Issues of health services for the consumer in Third World countries

This article deals with the issues of health services for poor consumers in Third World countries. The health services in these countries have been modelled on the systems available in developed countries and meet the needs of the affluent sections of the population who control government policy. But these services are beyond the reach of the poor. There are wide disparities between the health indicators of the rich and poor consumers in the Third World. To provide adequate health services to the poor, there should be a re-allocation of resources away from high technology and hospital based curative services to preventive and promotive health services. It is often argued that low income countries cannot expect to improve the health of all their inhabitants without first increasing productivity. Evidence from selected Third World countries indicates, however, that visible improvements in the health status of the poor are quite feasible with low per capita GNPs if there is the political will to implement progressive policies in health and certain non-health sectors. The latter include policies on land reform and education, particularly education of women.

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Verbraucherprobleme bei Gesundheitsdiensten in Drittweltländern

Zusammenfassung Der Aufsatz befaßt sich mit Problemen von Gesundheitsdiensten für arme Konsumenten von Drittweltländern. Die gesundheitliche Versorgung der Bevölkerung ist dort nach Vorbildern von Industrieländern eingerrichtet worden. Sie kommt den Bedürfnissen der wohlhabenden Oberschicht entgegen, die die Regierungspolitik kontrollieren. Die dieserart angebotenen Gesundheitsdienstleistungen sind jedoch für die Armen unerreichbar und unerschwinglich. Es zeichnen sich erhebliche Unterschiede in den Gesundheitsindikatoren zwischen den wohlhabenden und den armen Verbrauchern in Ländern der Dritten Welt ab. Um wirklich die Armen gesundheitlich zu versorgen, müßte eine Umverteilung der Resourcen weg von Hochtechnologie und stationärer Behandlung und hin zu präventiven und unterstützend-helfenden Maßnahmen erfolgen. Es wird oft behauptet, daß Länder mit geringem Volkseinkommen den Gesundheitsstand ihrer Bevölkerung nicht wesentlich verbessern können, bevor sie nicht erst ihre Produktivität steigern. Beweismaterial von Drittweltländern zeigt jedoch an, daß erkennbare Verbesserungen des Gesundheitszustandes der Armen in Ländern mit geringem Volkseinkommen möglich sind, wenn der politische Wille besteht, fortschrittliche Politiken in Gesundheitsdientsen und einigen verwandten Nichtgesundheitssektoren umzusetzen. Zu letzteren gehören Bodenreform und Erziehung, vor allem für Frauen.

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Kumariah Balasubramaniam is pharmaceutical advisor to IOCU (International Organization of Consumers Unions), P.O. Box 1045, 10830 Penang, Malaysia.     

The main lines of cooperation among developing countries in pharmaceuticals

The recent period has seen major initiatives for new pharmaceutical policies in the developing countries. Two Conferences of the Heads of State of Non-Aligned and other developing countries have adopted special resolutions on the subject, giving broad directives for national policies and for cooperative action among the developing countries themselves. The possible areas of activity for initiating regional or subregional cooperative programmes in the pharmaceutical sector are examined. The current initiatives in cooperative activity undertaken by sub-regional groupings in different parts of the world are described. A possible model for a mixed multinational pharmaceutical enterprise to foster inter-regional cooperation is also described.     

The exchange rate regime in Asia: From crisis to crisis

Prior to the Asian financial crisis, most Asian exchange rates were de facto pegged to the US Dollar. During the crisis, many economies experienced a brief period of extreme flexibility. A ‘fear of floating’ gave reduced flexibility when the crisis subsided, but flexibility after the crisis was greater than that seen prior to the crisis. Contrary to the idea of a durable Bretton Woods II arrangement, Asia then went on to slowly raise flexibility and reduce the role for the US dollar. When the period from April 2008 to December 2009 is compared against periods of high inflexibility, from January 1991 to November 1991 and October 1995 to March 1997, the increase in flexibility is economically and statistically significant. This paper proposes a new measure of dollar pegging, the “Bretton Woods II Score”. We find that Asia has been slowly moving away from a Bretton Woods II arrangement.     

Imputation of Missing Values in the Fundamental Data: Using MICE Framework

Revolutionary developments in the field of big data analytics and machine learning algorithms have transformed the business strategies of industries such as banking, financial services, asset management, and e-commerce. The most common problems these firms face while utilizing data is the presence of missing values in the dataset. The objective of this study is to impute fundamental data that is missing in financial statements. The study uses ‘Multiple Imputation by Chained Equations’ (MICE) framework by utilizing the interdependency among the variables that wholly comply with accounting rules. The proposed framework has two stages. The initial imputation is based on predictive mean matching in the first stage and resolving financial constraints in the second stage. The MICE framework allows us to incorporate accounting constraints in the imputation process. The performance tests conducted on the imputed dataset indicate that the imputed values for the 177 line items are good and in line with the expectations of subject matter experts.