Governments have faced difficult decisions over the past months, but the decision to remove unnecessary barriers to accessing COVID-19 health technologies like vaccines, diagnostics and treatments should be an obvious one. This decision is currently under debate among member states of the World Trade Organization, who are considering a proposal to waive global intellectual property […]
Category: Health financing
Domestic health financing for Covid-19 response in Africa
This blog is a part of #COVID19Africa Series The outbreak of Covid-19 imposes additional financing requirements to prevent, detect and respond in a timely and effective manner. Underfunding of health is a persistent problem in African countries, resulting in weak health systems and gaps in service delivery. Required funding to promote universal access to primary […]
Why We Need to Address Surgery in Low-Resource Countries ?
Surgery remains grossly neglected in global health. This particularly affects low-resource settings with weak surgical health systems. ‘Global surgery’ is the term now adopted to describe the rapidly developing field seeking to address this, although recognition of this emerging multidisciplinary area is still evolving. To help define this interface between surgery, anaesthesia, and public health, […]
‘Sin tax’: making clear who commits the sin
As countries introduce policy measures to respond to the growing epidemic of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), one policy intervention that is becoming increasingly popular is excise tax imposed on harmful products such as tobacco and alcohol – popularly known as ‘sin tax’1. This form of tax serves a dual purpose: reducing consumption of unhealthy products and […]
We need to question all ‘donor fads’, not only performance-based financing
By Shola Molemodile I applaud Paul and colleagues, authors of the recent BMJ Global Health paper on performance-based financing in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), for being bold. We need more daring authors in health systems and global health, who are unafraid to state the obvious as these authors have done. While many may be […]
How to ask for more trouble in an ailing health system
By Meena Putturaj Photo by Geralt under CC 0 India is one of the world’s largest economies and its health system is ranked 154th globally by the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015. Time and again, India has expressed its commitment to achieving universal health coverage (UHC), but are the policy choices being made in […]
Towards a more balanced rethinking of performance-based financing
By Maarten Oranje In a recently published paper in BMJ Global Health, a group of authors (Paul et al) challenged overly optimistic views on performance-based financing (PBF) in the health sector, and its implementation in low- and middle-income countries. While some of the issues they raised are legitimate, the paper paints an overall picture of […]
Where are the economic benefits we, the TB-affected, were promised?
Deepti Chavan When the Government of India in its National Tuberculosis Strategic Plan 2017-2022 announced that tuberculosis (TB) patients would be provided direct economic benefits while on treatment, I was overjoyed. I have seen up close and upfront how TB affects a family’s economic status. I am a multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB survivor. My six-year […]
Fee-for-service – a bold measure by the Afghan health ministry
The Afghan Ministry of Public Health has recently announced a User Fee Regulation under which user fees will be levied for services in secondary and tertiary public health facilities. The details of how much will be charged, for what services, and when the regulation will actually come into effect are yet to be known. What […]