The past Asian and current global fiscal crisis, coupled with the emergence of new infectious diseases like SARS and prospects of an avian flu pandemic, have thrown the vulnerabilities of healthcare systems into sharp relief. With regional trade further opening up, healthcare markets and the private sector have grown together with the proliferation of healthcare corporate entities. It is timely therefore to take stock of the trends in healthcare around the region, and to identify in a comparative perspective, the common issues and challenges that have arisen with changes in various health systems, and the manner in which national governments have met these challenges.Health and Health Systems in Southeast Asia: Policy Issues and Challenges discusses development trends in health and health systems in Southeast Asia, analyzes the regional issues and experiences related to health sector reforms, and offers lessons to inform wider policy debates of global health challenges and health systems development in other regions.More specifically, the book attempts to address the following questions: What are the global forces affecting health and development in Southeast Asia? How do regional health systems and policies respond to such developments? Are there policy implications and lessons for sustainable health systems reforms? Broad descriptive trends of health issues are compared across ASEAN within the context of very rapid demographic, epidemiological and socio-economic transitions. A selection of national health systems and programs, with interesting case-studies that offer innovative and useful lessons are featured and discussed in more depth.
