OBJECTIVES To determine whether employment status after job loss due to privatisation influences health and use of health services and whether financial strain, psychosocial measures, or health related behaviours can explain any findings. DESIGN Data collected before and 18 months after privatisation. SETTING One department of the civil service that was sold to the private sector. PARTICI...

martin powell suggests that the death of the english national health service (nhs) has been announced so many times we are at risk of not noticing should it actually happen. he is right. if we ‘cry wolf’ too many times, we risk losing sight of what is important about the nhs and why.

There is a general perception, based upon casual observation and some systematic empirica! study, that public enterprises are inefllcient.! This paper takes this to be true, and is concerned with the problem of providing a rigorous analysis and explanation of this inefficiency.2 Privatisation, which, in the U.K. at least has received its primary impetus from political and ideological motivarion...

BACKGROUND Previous research using routine data identified rapid mass privatisation as an important driver of mortality crisis following the collapse of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe. However, existing studies on the mortality crisis relying on individual level or routine data cannot assess both distal (societal) and proximal (individual) causes of mortality simultaneously. The aim of...

Like most developing countries, Zambia has been going through very difficult times economically. This has seriously affected the capacity of various government agencies to provide public services. As a result the government and its agencies have over the past decade been forced to reassess the way in which publicly provided urban services are delivered. The key policy response has been a moveme...

BACKGROUND Population-level data suggest that economic disruptions in the early 1990s increased working-age male mortality in post-Soviet countries. This study uses individual-level data, using an indirect estimation method, to test the hypothesis that fast privatisation increased mortality in Russia. METHODS In this retrospective cohort study, we surveyed surviving relatives of individuals w...

PURPOSE To review the evidence basis of international aid and health policy. CONTEXT OF CASE Current international aid policy is largely neoliberal in its promotion of commoditization and privatisation. We review this policy's responsibility for the lack of effectiveness in disease control and poor access to care in low and middle-income countries. DATA SOURCES National policies, internatio...