World Development Report 2004
The 2004 edition of the World Bank’s World Development Report focuses on basic services, particularly health, education, water and sanitation, and discusses ways to make them work for poor people. In the light of widespread failure to make services accessible, affordable and of high quality, the report also points to success stories and concludes that services can be improved by putting poor people at the centre of service provision by enabling the poor to monitor and discipline service providers, by amplifying their voice in policymaking, and by strengthening the incentives for providers to serve the poor.

Of particular interest to the health sector are chapters 8, 10 and 11. Chapter 8 focuses on health and nutrition services, in particular the health of poor people, market and government failures, strengthening client power and the voices of poor citizens, and providing incentives to serve the poor. Chapter 10 discusses public sector underpinnings of service reform, especially the importance of strengthening the foundations of government, wise spending, decentralisation, policy making, management and implementation, curbing corruption, and transition management. Chapter 11 considers the role of donors in service reform, including aid and accountability, management by provider organizations, increasing client power, promoting the voice of the poor, aligning aid delivery with service delivery, and the challenges of reforming aid.

Human development Report 2003
The 2003 edition of the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Report is devoted to the Millennium Development Goals. The central part of the report is an analyse of what needs to be done to reverse the setbacks, and offers concrete proposals on how to accelerate progress. The Report sets out a Millennium Development Compact which highlights the key areas of intervention that should guide national efforts and international support for the Goals.

The health sector is covered in chapters 4 and 5. Chapter 4, entitled Public Policies to Improve People’s Health and Education, focuses on setting the right policy priorities and includes an in-depth examination of the Goals related to hunger, education, health, and water sanitation. This chapter also includes an action plan intended to boost the level, equity and efficiency of public spending – as well as the quantity and quality of official development assistance – for basic services. Chapter 5 considers the private financing and provision of health, education and water services, and considers issues of privatization of public services including the risks of corruption.

“The World Health Report 2000- Health systems: Improving performance”
The 2000 edition of the WHO’s World Health Report is devoted entirely to health systems and represents an extension of the organisation’s traditional concern for people’s physical and mental well-being to emphasize the important elements of goodness and fairness within organizations, institutions, and resources devoted to producing actions to improve people’s health.

It takes account of the roles people have as providers and consumers of health services, as financial contributors to health systems, as workers within them, and as citizens engaged in responsible management or stewardship. It also considers successes and failures in addressing inequalities, how they respond to people’s expectations, and how much or how little they respect people’s dignity, rights and freedoms. The report also provides an index of member states’ national health systems’ performance in trying to achieve three overall goals: good health, responsiveness to the expectations of the population, and fairness of financial contribution.

Global Health Watch Report 2005-2006
The report results from a collaboration of public health experts, NGOs, community groups, health workers and academics. It presents an assessment of inequalities in health and health care - and is aimed at challenging the major institutions, such as the World Health Organization, that influence health.

The Watch is divided into five thematic sections:
Health and globalisation; healthcare services and systems; health of vulnerable groups; the wider health context; and holding to account, which looks at the lack of transparency and accountability in the priority setting and management of international organisations that deal with health.

Sanjeev Gupta, Hamid Davoodi, Erwin Tiongron, ‘Corruption and the Provision of Health Care and Education Services’, IMF Working Paper, 2000.
This paper reviews the relevant theoretical models and users’ perceptions of corruption in the public provision of social services. Reports based on public service delivery surveys are found to confirm the pervasiveness of corruption and bribery in the public provision of health and education services. Evidence that reducing corruption can result in significant gains as measured by decreases in child and infant mortality rates, percent of low-birth weight babies, and primary school dropout rates are provided. The purpose of the review is to determine whether a link between corruption and the outcome of public provision of social services can be established. However, the question of what causes such links and how to approach the problem of corruption receives less attention. Suggested policy implications appear rather conventional and devoid of contextual considerations.

Taryn Vian, ‘Corruption and the Health Sector’, Management Systems International/USAID, Nov 2002

Lindelow, Kushnarova, Kaiser, ‘Measuring Corruption in the Health Sector; What we can learn from public expenditure tracking and service delivery surveys in developing countries’, World Bank PETS Survey, World Bank, June 2005. GCR 2006, Chapter 2, p29

Khaleghian, Das Gupta, ‘Public Management and the Essential Public Health Functions’, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, February 2004

Ensor and Duran-Moreno, ‘Corruption as a Challenge to Effective Regulation in the Health Sector’, in Regulating Entrepreneurial Behavior, Open University Press, 2002