Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Biographies
- Notices
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Reviews
- Introduction: Overview and purpose
- Section 1 Paradigms of international policies
- Section 2 The failure of the aid paradigm: poor disease control in developing countries
- Section 3 Impact of international health policies on access to health in middle-income countries: some experiences from Latin America
- Section 4 Determinants and implications of new liberal health policies: the case of India, China and Lebanon
- Section 5 Principles for alternative, publicly oriented health care policies, planning, management and delivery
- Section 6 A public health, strategic toolkit to implement these alternatives
- Conclusions
- Glossary
- Index
- References
Introduction: Overview and purpose
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 December 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Biographies
- Notices
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Reviews
- Introduction: Overview and purpose
- Section 1 Paradigms of international policies
- Section 2 The failure of the aid paradigm: poor disease control in developing countries
- Section 3 Impact of international health policies on access to health in middle-income countries: some experiences from Latin America
- Section 4 Determinants and implications of new liberal health policies: the case of India, China and Lebanon
- Section 5 Principles for alternative, publicly oriented health care policies, planning, management and delivery
- Section 6 A public health, strategic toolkit to implement these alternatives
- Conclusions
- Glossary
- Index
- References
Summary
Confident in the infinity of time, a certain conception of history discerns only the rhythm, faster or slower, at which men and times move along the path of progress.
Walter Benjamin, 1915. La vie des étudiants. In: W. Benjamin, Œuvres I, Folio Essais, Editions Gallimard, 2000, p. 125.Plato was the first to discern between those who know without acting and those who act without knowing while in the past, action was divided in enterprise and achievement: the result was that the knowledge of action to accomplish and its implementation became two radically different concepts.
H. Arendt. Condition de l'homme moderne. Calmann Levy Ed., Paris, 1983, p. 286.After 15 years of neoliberal international health policy, data from 26 sub-Saharan countries reveals that more than 50% of the poorest children receive no health care when sick (Marek et al., 2005). Data from 44 low- to middle-income countries (LMICs) suggest that the greater the participation of the private sector in primary health care (PHC), the higher the exclusion from treatment and care (Macintosh & Koivusalo, 2005) across sectors.
This is a textbook about public health with a difference. Firstly, it addresses policies relating to the delivery of health care – while the study of public health has historically evolved around issues of disease control. This book makes a case for alternative policies that could shape the structure and provision of universally accessible, polyvalent, discretionary health care, rather than making it work through its commodification and the priorities of cost-effective interventions in public services.
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- International Health and Aid PoliciesThe Need for Alternatives, pp. xxv - xxxviiiPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010