Transforming Health Markets In Asia And Africa

There has been a dramatic spread of health markets in much of Asia and Africa over the past couple of decades. This has substantially increased the availability of health-related goods and services in all but the most remote localities, but it has created problems with safety, efficiency and cost. This book documents the problems associated with unregulated health markets and presents innovative approaches that have emerged to address them.

Health Service Marketing Management in Africa (978-0-429-40085-8, K402492) Shelving Guide: Business & Management / Marketing Management The application of marketing to healthcare is a fascinating field that will likely have more impact on society than any other field of marketing. It’s been theorized that an intrinsically unstable environment characterizes this very relevant emerging field, hence raising new questions. Changing regulations, discoveries, and new health treatments continuously appear and give rise to such questions. Advancements in technology not only improve healthcare delivery systems but also provide avenues for customers to seek information regarding their health conditions and influence their participatory behaviors or changing roles in the service delivery. Increasingly, there is a shift from a doctor-led approach to a more patient-centered approach. In Africa, the importance of marketing-driven practices in improving the delivery of healthcare services cannot be overemphasized. The issue of healthcare delivery and management is significant for policymakers, private sector players, and consumers of health-related services in developing economy contexts. Scholars have strongly argued in favor of marketing and value creation in healthcare service delivery in Africa. Each country in Africa has its own issues. For example, long waiting times, unavailable medications, and unfriendly staff are just a sampling of issues affecting the acceptability of healthcare services. These examples highlight the need to utilize marketing and value creation tools in the delivery of healthcare services. Furthermore, there is a need for the integration of service marketing and management principles to enhance the delivery of quality healthcare across Africa and other developing economies which is the critical focus of this book. This book responds to calls for quality healthcare service management practices or processes from developing economy perspectives. Focusing primarily on African and other developing economy contexts, this book covers seven thematic areas: strategy in healthcare; marketing imperatives in healthcare management; product and pricing management in healthcare; distribution and marketing communications in healthcare; managing people in healthcare; physical evidence and service quality management in healthcare; and process management in healthcare.

Zoonotic diseases – pathogens transmitted from animals to people – offer particularly challenging problems for global health institutions and actors, given the complex social-ecological dynamics at play. New forms of risk caused by unprecedented global connectivity and rapid social and environmental change demand new approaches. ‘One Health’ highlights the need for collaboration across sectors and disciplines to tackle zoonotic diseases. However, there has been little exploration of how social, political and economic contexts influence efforts to ‘do’ One Health. This book fills this gap by offering a much needed political economy analysis of zoonosis research and policy. Through ethnographic, qualitative and quantitative data, the book draws together a diverse number of case studies. These include chapters exploring global narratives about One Health operationalization and prevailing institutional bottlenecks; the evolution of research networks over time; and the histories and politics behind conflicting disease control approaches. The themes from these chapters are further contextualized and expanded upon through country-specific case studies – from Kenya, Zambia, Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone – exploring the translation of One Health research and policy into the African context. This book is a valuable resource for academic researchers, students and policy practitioners in the areas of global health, agriculture and development.

Multiple ‘green transformations’ are required if humanity is to live sustainably on planet Earth. Recalling past transformations, this book examines what makes the current challenge different, and especially urgent. It examines how green transformations must take place in the context of the particular moments of capitalist development, and in relation to particular alliances. The role of the state is emphasised, both in terms of the type of incentives required to make green transformations politically feasible and the way states must take a developmental role in financing innovation and technology for green transformations. The book also highlights the role of citizens, as innovators, entrepreneurs, green consumers and members of social movements. Green transformations must be both ‘top-down’, involving elite alliances between states and business, but also ‘bottom up’, pushed by grassroots innovators and entrepreneurs, and part of wider mobilisations among civil society. The chapters in the book draw on international examples to emphasise how contexts matter in shaping pathways to sustainability Written by experts in the field, this book will be of great interest to researchers and students in environmental studies, international relations, political science, development studies, geography and anthropology, as well as policymakers and practitioners concerned with sustainability.

Despite decades of effort and billions of dollars spent, two thirds of people in sub-Saharan Africa still lack access to electricity, a vital pre-cursor to economic development and poverty reduction. Ambitious international policy commitments seek to address this, but scholarship has failed to keep pace with policy ambitions, lacking both the empirical basis and the theoretical perspective to inform such transformative policy aims. Sustainable Energy for All aims to fill this gap. Through detailed historical analysis of the Kenyan solar PV market the book demonstrates the value of a new theoretical perspective based on Socio-Technical Innovation System Building. Importantly, the book goes beyond a purely academic critique to detail exactly how a Socio-Technical Innovation System Building approach might be operationalized in practice, facilitating both a detailed plan for future comparative research as well as a clear agenda for policy and practice. Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tandfbis/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9781138656925_oachapter01.pdf Chapter 6 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tandfbis/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9781138656925_oachapter06.pdf

India is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. Yet health is not a part of our ambitious development story. In fact, India’s disproportionately stingy healthcare budget makes some of the poorer nations look better in comparison. Statistics, however, speak louder than critics: we have one of the highest numbers of women dying in childbirth and under-five mortality rates. Every year nearly sixty million people get pushed below the poverty line due to the health expenditures that they incur. But there are a few bright spots too: India has eradicated polio and reversed the incidence of HIV/AIDS by an impressive margin. Drawing on her experience as the former union health secretary, K. Sujatha Rao gives us an unsparingly candid insider’s view of India’s health system. This richly detailed book favours increasing the health budget, greater use of technology, and providing leadership and good governance. Rao argues that unless good health is prioritized as a national goal, India’s growth story will remain largely self-congratulatory.

Infertility and assisted reproductive technologies in India lie at the confluence of multiple cultural conceptions. These ‘conceptions’ are key to understanding the burgeoning spread of assisted reproductive technologies and the social implications of infertility and childlessness in India. This longitudinal study is situated in a number of diverse locales which, when taken together, unravel the complex nature of infertility and assisted conception in contemporary India.

Future climatic and agro-ecological changes in Africa are uncertain and associated with high degrees of spatial and temporal variability and this change is differently simulated within divergent climate-crop models and in controlled crop breeding stations. Furthermore, uncertainty emerges in local contexts, not just in response to climatic systems, but to social, economic, and political systems, and often with implications for the appropriateness and adoption of technologies or the success of alternative cropping systems. This book examines the challenges of adaptation in smallholder farming in Africa, analysing the social, economic, political and climatic uncertainties that impact on agriculture in the region and the range of solutions proposed. Drawing on case studies of genetically modified crops, conservation agriculture, and other 'climate smart' solutions in eastern and southern Africa, the book identifies how uncertainties are framed 'from above' as well experienced 'from below', by farmers themselves. It provides a compelling insight into why ideas about adaptation emerge, from whom, and with what implications. This book offers a unique perspective and will be highly relevant to students of climate change adaptation, food security and poverty alleviation, as well as policy-makers and field practitioners in international development and agronomy.