TY - JOUR
T1 - Making health systems more equitable
AU - Gwatkin, Davidson R.
AU - Bhuiya, Abbas
AU - Victora, Cesar G.
PY - 2004/10/2
Y1 - 2004/10/2
N2 - Health systems are consistently inequitable, providing more and higher quality services to the well-off, who need them less, than to the poor, who are unable to obtain them. In the absence of a concerted effort to ensure that health systems reach disadvantaged groups more effectively, such inequities are likely to continue. Yet this situation need not be accepted as inevitable, for there are many promising measures that might be pursued: establishment of goals for improved coverage in the poor, rather than in entire populations, and use of those goals to direct planning toward the needs of the disadvantaged; use of one or more of the several techniques that seem to have been effective in at least some of the settings where they have been tried; and empowerment of poor clients to have a more central role in health system design and operation.
AB - Health systems are consistently inequitable, providing more and higher quality services to the well-off, who need them less, than to the poor, who are unable to obtain them. In the absence of a concerted effort to ensure that health systems reach disadvantaged groups more effectively, such inequities are likely to continue. Yet this situation need not be accepted as inevitable, for there are many promising measures that might be pursued: establishment of goals for improved coverage in the poor, rather than in entire populations, and use of those goals to direct planning toward the needs of the disadvantaged; use of one or more of the several techniques that seem to have been effective in at least some of the settings where they have been tried; and empowerment of poor clients to have a more central role in health system design and operation.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=4744338846&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1016/S0140-6736(04)17145-6
DO - 10.1016/S0140-6736(04)17145-6
M3 - Article
C2 - 15464189
AN - SCOPUS:4744338846
SN - 0140-6736
VL - 364
SP - 1273
EP - 1280
JO - The Lancet
JF - The Lancet
IS - 9441
ER -