BACKGROUND This article is based upon data gathered during a study conducted in partnership with the World Intellectual Property Organization on the patent status of products appearing on the World Health Organization's 2013 Model List of Essential Medicines (MLEM). It is a statistical analysis aimed at answering: in which developing countries are patents on essential medicines being filed? M...

Background: The National Health Accounts keep track of all healthcare related activities from the beginning (i.e. resource provision), to the end (i.e. service provision). This study was conducted to address following questions: How is the Iranian health system funded? Who distribute the funds? For what services are the funds spent on?, What service providers receive the funds? Methods: The...

BACKGROUND Protecting households against financial risks is one of objectives of any health system. In this regard, Iran's fourth five year developmental plan act in its 90th article, articulated decreasing household's exposure to catastrophic health expenditure to one percent. Hence, this study aimed to measure percentage of Iranian households exposed to catastrophic health expenditures and to...

Total spending on drugs in Canada was forecasted, by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), to have reached $26.9 billion in 2007, an increase of 7.2% over the previous year 1 . Drug expenses were forecasted to represent 16.8% of total healthcare spending in 2007. Drug expenditure growth was lower in 2007 than the 11% increase reported in 2005 and the 9.1% increase in 2003. CIHI ...

This paper contributes to the ongoing debate about economic inequality in India during the post-reform period. We analyze consumption inequality through the hitherto neglected lens of nonfood expenditure. Using household level consumption expenditure data from the quinquennial “thick” rounds of the NSS, we show that inequality within food and non-food groups has declined, even as overall expend...

BACKGROUND Previous research has shown that tobacco control funding in California has reduced per capita cigarette consumption and per capita healthcare expenditures. This paper refines our earlier model by estimating the effect of California tobacco control funding on current smoking prevalence and cigarette consumption per smoker and the effect of prevalence and consumption on per capita heal...

BACKGROUND Due to the current economic crisis in Greece, effects on health and healthcare have been reported. The aim of this study was to present a systematic overview of the consequences that the financial crisis has had for health and healthcare in Greece. METHODS Systematic literature review was conducted in order to identify articles that were published from January 2009 to March 2013 an...