The complex ways in which decentralization is practised in the ®eld of government health services are examined. Organizationally, decentralization means a choice between different types of public institution, which vary in terms of: the areas over which they have jurisdiction, the functions delegated to local institutions; and the way decision-makers are recruited, so producing institutions. Th...

In 1991, Indonesia began a process of decentralization in the health sector which had implications for the country's public hospitals. The public hospitals were given greater authority to manage their own personnel, finance and procurement, with which they were allowed to operate commercial sections in addition to offering public services. These public services are subsidized by the government,...

1 Nossal Institute for Global Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia, 2 UNICEF Office for China, Beijing, People’s Republic of China, 3 Department of Health Policy and Administration, School of Public Health, Peking University, Beijing, People’s Republic of China, 4 Department of Health Statistics and Social Medicine, Fudan University School of Public Health, Shanghai, People’s R...

How does the degree of political decentralization in a country affect the quality of its government? Greater political decentralization might make governments more honest and efficient by bringing officials “closer to the people”, forcing them to compete for mobile capital, and facilitating the satisfaction of diverse local tastes. On the other hand, it might create coordination problems or roa...

BACKGROUND Throughout the economic and political reforms in post-communist countries, significant changes have also occurred in public morality. One of the tasks of the Lithuanian health policy is to create mechanisms for strengthening the significance of ethical considerations in the decision-making processes concerning health care of individuals and groups of individuals, as well as consideri...

the article by brenna and spandonaro on interregional mobility for acute hospital care in italy raises important issues concerning social and territorial equity in a healthcare system. based on regions and private providers’ strategic behavior, the hypothesis adopted to explain patient cross-border mobility (cbm), demonstrated by statistical analysis, may be further explored using qualitative m...

Both Senegal and Ethiopia have recently undertaken changes in the political and financial administration of government services, decentralizing decisionmaking power to local levels. In Senegal, decentralization of health service planning and implementation to the district level poses both challenges and opportunities to the financing, treatment, and prevention of HIV. The positive consequences ...

In Lao PDR, lack of skilled manpower and financial resources in the central government, plus the policy urging local authorities to be self-sufficient and self-reliant caused the central government to decentralize all sectors to the provincial level in 1987. After 1987, the provinces took over all responsibilities such as planning, financing and provision of health services, only informing the ...

BACKGROUND Current service delivery systems do not reach all people in need of antiretroviral therapy (ART). In order to inform the operational and service delivery section of the WHO 2013 consolidated antiretroviral guidelines, our objective was to summarize systematic reviews on integrating ART delivery into maternal, newborn, and child health (MNCH) care settings in countries with generalize...