Global Health Watch 1 in one file

4 Effective clinical care is vital to the health and well-being of children.
But the mother of this child will also need to be given appropriate advice
and practical support on child care and nutrition.
equitably need more discussion and research amongst the international public
health community.
Health care systems can also fail people as a result of bureaucratic failures.
Rigid civil service rules and regulations combined with poor management
and leadership can impair innovation, motivation, efficiency and community
responsiveness. Civil servants can bend the rules or use their positions to serve
their own personal needs. Many countries do not have the capacity for effective
administration – for example, there may be no experts in the field of ‘personnel
management’ working in the entire Ministry of Health in spite of the central
importance of people to health care systems. Government health departments
have vast responsibilities and varied challenges; they simply cannot succeed
without a minimum degree of management and administrative capacity and
competence at all levels of the health care system. At present, however, efforts
are inadequate to ensure this level of capacity and competence.
In countries in which donor funds contribute a significant proportion of
public health expenditure, public sector failure must be regarded as ‘donor
and international agency failure’ as well. The influence of donors and international
agencies on the functioning of the Ministries of Health in developing
countries can be enormous – and is often not positive. One problem is
Approaches to health care
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