PHA-Exch> WHO tells governments to focus on basic health care

[Claudio Schuftan]

From: Vern Weitzel <vern.weitzel at gmail.com>
crossposted from: "[health-vn discussion group]" health-vn at cairo.anu.edu.au


http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L7177447.htm

WHO tells governments to focus on basic health care.   excerpts

By Laura MacInnis

GENEVA, Oct 14 (Reuters) - The World Health Organisation (WHO) is calling
for an overhaul of how health care is financed and managed globally.

The United Nations agency said in its annual World Health Report that the
billions of aid dollars devoted to fight specific epidemics like AIDS had
distracted attention from providing comprehensive care to mothers and
children.

Increasingly specialised and technical medicine in wealthy nations has also
excluded and impoverished millions of patients, exposing failures of
"laissez-faire" governance in health.

Despite huge foreign aid sums earmarked for programmes fighting AIDS,
tuberculosis, malaria, and other killer diseases in developing countries,
WHO said quality care remained scarce outside of those specific areas.
Disproportionate investment in a limited number of disease programmes
considered as global priorities in countries that are dependent on external
support has diverted the limited energies of ministries of health away from
their primary role.

Front-line health workers ought to better assess patients' overall needs
instead of referring them to costly specialists.

Inequitable access and impoverishing costs for health care erode social
stability in a number of vulnerable countries.  (For more information on
international public health issues visit www.alertnet.org)
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