In the decade since the Doha Declaration was adopted, significant progress has been made in addressing problems associated with innovation and access to medicines, including through expanded financial support for procurement and distribution of treatments and vaccines and the establishment of...

This chapter provides a broader view of the development of international laws impacting the protection of drugs from the lens of patents as either a privilege or a right. In particular, this chapter demonstrates how domestic and international laws and policies impacting access to medicine is a...

Annual worldwide spending on medicines is anticipated to exceed $1.2 trillion by 2016. Developing countries, and particularly so-called emerging markets, will account for a substantial portion of the growth in spending on medicines. A good part of global market demand will be satisfied by...

This article analyzes the difficulties surrounding justiciability of the right to health care in Nigeria and the implications for access issues. It argues that claims denying justiciability on the grounds of an absence of a legal foundation and/or paucity of resources are misplaced. This...

This paper compares health care systems. It looks beyond normal academic, political, or journalistic rhetoric, by exactly sticking to facts, i.e. empirical data (in particular data provided by the WHO) and comprehensive case study analyses. The paper finds that a number of myths and common...

There are no ready-made data on hospital outputs and inputs which would allow comprehensive international comparisons of hospital efficiency to be carried out. This paper, therefore, relies on selected evidence to compare hospital efficiency in a subset of OECD countries, based on three...

Israel presents an intriguing conundrum: on the one hand, it provides quality healthcare in a near-universal healthcare system; on the other, it has maintained healthcare costs level at approximately 7.7% of GDP. This comes at a time when all western nations struggle with one or both sides of...

In this article, we discuss the public health provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). We first set forth a framework to identify the key reforms that are needed for a robust public health system. These include workforce and infrastructure investments. We then assess...

Overall, health outcomes in China have improved tremendously over the past three decades, especially thanks to the reduction in some traditional infectious diseases. However, death rates from chronic diseases have been on the rise, not least owing to changes in life styles and deteriorating...

In Scandinavia, the provision of health care services has been, almost entirely, the responsibility of the public health care system. However, in the last five to seven years there has been remarkable growth in the private health care market. These health care services are obtained normally...