Inequities in access to information and inequities in health]

This piece presents evidence that inequities in information are an important determinant of health inequities and that eliminating these inequities in access to information, especially by using new information and communication technologies (ICTs), could represent a significant advance in terms of guaranteeing the right to health for all. The piece reviews the most important international scientific research findings on the determinants of the health of populations, emphasizing the role of socioeconomic inequities and of deteriorating social capital as factors that worsen health conditions. It is noteworthy that Latin America has both socioeconomic inequities and major sectors of the population living in poverty. Among the fundamental strategies for overcoming the inequalities and the poverty are greater participation by the poor in civic life and the strengthening of social capital. The contribution that the new ICTs could make to these strategies is analyzed, and the Virtual Health Library (VHL) is discussed. Coordinated by the Latin American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences Information (BIREME), the VHL is a contribution by the Pan American Health Organization that takes advantage of the potential of ICTs to democratize information and knowledge and consequently promote equity in health. The "digital gap" is discussed as something that can produce inequity itself and also increase other inequities, including ones in health. Prospects are discussed for overcoming this gap, emphasizing the role that governments and international organizations should play in order to expand access to the global public good that information for social development is.     

Inequities in under-five child malnutrition in South Africa

OBJECTIVES: To assess and quantify the magnitude of inequalities in under-five child malnutrition, particularly those ascribable to socio-economic status and to consider the policy implications of these findings. METHODS: Data on 3765 under-five children were derived from the Living Standards and Development Survey. Household income, proxied by per capita household expenditure, was used as the main indicator of socio-economic status. Socio-economic inequality in malnutrition (stunting, underweight and wasting) was measured using the illness concentration index. The concentration index was calculated for the whole sample, as well as for different population groups, areas of residence (rural, urban and metropolitan) and for each province. RESULTS: Stunting was found to be the most prevalent form of malnutrition in South Africa. Consistent with expectation, the rate of stunting is observed to be the highest in the Eastern Cape and the Northern Province - provinces with the highest concentration of poverty. There are considerable pro-rich inequalities in the distribution of stunting and underweight. However, wasting does not manifest gradients related to socio-economic position. Among White children, no inequities are observed in all three forms of malnutrition. The highest pro-rich inequalities in stunting and underweight are found among Coloured children and metropolitan areas. There is a tendency for high pro-rich concentration indices in those provinces with relatively lower rates of stunting and underweight (Gauteng and the Western Cape). CONCLUSION: There are significant differences in under-five child malnutrition (stunting and underweight) that favour the richest of society. These are unnecessary, avoidable and unjust. It is demonstrated that addressing such socio-economic gradients in ill-health, which perpetuate inequalities in the future adult population requires a sound evidence base. Reliance on global averages alone can be misleading. Thus there is a need for evaluating policies not only in terms of improvements in averages, but also improvements in distribution. Furthermore, addressing problems of stunting and underweight, which are found to be responsive to improvements in household income status, requires initiatives that transcend the medical arena.     

Why equity in health and in access to health care are elusive: Insights from Canada and South Africa

Health and access to health care vary strikingly across the globe, and debates about this have been pervasive and controversial. Some comparative data in Canada and South Africa illustrate the complexity of achieving greater equity anywhere, even in a wealthy country like Canada. Potential bi-directional lessons relevant both to local and global public health are identified. Both countries should consider the implications of lost opportunity costs associated with lack of explicit resource allocation policies. While National Health Insurance is attractive politically, Canada's example cannot be fully emulated in South Africa. Short- and medium-term attempts to improve equity in middle-income countries should focus on equitable access to insurance to cover primary health care and on making more use of nurse practitioners and community health workers. In the longer-term, attention is needed to the economic and political power structures that influence health and health care and that ignore the social and societal determinants of sustainable good health locally and globally. This long-term vision of health is needed globally to achieve improvements in individual and population health in a century characterised by limits to economic growth, widening disparities, continuing conflict and migration on a large scale and multiple adverse impacts of climate change.     

Post-apartheid challenges: household access and use of health care in South Africa.

