Health Services In Latin America And Asia

On either side of the globe, poor people often do not have access to the health services they need. Improvements in health care systems in Asia have lagged behind economic development, and progress in expanding health coverage in Latin America has been skewed across income levels. Health Services in Latin America and Asia takes a close look at how countries in both regions provide health care services, including the strategies that work and the problems that persist. The book documents encouraging progress in Bolivia, Brazil, China and Vietnam, and important preventive care programs in Central America and Thailand. It also examines health services in Chile, Colombia, the Philippines and Malaysia, as well as the health system and insurance model in Japan.Even though public and preventive health require specific and sustained allocations, both regions continue to use health insurance and other supply mechanisms to expand health service coverage. The book recommends broadening the supply of services through family doctors and community health workers, an alternative approach that would likely improve the equity, efficiency and sustainability of services.

Reshaping Health Care in Latin America: A Comparative Analysis of Health Care Reform in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico

Why do some societies fare well, and others poorly, at reducing the risk of early death? Wealth, Health, and Democracy in East Asia and Latin America finds that the public provision of basic health care and other inexpensive social services has reduced mortality rapidly even in tough economic circumstances, and that political democracy has contributed to the provision and utilization of such social services, in a wider range of ways than is sometimes recognized. These conclusions are based on case studies of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Indonesia, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand, as well as on cross-national comparisons involving these cases and others.

Why do some societies fare well, and others poorly, at reducing the risk of early death? Wealth, Health, and Democracy in East Asia and Latin America finds that the public provision of basic health care and other inexpensive social services has reduced mortality rapidly even in tough economic circumstances, and that political democracy has contributed to the provision and utilization of such social services, in a wider range of ways than is sometimes recognized. These conclusions are based on case studies of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Indonesia, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand, as well as on cross-national comparisons involving these cases and others.

Spanish summary. The full report examines the public policies of 8 high-performing Asian economies (HPAEs) from 1965 to 1990. It seeks to uncover the role those policies played in the dramatic economic growth, improved human welfare, and more equitable income distribution in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Taiwan (China), and Thailand. HPAEs stabilized their economies with sound development policies that led to fast growth. They were committed to sharing the new prosperity by making income distribution more equitable. Their public policies promoted rapid capital accumulation by making banks more reliable and encouraging high levels of domestic savings. They increased the skilled labor force by providing universal primary schooling and better primary and secondary education. Agricultural policies supported productivity, while requiring only modest taxes. HPAEs kept price distortions in check and welcomed new technology and FDI. Legal and regulatory structures created a positive business environment. Cooperation between governments and private enterprises was fostered. Beyond the fundamentals of accepted macroeconomic management, HPAEs adopted policies at variance with the notion of the level playing field of open-market free enterprise. HPAEs targeted key industries for rapid development. In key areas, resource allocation was strictly managed. Trade in manufactured exports was promoted by government-established marketing institutions. Analysts disagree about the effectiveness of such interventions, but agree that without the foundation of macroeconomic stability and development of human and physical capital, the expansion would not have been so dramatic and sustainable. This report reviews the basic development policies of HPAEs that created macroeconomic stability. It explains why most countries should not use government interventions in today's changing global economy.

World Bank Technical Paper No. 274. The preparation of the World Bank's World Development Report 1993: Investing in Health (WDR) included an effort to assemble internationally comparable statistics on a broad range of health and health system indicators. Data had to be compiled from existing sources while analytical efforts were made to improve the quality and comparability of the data. This paper presents an expanded and updated version of the WDR estimates of 1990 health expenditures for the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. Whereas the population cut-off for inclusion in the WDR was 3 million, these tables include almost all countries in the region. This update of the expenditures results in a substantial upward revision in the estimated percentage of GNP spent on health in the region in 1990 from 4 to 6%.

For the last two decades, major Asian economies have successfully kept their economic growth momentum going. Now, as these economies are entering a new phase of economic growth, more attention is being paid to their respective states of social development, especially the provision and the expansion of social security and, in particular, health care. Academic study of the development of health care in developing countries has been for the most part neglected by the literature, and in-depth country case studies that are directly comparable on a one-to-one basis have not yet been conducted in a systematic manner. This book volume also proposes a new stance on health policy and the health care policy paradigm, one that focuses on "saving lives" from premature death, as well as illness, accidents, misery and poverty, based on the normative theory of developmental social policy (DSP). This groundbreaking book will therefore serve as a valuable reference volume for health policy, social policy and public policy experts, social development experts, health and development economists, health sociologists, social workers, government administrators as well as other medical and health professionals and academics.