Affordable primary health care in low-income countries: can it be achieved?

Achieving Universal Health Coverage by Focusing on Primary Care in Japan: Lessons for Low- and Middle-Income Countries

When the Japanese government adopted Western medicine in the late nineteenth century, it left intact the infrastructure of primary care by giving licenses to the existing practitioners and by initially setting the hurdle for entry into medical school low. Public financing of hospitals was kept minimal so that almost all of their revenue came from patient charges. When social health insurance (S...

Universal and affordable health care: how can we achieve it?

I was watching a live TV broadcast of the US House of Representatives voting for the health care reform bill (Affordable Health Care for America Act) in a hotel room on November 7th when I was visiting Philadel-phia to participate in the annual meeting of the Ameri-can Public Health Association. The voting continued, despite it being late on a Saturday night. When the House passed the bill at a...

Health care systems in low- and middle-income countries.

Maternal mental health in primary care in five low- and middle-income countries: a situational analysis

BACKGROUND The integration of maternal mental health into primary health care has been advocated to reduce the mental health treatment gap in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This study reports findings of a cross-country situation analysis on maternal mental health and services available in five LMICs, to inform the development of integrated maternal mental health services integrated ...

Efficiency of Primary Health Care in Low- and Middle-income Countries: Case Studies from Bangladesh

Most of the research concerned with the economics of health systems has focussed on allocative efficiency. Specifically, much effort has been devoted to the development and application of techniques of economic evaluation. The consideration of technical efficiency has figured less prominently in the search for 'solutions' to the problems of health systems. Those working on the economic evaluati...