Out-of-pocket (OOP) payments are the principal means of financing health care throughout much of Asia. The paper describe the magnitude and distribution of OOP payments for health care in 14 countries and territories accounting for 81% of the Asian population. The focus is on expenditures that...

The budget 2006-07 proposals in health care fell well short of India’s march towards achieving Millennium Development Goals(MDGs), the National Health Policy (NHP) goals and fully operationalising the National Rural Health Mission. Two questions still remain: (a) when will the urban bias...

This paper describes the structure and the distribution of health care financing in 13 territories that account for 55% of the Asian population. Survey data on household payments are combined with Health Accounts data on aggregate expenditures by source to estimate distributions of total health...

Private practice in the health sector was re-introduced from 1980, when China began its economic reform from a planned economy to a market economy. But today the total number of private sector providers is quite few, because the government does not encourage the growth of private sector...

National Health Accounts (NHA) is a tried and tested tool for summarizing, describing, and analyzing the financing of national health systems. The estimates prepared provide clues regarding the essential steps to be taken for better use of health financing to improve health system performance. A...

This paper investigates the effects of safe drinking water and sanitation on diarrhoeal diseases among children in rural Orissa. [Working Paer No. 278]

India’s health policy has focused on primary health centers and hospitals. The numbers of hospital beds, doctors, and nurses per 1000 persons have often been treated less as inputs and more as measures of success of the health policy. Health outcomes such as a reduction in cases of...

Creating and developing fair and evidence-based national and global systems to more rationally set priorities for public spending on health. An interim secretariat should be there to incubate a global health technology assessment facility designed to help governments develop national systems and...

This paper examines the multi-dimensional nature of urban poverty with special emphasis on ill-health led deprivation. As a driver of poverty, ill-health reduces the income earning potential and increases expenditure on medication, thereby causing asset depletion, increasing debt and worsening...

If the Union Budget 2014 is anything to go by , the fiscal policy of the new government shows no change. In fact, there is an amazing continuity with the previous few Budgets. Significantly however, there are signs that the Union government appears to be abdicating its responsibility towards the...