South Africa has a well-established private voluntary health insurance sector. At present, only 16% of the South African population are members of these medical schemes. The rest of the population depends on public sector health care. Yet more than 60% of resources are located in the private...

Illness is a major risk to people's livelihoods in resource-poor settings, particularly where there are rising levels of chronic illness. Measures that improve access to treatment are increasingly seen as a vital form of social protection for vulnerable households, and central to the achievement...

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...