Cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) is increasingly important in public health decision making, including in low- and middle-income countries. The decision makers’ valuation of a unit of health gain, or ceiling ratio (λ), is important in CEA as the relative value against which acceptability is...

The impact of market concentration has been little studied in markets for ambulatory care in the developing world, where the retail sector often accounts for a high proportion of treatments. This study begins to address this gap through an analysis of the consumer market for malaria treatment in...

Health systems reform processes have increasingly recognized the essential contribution of communities to the success of health programs and development activities in general. Here we examine the experience from Kilifi district in Kenya of implementing annual health sector planning guidelines...

The role of shops as an important first source of treatment for many illnesses is well documented. Far less attention has been directed towards the broader role that shops and shopkeepers may play in household coping behaviour, for example by offering credit to help meet the direct and indirect...

The burden of chronic illnesses is rising throughout the world but information on barriers to managing such diseases in developing countries is scarce. Qualitative data from focus group discussions and interview transcripts from a longitudinal study involving 22 households in urban, coastal...

The value of the social sciences is increasingly recognised in health services and clinical research, contributing to an increasing number of multi-disciplinary, multi-method studies. Such studies offer numerous advantages, but also pose particular challenges, including different approaches to...

The last major review of urban health in developing countries was published in 1992. At that time, knowledge was largely limited to crude rural-urban comparisons and some ad hoc studies of low-income urban communities. Most research was done on communicable (infectious) diseases and little was...