Increasing health care costs is an international problem from which SouthAfrica is not excluded. Prescription medication contributes most to these high health care costs,and methods to reduce their costs to society are implemented worldwide. In South Africa, sucha method is a managed care...

Health is a fundamental human right. Access to health care, which includes providing apopulation with safe, effective, good quality drugs at the least possible cost, is a prerequisite torealising that right. Drugs or medicines play a fundamental role in the effectiveness, efficiencyand...

The most frequent intervention performed by physicians is the writing of a prescription. Modern medicine has been remarkably effective in managing diseases. Medicines play a fundamentalrole in the effectiveness, efficiency and responsiveness of health care systems. However,health care...

Background: Reducing rates of healthcare acquired infection has been identified by the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care as a national priority. One of the goals is the prevention of central venous catheter-related bloodstream infection (CR-BSI). At least 3,500 cases of...

Maternal and infant mortality is a global health issue with a significant social and economic impact. Each year, over half a million women worldwide die due to complications related to pregnancy or childbirth, four million infants die in the first 28 days of life, and eight million infants die...

Background: There is ongoing interest in assessing the effectiveness of various drug control strategies, including policy intended to reduce initiation and prevalence. Compartmental models of trajectories of drug use have been developed that demonstrate that drug “systems” display...

Background: There is ongoing interest in assessing the effectiveness of various drug control strategies, including policy intended to reduce initiation and prevalence. Compartmental models of trajectories of drug use have been developed that demonstrate that drug “systems” display...

ENGLISH ABSTRACT: South Africa is on the verge of major changes in the private medical sector. The government’s planned National Health Insurance has far reaching implications for all role players in the industry, as well as for the general public. This paper looks at the changes that have...

The economic calculations carried out prior to the Plan for the Aquatic Environment III included a comparison of regulation systems aimed at reducing nitrogen leaching, analyses of measures for reducing phosphorus losses and estimation of administrative costs. The conclusions were that taxation...

Decisions concerning environmental protection hinge on estimates of economic burden. Over the past 30 years, economists have developed and applied various tools to measure this burden. In this paper, developed as a chapter for the Handbook of Environmental Economics, we present a taxonomy of...