Special issue on South Asia: Health economics is neglected in this region

doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7434.288-a

BMJ 2004;328:288 (31 January), doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7434.288-a

Letter

Special issue on South Asia

Health economics is neglected in this region

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—A special issue on South Asia is welcome.¹ Theregion provides ample opportunity for the world to discuss andlearn from its problems and experiences. Yet little is knownabout its disease burden and barriers to health care as researcherseither do not exist or do not get published. As a result, internationalestimates, such as disability adjusted life years, for thisregion could be faulty. Resource allocation based on such estimatescould put the region at a loss. Besides, there are emergingissues such as health inequity, government withdrawal from healthcare, lack of insurance, and cost ineffective use of resources.

However, this region is not just full of problems. New practicesare emerging that could serve as models to the rest of the world.Kerala's model of "good health at low cost" is well known; othermodels are adoption of government healthcare institutions byindustry, non-governmental . . . [Full text of this article]

D Varatharajan, associate professor for health economics and policy

Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala 695 011, India dvrajan@sctimst.ac.in

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