Variations In Practice Quality In Five Low-Income Countries

Health Affairs - 27 March 2007

“…….Going Beyond Access In Developing Countries
……….……Studies cite need to improve quality of care …..”

“….For a quarter-century, development experts have concentrated primarily on increasing the availability of health care in poorer countries. Now, in light of evidence that the “use of health care is high, even in countries with low per capita incomes and even among the poor,” it is time to focus more on measuring and improving the low quality of the care that many patients in the developing world receive, Jishnu Das and Paul Gertler say in a paper published today on the Health Affairs Web site. Das and Gertler provide an overview of six studies written by experts from the World Bank and elsewhere and published in Health Affairs that look at the quality of health care in five different countries: India, Indonesia , Mexico , Paraguay , and Tanzania .

You can find Das and Gertler’s overview and the six individual-country studies at http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/hlthaff.26.3.w296/DC2