Pro-poor health strategies
Health strategies must address the needs of poor people if the MDGs are to be met. This demands that development strategies are formulated to give priority to common health problems, and implemented in ways that are meaningful for poor people.
Resource limitations mean that cost-effectiveness is a core policy consideration. However, many poor people live in harder to reach locations, where government administrative systems are weak and governance is limited. This raises challenges for managers and policy-makers. A number of innovative efforts to overcome these problems are presented here.
- Designing health and population programmes to reach the poor
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This report, by the Population Reference Bureau, analyses programmes and interventions aimed at promoting greater access to quality health care services for poor people. It notes that poor people are more likely to suffer from health problems and less likely to use health services than more well off people.
Recommended readings
- Macroeconomics and health: investing in health for economic development
- ( J.D. Sachs / Commission on Macroeconomics and Health, WHO , 2001)
- Recommended reading
- Scaling up the resources spent in the health sector by poor countries and donors could help to avert up to 8 million deaths by 2010. This is the key message of the Commission on Macroeconomics and Hea...
- Dying for change: poor people’s experience of health and ill-health
- ( A. Kern; J. Ritzen / World Bank , 2001)
- What can we learn from the World Bank’s (WB) Voices of the Poor study that relates specifically to poor people’s experiences of health and ill-health? This study draws on the 3 volumes published as a ...
- Health and poverty in sub-Saharan Africa
- ( G. Bloom; H. Lucas / Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, UK , 1999)
- Poverty and ill health are intimately linked, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa where public health services are severely strained. A report by the UK Institute of Development Studies suggests that p...
- Poverty and health
- ( OECD Development Centre , 2003)
- Improving health outcomes is a prerequisite necessary for developing countries to break out of the poverty cycle, but how can this be achieved? This DAC Reference Document, aimed at development agency...
Latest Additions
- Review of pro-poor health policies in South Africa
- ( K. S. Chetty / Health Systems Knowledge Network , 2007)
- This paper reviews literature on the health care policies that were implemented by the South African democratic government in order to promote equity following the end of the apartheid government in 1...
Allocation of sufficient public resources and policies of universal access to health care can ensure greater benefits for poor people
- ( O. O’Donnell;E. van Doorslaer;R. P. Rannan-Eliya / Equitap , 2005)
- This paper by EQUITAP examines the benefit incidence of public health care subsidies in eleven Asian territories including India, Indonesia, and two provinces of China. Distinguishing between hospital...