Since 1994 the South African government has placed equity at the heart of its health policy goals. However, there has as yet been surprisingly little assessment of the success of policies in reducing inequity. This article provides insights on these issues by applying the Affordability Ladder conceptual framework in synthesizing evidence drawn from a series of household surveys and studies undertaken between 1992 and 2003. These data suggest that, despite policy efforts, inequities in access and utilization between socioeconomic groups remain. Underlying challenges include worsening community perceptions of the quality of publicly provided care and the influence of insurance status on utilization patterns. Further and more detailed evaluation of household-level policy impacts requires both improvements in the quality of South African survey data, particularly in enhancing consistency in survey design over time, and more detailed, focused studies.     

Surveys on access to health care in Africa. Methodological problems

This analysis of the methodological problems in measuring access to health care in Africa is based on a survey of the literature and the author's personal experience in Tunisia, Burkina Faso, and Senegal. 3 data bases were consulted for the previous decade and authors' references were verified. 18 published works were identified. Salient data from them are summarized in 2 tables, one covering methods and the other present findings. Surveys conducted by ministries of health, research institutions, and international organizations not leading to publication in scientific reviews were excluded. The essential argument is that methodological problems preclude comparison of the results of different surveys. Surveys of access to health care have different major objectives, which are less similar than they appear. They are either morbidity surveys which study the frequency and distribution of illness and secondarily the therapeutic practices for different pathologies or they are behavior surveys attempting to study recourse to care and its conditioning factors without reference to epidemiology. Different methodological problems are specific to each type of study. For morbidity surveys, sociocultural factors intervene in recognition of illness, individuals vary in their declaration of symptoms, and the least troublesome episodes are forgotten. The choice of open-ended question or list of symptoms influences the outcome. Results of surveys of recourse to care are influenced by differences between potential accessibility and true access, discrepancies between stated preferences and actual use, and dissimulation about use of therapies considered less legitimate. Questions about a specific illness episode provide a concrete support and enable data on all care practices to be elicited, including self-medication and nontreatment. The social relationship between the interviewer and the respondent influences responses and thus quality of information. Social and cultural factors such as ethnic group and literacy status and even political pressures are especially important in Africa, but data on the interviewer and respondents are not always specified. The language used may be significant if respondents do not fully understand the questions. Few surveys concern themselves with the validity of responses despite the opportunities for inaccuracy. Only 1 of the African surveys contained a systematic analysis of biases in responses. The variability of sampling techniques and procedures also hampers comparison of results. Different systems of classifying types of care available or omission of some types of care further complicate efforts to compare results of different surveys. And surveys of access to care do not take into account the quality of care offered or the efficacy of treatments sought.     

Indigence and access to health care in sub‐Saharan Africa

Access to health care services for the poor and indigent is hampered by current policies of health care financing in sub‐Saharan Africa. This paper reviews the issue as it is discussed in the international literature. No real strategies seem to exist for covering the health care of the indigent. Frequently, definitions of poverty and indigence are imprecise, the assessment of indigence is difficult for conceptual and technical reasons, and, therefore, the actual extent of indigence in Africa is not well known. Explicit policies rarely exist, and systematic evaluation of experiences is scarce. Results in terms of adequately identifying the indigent, and of mechanisms to improve indigents' access to health care, are rather deceiving. Policies to reduce poverty, and improve indigents' access to health care, seem to pursue strategies of depoliticizing the issue of social injustice and inequities. The problem is treated in a ‘technical’ manner, identifying and implementing ‘operational’ measures of social assistance. This approach, however, cannot resolve the problem of social exclusion, and, consequently, the problem of excluding large parts of African populations from modern health care. Therefore, this approach has to be integrated into a more ‘political’ approach which is interested in the process of impoverishment, and which addresses the macro‐economic and social causes of poverty and inequity. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Inequities in mental health care after health care system reform in Chile

