This book combines a comprehensive overview of the Brazilian hospital sector with in-depth analyses of the key elements of interest in promoting and ensuring excellence in hospital performance. It does so in an accessible manner and within the organizational and financial context of Brazil....

The report is divided into five chapters. This chapter provides background on demographic and epidemiological trends, the configuration of Ghana's health system, and health financing functions and health systems goals. It also describes Ghana's health financing system. Chapter two assesses the...

The way countries finance health care influences how well a health system performs and achieves its expected outcomes, including how equitable and efficient it is. Countries decide how to mobilize revenues from different sources for financing health care, how to pool revenues in public and...

Over the past decade, faster growth and smarter social policy have reversed the trend in Latin America's poverty. Too slowly and insufficiently, but undeniably, the percentage of Latinos who are poor has at long last begun to fall. This has shifted the political and policy debates from poverty...

The report shows that there is good evidence that conditional cash transfers (CCTs) have improved the lives of poor people. Transfers generally have been well targeted to poor households, have raised consumption levels, and have reduced poverty, by a substantial amount in some countries....