Lanterna Rally
eBook PDF Download Digital Library
Toward Universal Health Coverage and Equity in Latin America and the Caribbean
Author: Tania Dmytraczenko
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Published: 2015-06-30
Total Pages: 247
ISBN-13: 1464804559
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Over the past three decades, many countries of Latin America and the Caribbean have recognized health as a human right. Since the early 2000s, 46 million more people in the countries studied are covered by health programs with explicit guarantees of affordable care. Reforms have been accompanied by a rise in public spending for health, financed largely from general revenues that prioritized or explicitly target the population without capacity to pay. Political commitment has generally translated into larger budgets as well as passage of legislation that ring-fenced funding for health. Most countries have prioritized cost-effective primary care and adopted purchasing methods that incentivize efficiency and accountability for results, and that give stewards of the health sector greater leverage to steer providers to deliver on public health priorities. Evidence from the analysis of 54 household surveys corroborates that investments in extending coverage are yielding results. Though the poor still have worse health outcomes than the rich, disparities have narrowed considerably - particularly in the early stage of the life course. Countries have reached high levels of coverage and equity in utilization of maternal and child health services; coverage of noncommunicable disease interventions is not as high and service utilization is still skewed toward the better off. Catastrophic health expenditures have declined in most countries; the picture regarding equity, however, is mixed. While the rate of impoverishment owing to health-care expenditures is low and generally declining, 2-4 million people in the countries studied still fall below the poverty line after health spending. Efforts to systematically monitor quality of care in the region are still in their infancy. Nonetheless, a review of the literature reveals important shortcomings in quality of care, as well as substantial differences across subsystems. Improving quality of care and ensuring sustainability of investments in health remain an unfinished agenda.
Toward Universal Health Coverage and Equity in Latin America and the Caribbean
Health Care Problems in Latin America and the Caribbean
Left Behind
Author: Renos Vakis
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Published: 2016-07-26
Total Pages: 192
ISBN-13: 1464806616
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →One out of every five Latin Americans or around 130 million people have never known anything but poverty, subsisting on less than US$4-a-day throughout their lives. These are the region ́s chronically poor, who have remained so despite unprecedented inroads against poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean since the turn of the century. Left Behind: Chronic Poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean takes a closer look at the region’s entrenched poor, who and where they are, and how existing policies need to change in order to effectively assist them. The book shows significant variations of rates of chronic poverty both across and within countries. Within a single country, some regions show incidence rates up to eight times higher than the lowest. Despite the higher rates of chronic poverty in rural areas, chronic poverty is as much an urban as a rural issue. In fact, considering absolute numbers, urban areas in many countries, including Chile, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and the Dominican Republic, have more chronic poor than rural areas. Undoubtedly the region has come a long way during the decade in terms of poverty reduction, guided by a mix of sustained growth and increased levels in amounts and quality of public spending and programs targeted directly or indirectly to the chronic poor. While improving endowments and the context where the chronic poor live is a necessary condition going forward, the decade’s experience suggests that it may not be enough to reach the chronic poor. The book posits that refinements to the existing policy toolkit †“ as opposed to more programs †“ may come a long way in helping the remaining poor. These refinements include intensifying efforts to improve coordination between different social and economic programs, which can boost the income generation process and deal with the intergenerational transmission of chronic poverty by investing in early childhood development. Equally important though, there is an urgent need to adapt programs to directly address the psychological toll of chronic poverty on people’s mindset and aspirations, which currently undermines the effectiveness of the existing policy efforts.
Policy Choices and Practical Problems in Health Economics
Author: Catherine Overholt
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Published: 1996
Total Pages: 246
ISBN-13: 9780821330128
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Conservation of biological diversity is important for sustainable development, and decentralization is a key aspect of good governance. Whether decentralization promotes conservation and if so, under what conditions, is the topic of this book. This study draws insights from field experience and traces the complex interactions among various factors involved, such as degree and type of decentralization, community participation, institutional capacity, and economic incentives. Local and international experts present case studies from experiences in Colombia, Costa Rica, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Nepal, Nigeria, the Philippines, Russia, and Zimbabwe. Subsequent chapters review 32 World Bank and Global Environment Facility projects and their impact on habitat conservation, describe a possible model of a decentralized country, and look at lessons learned from the overall study.
Medicine and Public Health in Latin America
Author: Marcos Cueto
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2015
Total Pages: 317
ISBN-13: 110702367X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This book provides a clear, broad, and provocative synthesis of the history of Latin American medicine.
The Health Workforce in Latin America and the Caribbean
Author: Carmen Carpio
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Published: 2015-06-25
Total Pages: 133
ISBN-13: 1464805954
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This report provides a status update on the human resources for health (HRH) sub-system in six Latin American and Caribbean countries: Colombia, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Panama, Peru, and Uruguay. The report structures its discussion around how the health workforce is financed, organized, managed, regulated, and performing. In the area of financing, the study presents the variety of contracting mechanisms, salary levels, and financial incentives offered across the countries and their role in being able to attract and retain health workers. On the organization of the HRH sub-system, the report looks at the skill-mix, training, and distribution of health care workers concluding that although the countries have made progress towards achieving key HRH targets and in making education more accessible, there continues to be limited absorption capacity for graduates, the Primary Health Care focus of training programs needs to be strengthened, and strategies to encourage rural service have not been able to fully address the gap in the distribution of health workers. In reviewing management strategies for HRH, the report presents how all countries have adopted the WHO Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel to recognize foreign-trained professionals to help address shortages and fill gaps of health worker presence in rural, remote areas. However, the countries continue to struggle with putting self-sufficiency policies in place to meet HRH needs such as the lack of promotion plans, limited non-monetary incentives, and the shortage of personnel for recruitment and eventual placement. In the area of regulation, the report presents the countries' efforts to reduce precarious employment and introduce HRH safety policies and legislation to regulate disputes and negotiations. On performance, the report found mixed results in the areas of access/availability to health workers and quality of care, factors discouraging dual practice, and unjustified absenteeism of health workers.
Health Systems Inequalities and Poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean
Author: World Bank. Equity in Health in LAC Project
Publisher:
Published: 1999*
Total Pages:
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Beyond Survival
Author: Truman G. Packard
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Published: 2006-06-20
Total Pages: 196
ISBN-13: 082136572X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →'Beyond Survival' breaks new ground in the ongoing debate about health finance and financial protection from the costs of health care. The evidence and discussion support the need to consider financial protection, in addition to health status, as a policy objective when setting priorities for health systems. This book reviews the Latin American experience with health reform in the last 20 years and the fundamentals of health system financing, using new evidence to show the magnitude and mechanisms that determine the impoverishing effects of health events (diseases, accidents, and those of the life cycle). It provides options for policy makers on how to protect, and help household to protect themselves,against this impoverishment. The authors use empirical evidence from six case studies commissioned for this report, on Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras, and Mexico. This book provides policy makers with a solid conceptual basis for decisions on the contents of mandatory health insurance benefit packages, choices of financing mechanisms, and the roles of public policy in this field. 'Beyond Survival' provides an in-depth analysis of, and organizational alternatives for, risk pooling and health insurance for financial protection. It analyzes the urgent need to extend risk pooling to the informal sector, the challenges for current social insurance arrangements, and options for policy makers to effectively extend risk pooling to the informal sector.
