In Laos health shocks are more common than most other shocks and more concentrated among the poor. They tend to be more idiosyncratic than non-health shocks, and are more costly, partly because they lead to high medical expenses, but also because they lead to income losses that are sizeable...

The authors develop a method in which vignettes-a battery of questions for hypothetical cases-are evaluated with item response theory to create a metric for doctor quality. The method allows a simultaneous estimation of quality and validation of the test instrument that can be used for further...

To examine the relationship between patient satisfaction and doctor performance, the authors observed 2,271 interactions between 292 doctors and their patients in 98 clinics and hospitals in Paraguay and conducted an exit-survey with the same patients as they left the clinic. For a subsample of...

The quality of medical care is a potentially important determinant of health outcomes. Nevertheless, it remains an understudied area. The limited research that exists defines quality either on the basis of drug availability or facility characteristics, but little is known about how provider...

The authors explore the hypothesis that--because of the important role children play in collection activities (firewood, water, grazing)--the demand forchildren may increase as local environmental resources are depleted, setting up a vicious circle between resource depletion and population...

This report examines the various challenges and opportunities of mainstreaming gender issues in social fund projects and offers five good practice examples of gender integration in social fund projects in Ethiopia, Honduras, Malawi, Moldova, and Romania. Each case study takes gender into...

Insufficient attention has been paid to understanding what determines the performance of health workers and how they make labor market choices. This paper reports on findings from focus group discussions with both health workers and users of health services in Ethiopia, a country with some of...

Many developing countries are trying to improve the routine collection of health information by strengthening surveys, censuses, and registration systems. At the international level, too, efforts are underway to provide information on health and health interventions, including statistical...

Many donor agencies have tended to view the problem of financing health care services in developing countries as a problem of cost recovery. Policy reforms based on this view have therefore focused on measures, such as user charges and insurance, intended to generate additional revenues to meet...

Most health professionals who have worked in rural areas have had the experience of being supervised badly: the flying visit by a superiorwho inspects the records, delivers a critical speech, and disappears without ever finding out what is really going on in the health center area. Such visits...