tailieunhanh - Child Health And The Quality Of Medical Care by Sarah L. Barber University of California, Berkeley

Now is the time to align CHWs with broader health system strengthening efforts at the primary care level, improve CHW financing, and broadly disseminate recent advances in technology, diagnostics and treatment to support community-based health workers. The MDGs have provided the impetus for a new generation of investments accompanied by international progress monitoring of progress through the Countdown to 2015 initiative and the UN Commission on Information and Accountability for Women’s and Children’s Health. Concomitant focus on health systems by the World Health Organization (WHO) and other technical bodies has allowed for a greater emphasis on the operational and supportive considerations required to make any subsystems within a health system perform optimally. Upon this backdrop, advances. | Child Health And The Quality Of Medical Care Sarah L. Barber University of California Berkeley Paul J. Gertler University of California Berkeley and NBER March 1 2002 Abstract Health investments that promote development in early life have the potential to affect physical functioning particularly in low- and middle-income countries where infectious illnesses amenable to care contribute significantly to ill health. We evaluate whether high quality prenatal and child healthcare promote child growth. We conclude that children who live in communities with high quality care are healthier compared with children who live in areas with poor quality care. These results support the shift health service delivery investments away from expanding access to improving the quality of care in existing health facilities. JEL classification I12 I18 I30 H51 Keywords quality of care child health Indonesia prenatal care Author for correspondence Paul Gerter PhD F643 Haas School of Business University of California Berkeley CA 94720-1900. Tel Fax gertler@ The authors remain responsible for errors but gratefully acknowledge comments from Jeffrey Gould David Leonard David Levine Daniel Perez Gunawan Sediati and Indonesia seminar participants at the University of California Berkeley. We also thank the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development for financial support. Child Health And The Quality Of Medical Care 1. Introduction The number of deaths among children worldwide has decreased over the past 20 years from fifteen to eleven million annually -a remarkable achievement considering the increase in the absolute number of births over the same period UNICEF 2000 . This realization is due in part to health investments during the 1970s and 1980s that greatly expanded access to basic interventions Rutstein 2000 . Yet the vast majority of deaths among children under five in low-income settings is still attributable to a handful of .