficiency and bring healthcare and decision-making as close as possible to where...