GLOBAL HEALTH: New Health Affairs Issue Looks At Catastrophic Spending, AIDS Vaccines, And More
July 17th, 2007
by
Chris Fleming
|
At least 150 million people worldwide suffer financial catastrophe each year and 100 million are pushed under the poverty level simply because they need to pay for health services, according to new World Health Organization (WHO) research published July 16 in the July/August issue of Health Affairs. The researchers found that countries could reduce the extent of health-related financial catastrophe by moving away from out-of-pocket payments, and towards prepayment mechanisms such as taxes and insurance, in financing their health care systems.
The new Health Affairs issue is a thematic volume on global health financing. It features leading global-health figures such as William Hsiao, Paul Farmer, and George Schieber and colleagues from the World Bank. Highlights of the issue include the following:
AIDS Vaccine Development. Even a modestly effective, first-generation AIDS vaccine could have a profound impact on the epidemic, according to a new model developed by researchers from the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative and the Futures Institute. They found that a vaccine with 50 percent efficacy that was provided to nearly a third of the population would avoid 17 million new HIV infections between 2015 and 2030.
Is Global Health Aid Effective? Brookings Institution researchers write that health aid is closely aligned in the aggregate with recipients’ aggregate disease burden and commitment to health. However, they also note that health aid is fragmented, unpredictable, and disproportionately targeted to countries with smaller populations.
Hospital Quality. The Department of Health and Human Services’ Hospital Quality Alliance (HQA) program collects data on hospitals’ management of three common medical conditions: acute myocardial infarction, congestive heart failure, and pneumonia. Harvard’s Ashish Jha and colleagues found that, for each of the three conditions, higher hospital performance on the associated HQA process measures was associated with lower risk-adjusted mortality.