OBJECTIVES: We compared differences in mental health needs and provision of mental health services among residents of Santiago, Chile, with private and public health insurance coverage. METHODS: We conducted a cross-sectional survey of a random sample of adults. Presence of mental disorders and use of health care services were assessed via structured interviews. Individuals were classified as having public, private, or no health insurance coverage. RESULTS: Among individuals with mental disorders, only 20% (95% confidence interval [CI]=16%, 24%) had consulted a professional about these problems. A clear mismatch was found between need and provision of services. Participants with public insurance coverage exhibited the highest prevalence of mental disorders but the lowest rates of consultation; participants with private coverage exhibited exactly the opposite pattern. After adjustment for age, income, and severity of symptoms, private insurance coverage (odds ratio [OR]=2.72; 95% CI=1.6, 4.6) and higher disability level (OR=1.27, 95% CI=1.1, 1.5) were the only factors associated with increased frequency of mental health consultation. CONCLUSIONS: The health reforms that have encouraged the growth of the private health sector in Chile also have increased risk segmentation within the health system, accentuating inequalities in health care provision.     

Inequities in health care: a five-country survey

This paper reports the results of a comparative survey in five nations: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The survey finds a high level of citizen dissatisfaction with the health care systems in all five countries. Citizens with incomes below the national median were more likely than were those with higher incomes to be dissatisfied. In contrast, relatively few citizens reported problems getting needed health care. Low-income U.S. citizens reported more problems getting care than did their counterparts in the other four countries.     

Who consults and where? Sociocultural differentiation in access to health care in urban Africa

Sociocultural differentiation in health behaviour was studied among 500 mothers randomly chosen in the suburban area of Dakar, Senegal. Variables were age, marital status, educational level, socioeconomic conditions, urban experience, town integration, village attachment, social insurance, ethnic group and disease categories. Access to health care was considered for the last illness of the mother and her youngest child under five. Town integration and disease category (and social insurance for children) were the only variables correlated with the number of consultations. Socioeconomic level and social insurance (and educational level for mothers) were associated with preference for private rather than public health systems.     

Measuring equity in access to health care

This article develops and uses methodologies to: (1) measure equity in the distribution of access to health services; and (2) measure the impact of health insurance programs on equity. The article proposes two egalitarian-based indicators for measuring equity in terms of access to health care--a concentration coefficient derived from the Gini coefficient, and the Atkinson distributional measure and also employs a weighted Utilitarian social welfare function to measure overall levels of access. The article defines access as the use of health care by individuals with a need for care; need is measured as self-reported morbidity. The setting for the empirical application is the country of Ecuador. The Ecuador Social Security Institute runs a General Health Insurance (GHI) program, whose affiliates are primarily workers in the formal sector of the economy. The principal data source is the 1995 Ecuador Living Standards Measurement Survey. The study uses a microeconomic health care demand model and bivariate probit estimation techniques to measure the impact of insurance on health service use for each quintile of adjusted per-capita household expenditure. The study also predicts health care use and program impact for each quintile under a series of simulation scenarios corresponding to proposed expansion of eligibility for the GHI program. The GHI program increases overall access to health care, but has a negative impact on equity in the distribution of health services. The benefits of the program, calculated as its marginal impact on the probability of using of health care, have a strongly regressive distribution. Expanding eligibility to the self-employed makes the benefit more equitably distributed (but still inequitable), and increases overall social welfare considerably. Expanding eligibility to the dependents of the insured person has similar effects, although less important in magnitude.     

Occupational health policies and practices related to tuberculosis in health care workers in KwaZulu-Natal,South Africa

Setting:

Three district hospitals in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, with specialized drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) wards.

Objective:

To increase understanding of the implementation of occupational health (OH) and infection control (IC) guidelines for the prevention and control of TB among health care workers (HCWs).

Design:

An operational cross-sectional study conducted between July and September 2011, consisting of interviews with OH and IC nurses and chart review of OH medical records.

Results:

Although general national and provincial OH policies are in place, no specific OH policies exist for hospital settings. Two of three hospitals had a full-time OH nurse and all had a full-time IC nurse. All hospitals offered TB symptom screening; however, only 19% of HCWs were screened in 2010. TB incidence among HCWs was 1958 per 100 000 population in 2010. All hospitals offered HIV counseling and testing; however, only 22% of staff were tested across sites. Two hospitals offered isoniazid preventive therapy to HIV-positive staff and reassigned these staff to low TB risk areas.

