Home About us Contact
|
Home About us Contact | ||
|
|
||
International Agenda (international + agenda)
Selected AbstractsDistrict health systems in a neoliberal world: a review of five key policy areas,INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HEALTH PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT, Issue S1 2003Malcolm Segall Abstract District health systems, comprising primary health care and first referral hospitals, are key to the delivery of basic health services in developing countries. They should be prioritized in resource allocation and in the building of management and service capacity. The relegation in the World Health Report 2000 of primary health care to a ,second generation' reform,to be superseded by third generation reforms with a market orientation,flows from an analysis that is historically flawed and ideologically biased. Primary health care has struggled against economic crisis and adjustment and a neoliberal ideology often averse to its principles. To ascribe failures of primary health care to a weakness in policy design, when the political economy has starved it of resources, is to blame the victim. Improvement in the working and living conditions of health workers is a precondition for the effective delivery of public health services. A multidimensional programme of health worker rehabilitation should be developed as the foundation for health service recovery. District health systems can and should be financed (at least mainly) from public funds. Although in certain situations user fees have improved the quality and increased the utilization of primary care services, direct charges deter health care use by the poor and can result in further impoverishment. Direct user fees should be replaced progressively by increased public finance and, where possible, by prepayment schemes based on principles of social health insurance with public subsidization. Priority setting should be driven mainly by the objective to achieve equity in health and wellbeing outcomes. Cost effectiveness should enter into the selection of treatments for people (productive efficiency), but not into the selection of people for treatment (allocative efficiency). Decentralization is likely to be advantageous in most health systems, although the exact form(s) should be selected with care and implementation should be phased in after adequate preparation. The public health service should usually play the lead provider role in district health systems, but non-government providers can be contracted if needed. There is little or no evidence to support proactive privatization, marketization or provider competition. Democratization of political and popular involvement in health enhances the benefits of decentralization and community participation. Integrated district health systems are the means by which specific health programmes can best be delivered in the context of overall health care needs. International assistance should address communicable disease control priorities in ways that strengthen local health systems and do not undermine them. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria should not repeat the mistakes of the mass compaigns of past decades. In particular, it should not set programme targets that are driven by an international agenda and which are achievable only at the cost of an adverse impact on sustainable health systems. Above all the targets must not retard the development of the district health systems so badly needed by the rural poor. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Tourism and socio-economic development: UK tour operators' business approaches in the context of the new international agendaINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TOURISM RESEARCH, Issue 5 2001Richard Tapper Abstract Rapid growth of tourism to developing countries has led to new international expectations for tourism as an agent of socio-economic development. This paper describes these new expectations, reviews the influence of tour operators on tourism-dependent economies, and reports research into ways that UK outbound tour operators could respond to the new international expectations of their business ethic and practices. It shows that structural and business practice issues, especially local economic linkages in the supply chain, need to be addressed if the tourism industry is to contribute effectively to meeting new expectations of its role in socio-economic development in developing countries. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Developing an International System for Internally Displaced PersonsINTERNATIONAL STUDIES PERSPECTIVES, Issue 2 2006ROBERTA COHEN A pressing new problem came onto the international agenda at the end of the cold war, persons forced from their homes by conflict and human rights violations who remain uprooted and at risk within the borders of their own countries. The international system created after the Second World War to protect and assist refugees, people who flee across borders, did not extend to internally displaced persons (IDPs). Over the past fifteen years, substantial efforts have been made to create an international system to respond to the needs of the world's 20 to 25 million IDPs, but a long way remains to go in resolving issues of sovereignty, legal frameworks, institutional arrangements and strategies to protect people under assault in their own countries. [source] Heritage in Conflict and Consensus: towards an international agenda for the twenty-first centuryMUSEUM INTERNATIONAL, Issue 1-2 2010Elizabeth Chilton No abstract is available for this article. [source] | ||||||||||