Research Catalog

Title

Healthy partnerships : how governments can engage the private sector to improve health in Africa.

Publication

Washington, DC : World Bank, c2011.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

World Bank

Description

xix, 152 p. : ill., maps; 28 cm.

Summary

Health systems across Africa are in urgent need of improvement. The public sector should not be expected to shoulder the burden of directly providing the needed services alone, nor can it, given the current realities of African health systems. Therefore to achieve necessary improvements, governments will need to rely more heavily on the private health sector. Indeed, private providers already play a significant role in the health sector in Africa and are expected to continue to play a key role, and private providers serve all income levels across sub- Saharan Africa's health systems. The World Health Organization (WHO) and others have identified improvements in the way governments interact with and make use of their private health sectors as one of the key ingredients to health systems improvements. Across the African region, many ministries of health are actively seeking to increase the contributions of the private health sector. However, relatively little is known about the details of engagement; that is, the roles and responsibilities of the players, and what works and what does not. A better understanding of the ways that governments and the private health sector work together and can work together more effectively is needed. This Report assesses and compares the ways in which African governments are engaging with their private health sectors. Engagement is defined, for the purposes of this report, to mean the deliberate, systematic collaboration of the government and the private health sector according to national health priorities, beyond individual interventions and programs. With effective engagement, one of the main constraints to better private sector contributions can be addressed, which in turn should improve the performance of health systems overall.

Subject

• Private Sector
• International Cooperation
• Government Regulation
• Health Policy
• Medical policy > Africa, Sub-Saharan
• Medical policy > International cooperation > Africa, Sub-Saharan
• Medical policy > Africa, Sub-Saharan > International cooperation
• Public-private sector cooperation > Africa, Sub-Saharan
• Africa South of the Sahara
• Africa, Sub-Saharan

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Observation 1 : health systems in Africa are in urgent need of improvement -- Observation 2 : the private health sector in Africa is too large to be ignored, though it is only partly and often poorly integrated into the health system -- Observation 3 : a minimum level of engagement is an important part of the solution -- Results from the data collection -- A different type of engagement : how governments partner with faith-based organizations (FBOS) across the region -- Level of organization of the private health sector matters -- Translation of findings to country-level reform -- Engagement through health systems strengthening approach -- Key conclusions by domain -- Recommended actions by group -- Action plan for future research -- Tool kit for further guidance.

ISBN

• 9780821384725 (alk. paper)
• 0821384724 (alk. paper)
• 9780821384732 (e-ISBN)
• 0821384732 (e-ISBN)

LCCN

^^2011015197

OCLC

712765614

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library