Low- and middle-income countries face major challenges to their health systems. These include a high burden of communicable disease and an emerging non-communicable disease burden. Coverage of effective services and interventions is inadequate and often constrained by funding availability. At...

Financial incentives are increasingly being advocated as an effective means to influence health-related behaviours. There is, however, limited evidence on whether they work in low-income countries, particularly when implemented at scale. This paper explores the impact of a national programme in...

We examine the impact of removing user fees for healthcare in rural Ghana using data from a randomized experiment that includes rich information on objective measures of child health status. We find that free care increased use of formal healthcare shifting care seeking away from informal...

Despite a tremendous increase in financial resources, many countries are not on track to achieve the child and maternal mortality targets set out in the Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5. It is commonly argued that two main social factors - improved democratic governance and aggregate income...

Objectives To examine the levels of geographic inequities in households' choice of providers, mode of diagnosis and drugs for the treatment of malaria.Methods Interviewer-administered questionnaire was used to collect information from 2250 randomly selected respondents from six malaria-endemic...

This study uses a partial equilibrium simulation model to explore how price subsidies for insecticide-treated mosquito nets (ITNs) affect households' purchases of ITNs. The model describes the ITN market in a typical developing country and is applied to the situation in Tanzania, where the...

As agents for their patients, providers often make treatment decisions on behalf of patients, and their choices can affect health outcomes. However, providers operate within a network of relationships and are agents not only for their patients, but also other health sector actors, such as their...

The world’s poorest pay for professional services and thus are in a “market,” whether the services are provided in the public or private sectors. The associated problems of unequal information are particularly acute in undergoverned countries, where state regulation is weak. We...