With tuberculosis now relatively well contained in Japan, it is important to reconfigure treatment systems and structures to ensure the most appropriate treatments in the future. A survey of designated tuberculosis treatment facilities in Hiroshima Prefecture revealed declining standards of tuberculosis diagnosis and treatment as well as decreasing knowledge levels in regional areas, suggesting...

This paper brings together evidence from a number of randomized experiments designed to address the problem of absence of teachers and health providers in developing countries. The goal is to see what, if any, lessons we can draw from them. Our tentative conclusion is that these service providers are willing to respond even to quite moderate incentives. The constraint seems to be in getting the...

Outbreaks of epidemic diseases pose serious public health risks. To overcome the hurdles of sub-optimal disease surveillance reporting from the health facilities to relevant authorities, the Ministry of Health in Kenya piloted mSOS (mobile SMS-based disease outbreak alert system) in 2013-2014. In this paper, we report the results of the qualitative study, which examined factors that influence t...

BACKGROUND Many resource-limited countries are scaling up antiretroviral treatment (ART) towards universal access. However, there are few studies which evaluated outcomes of ART programs in these countries. In addition, these studies generally include a limited number of facilities and patients creating a clear need for studies with a wide range of facilities and large numbers of patients. In t...

BACKGROUND The available data on routine immunization in Nigeria show a disparity in coverage between Northern and Southern Nigeria, with the former performing worse. The effect of socio-cultural differences on health-seeking behaviour has been identified in the literature as the main cause of the disparity. Our study analyses the role of supply-side determinants, particularly access to service...

010 About a decade ago, I went wandering around Cairo’s City of the Dead. This might sound like a grim bit of tourism, but my connection to that vast necropolis runs deep—quite literally, as my family is buried there. After visiting their grave, I rambled through the city’s dusty alleyways, past hundreds of years of history. Yet what I remember most about that day was not one of the many magnif...

This paper combines information from two nationwide household surveys in Morocco, spanning eight years, to evaluate the impact of the Social Priorities Program (BAJ) on access to social services. The empirical analysis is based on refinements of the basic differences-in-differences approach, the most important of which allows for heterogeneous program impacts at the province level. The main fin...