While women in developing countries continue to die in large numbers in child birth, population and reproductive health specialists and advocates around the world are struggling to keep the policy agenda focused on the rights and needs of poor women. The 1994 Cairo Conference and Program of...

This report focuses on four areas of the health system in which reforms, and innovations would make the most difference to the future of the Indian health system: oversight, public health service delivery, ambulatory curative care, and inpatient care (together with health insurance). Part 1 of...

The overwhelming evidence of inequalities in health outcomes and in the use of health services calculated and disseminated by the World Bank and other development agencies in the last 10 years has energized global efforts to address the needs of the poor and socially vulnerable. These efforts...

Structural transformation of China's economy in the 1980s and its impact on the health sector created a critical need for skills and research capacity in health economics and financing. In 1989 the Government of China (GOC) enlisted the World Bank Institute (WBI) to work with China's Ministry of...

Every year, Ministries of Health the world over develop annual budgets for the health sector. Every year, donors, academicians, advocacy groups, medical trade unions and professional organizations, and health service managers and providers complain that the budgets have the wrong priorities....

This paper summarizes empirical findings from recent World Bank financed analysis on the use of health services by the poor in India (Mahal et al 2000) and some additional analysis conducted with the same data. Three factors motivate the choice of approach taken here and in the background paper....