India spends 6 percent of its GDP on health-three times the amount spent by Indonesia and twice that of China-and spending on non-chronic morbidities is three times that of chronic illnesses. It is normally assumed that the high spending on non-chronic illnesses reflects the prevalence of...

Geographical imbalances in the health workforce have been a consistent feature of nearly all health systems, especially in developing countries. The authors investigate the willingness to work in a rural area among final year nursing and medical students in Ethiopia. Analyzing data obtained from...

Financial crisis is a common state of affairs in the government health sector of many developing countries, and an increasing number are considering implementing user charges and insurance programs to shift some of the financial burden for health services away from direct budget allocations by a...

This paper assesses the extent to which provider payment mechanisms can help developing countries address their leading health care problems. It first identifies four key problems in the health care systems in developing countries: 1) public facilities, which provide the bulk of secondary and...

A complement to recent in-depth quantitative analyses of rural poverty in Ecuador, this is a report on the results of the Rural Qualitative Assessment in living conditions in rural communities in all three Ecuador's diverse regions. Using a variety of qualitative techniques, the research aimed...

The author examines the role of different data collection methods--including the types of data they produce--in the analysis of social phenomena in developing countries. He points out that one confusing factor in the"quantitative-qualitative"debate is that a distinction is not clearly made...

This paper review PHN lending for FY88. PHN lending rebounded in FY88 to $ 304.9 million for eight projects, a 50 percent increase in volumeover the previous five year average. Lending for health predominated, while population lending accounted for 27 percent of the total. Interest in nutrition...

This paper investigates individuals'bypassing behavior in the health sector in Chad and the determinants of individuals'facility choice. The authors introduce a new way to measure bypassing using the patients'own knowledge of alternative health providers available to them instead of assuming...

What strategies have Russian households used, to cope with economic hardship in the wake of recent financial crisis? Which coping strategies have been most effective in reducing poverty for different groups of households? And how have people been able to adapt to the dramatic drop in formal cash...

New Zealand's new Recognized Seasonal Employer program allows workers from the Pacific Islands to come to New Zealand for up to seven months to work in the horticulture and viticulture industries. One of the explicit objectives of the program is to encourage economic development in the Pacific....