Restructuring Health Services: Changing Contexts and Comparative Perspectives

Health service delivery is being restructured in many different ways in both the industrialized and developing countries. As the scholars in this volume show, this process is set to accelerate as a result of diverse factors including fiscal pressure, privatization, and the impending renegotiation of the WTO General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). The key policy issues that arise are what are the implications of these changes on access and equity in the healthcare field. The research in this volume, which has been supported by the European Commission, reviews the rapidly changing context in which debates about financing health care and its relationship to globalization and privatization are taking place.

Kasturi Sen is currently at the Institute of Public Health, Department of Public Health, University of Cambridge.