Conclusions:

While OH policies and procedures are in place, implementation of these policies and procedures is inconsistent. This potentially places HCWs at risk of acquiring TB. These findings support the need for strengthening OH and IC services to prevent TB.     

Private medicine and the privatisation of health care in South Africa

Health services in the Republic of South Africa (RSA) are provided by a mixture of public and private providers and institutions. Estimates of total health-related expenditure for 1985 range between 5.3% and 5.9% of gross national product (GNP), divided on approximately a 55:45 basis between public and private sectors. Basic preventive and curative services are provided by a hospital- and clinic-based public system. The public system does not adequately serve the rural areas and African tribal bantustans, and racial discrimination and/or segregation are obvious in its organisation and funding. The public sector's strength is the provision of state-subsidised care to many citizens who are unable to afford private medicine. The vast majority of hospitals are operated on a non-profit basis by government, industries, and voluntary agencies. Excluding hospitals that receive state subsidies, private investor-owned hospitals control about 10% of all hospital beds in the RSA. One-third of these investor-owned beds are held by state-dependent contractors providing long-term care. Two-thirds are wholly independent. Growth has been rapid in the independent hospital sector, and major corporations have entered the market. In 1985, over 85% of the white population was privately insured by a variety of prepayment programmes, including those organised through parastatal corporations and government departments. Despite major enrollment growth in the preceding decade, only 8% of blacks held private insurance by 1985; their coverage also tended to be less comprehensive. Faced with deficit financing, a sluggish economy, complaints from its white constituency about taxation levels, and pressure from private sector interest groups, the Nationalist government has endorsed the concept of privatisation of health care. Exponents of privatisation claim that it will permit differentiation by income to supplant discrimination by race. However, the direct links between disposable income and race, the rapidly rising costs of private insurance, and the still-limited extent of private coverage among the black majority, indicate that privatisation is likely to co-opt a comparatively small proportion of the total black population. It may exacerbate the urban-rural imbalance in health status and health services, promote growth of hospital-intensive curative services rather than needed expansion of community-centred preventive and primary care, and create financial barriers to access for low-income patients.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)     

Social capital and access to primary health care in developing countries: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

We test for a causal role of social capital, as measured by self-reported trust, in determining access to basic health facilities in Sub-Saharan Africa. To skirt the reverse-causality problems between social capital and basic health, we rely on instrumental-variable (IV) estimates. A one standard-deviation increase in trust is predicted to lead to a 0.22 standard-deviation fall in doctor absenteeism, a 0.31 standard-deviation fall in waiting time and a 0.30 standard-deviation fall in bribes. As a robustness check, we also use a different database regarding a different health issue, access to clean water. We find that a one standard-deviation rise in trust leads to a 0.33 standard-deviation rise in access to clean water. The variety of public goods considered provides insights about the possible channels through which social capital is converted into health improvements.     

Inequalities in access to health care in Hungary

'Crisis' in health care systems has become a widely discussed issue in the last 10 years. The claim for change is argued from various points of view, and according to manifold interests throughout the industrialized world. However, the present tensions of the national health service system of Hungary can be looked upon only partially in the broader terms of some 'world-phenomenon'. There are a great number of similar features, there is the great importance of temporal co-incidence, but the roots seem totally different in several respects. The paper focuses on those structural processes (historical, as well, as current), that have lead to increasing tensions and a dysfunctional working of the system, that shape the social inequalities of access to it. The main form of deeper structural tensions is the widening gap between needs and the conditions to meet them. This paper analyzes the consequences of the double pressure put on the system at its start after the war. The rapid extension of legal entitlements for free medical care was not followed by a similar extension of available resources for developing the institutions and services of the health care system. The long-term priorities given to forced industrialization and, later, to other spheres of production led to a chronic situation of 'residual' handling of various spheres of communual consumption and to the infrastructure, including programmes of health care, the pressure of rapid extension of rights and permanent scarcity of the resources has lead to a chronic shortage, overuse and 'substitutional, temporary solutions'.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)