Int J Health Serv
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This article explains the paradox of China's recent failure to secure significant improvements in the health of its people despite once being the envy of the developing world for its successful health policies and its huge sustained increases in both economic growth and expenditure on health care. The authors begin with an outline of the organization and financing of China's health services, then track the recent upward trend in health spending and examine its structural features in conjunction with those of spending in other, comparable countries. ⋯ The authors conclude with some policy proposals centering on the restoration of social justice in the health system. The article draws on material previously unavailable in English.
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China and Vietnam have adopted market reforms in the health sector in the context of market economic reforms. Vietnam has developed a large private health sector, while in China commercialization has occurred mainly in the formal public sector, where user fees are now the main source of facility finance. As a result, the integrity of China's planned health service has been disrupted, especially in poor rural areas. ⋯ This has particularly affected the rural poor, deterring them from accessing health care. Assistance for the poor to meet public-sector user fees is more beneficial and widespread in Vietnam than China. China is now criticizing the degree of commercialization of its health system and considers its health reforms "basically unsuccessful." Market reforms that stimulate growth in the economy are not appropriate to reform of social sectors such as health.
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The World Health Organization faces allegations that it attempted to secure a $10,000 donation from a pharmaceutical company by asking a patients' group to act as a covert channel for the funds, an arrangement that would break the WHO's own rules on accepting money from the pharmaceutical industry. The WHO denies attempts to bend its donation rules.
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Jeffrey Sachs's The End of Poverty is a manifesto and how-to guide on ending extreme poverty around the world; it promotes the U. N. ⋯ Sachs later became more prominent as a critic of development orthodoxy, and was economic advisor to the Jubilee 2000 movement. The End of Poverty is full of sharp critiques of Western imperialism, but his views on the rest of the development business are more conventional.
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Protecting children from the sharpest edges of poverty during their years of growth and formation is both the mark of a civilized society and a means of addressing some of the evident problems that affect the quality of life in the economically developed nations. The proportion of children living in poverty has risen in a majority of the world's developed economies over the past decade. This report asks what is driving poverty rates upwards and why some OECD countries are doing a much better job than others in protecting children at risk.