The objective of this article is to examine the posited solutions to health challenges in developing countries. Appraising this contest of approaches is critical since good health directly impacts economic growth by having a healthy workforce and indirectly raising the total factor productivity. However, according to the overall health indicators, the health situation in developing countries is in a dire state. Therefore, it is imperative to study the prevailing views on the health policies that work to identify what should be done to solve this problem.
Obeng-Odoom (2012) argues that disease, poor health, and the type of interventions to improve them create typical costs and opportunities. Three predominant views on the subject emphasize privatization, strengthening, and ‘NGOisation’ of the healthcare system. First, advocates of a state-oriented perspective hold that resolving the crisis in healthcare by funding the system is all that should be done to remedy the Third World health crisis. Second, supporters of privatization and ‘NGOisation’ argue that these organizations are keener about mobilizing money rather than people and undermine the state’s role since they operate undemocratically and top-down. Lastly, the author contends that solving this health crisis should go beyond civil society, the market, and the state to reconsider policies that help reduce social inequality and poverty, such as the distribution of wealth and income in the country.
Obeng-Odoom provides a debatable issue in terms of ‘NGOisation,’ privatization, and state strengthening of the health system to remedy the problems that exist in the sector. First, the article notes that better health outcomes are associated with higher health expenditure because omission and commission errors are amplified where money is scarce (Obeng-Odoom, 2012). Another issue presented by the author is that funders are often criticized for failing to coordinate efforts to support the needy. Consequently, this has prompted the prerequisite to implementing Sector Wide Approaches (SWAPs). Finally, Obeng-Odoom (2012) debates that instead of working with civil society, state and privatization strategies, policies to thin the social inequality and poverty gap are more practical in reducing health issues in Third World countries. Therefore, more focus should be put on the nature of food and eating habits of the poor to improve their life expectancy.
Obeng-Odoom (2012) presents well-formulated evidence to show that a state-led strategy and the civil society and market view of the healthcare system of developing nations are deficient. The aforementioned perspectives gloss over the primary drivers of health that generally lie outside the system. On the contrary, the author vouches for poverty and poor health, which are mutually reinforcing and drive cumulative and circular causation forces. Based on this study, misrepresentation of the state of the health crisis in Third World countries makes the prevailing community, market, and state frameworks constitute health in reverse case or an illness requiring a cure in extreme cases (Obeng-Odoom, 2012). However, improving the situation should not be reduced to one perspective that wins over the rest. Instead, the key idea is that most impediments to achieving well-being and good health lie outside the healthcare system and are linked to social class, affecting social inequality and poverty levels. I agree with Obeng-Odoom (2012) that health policy is more effective because it targets the aforementioned dynamics. A just change in how stakeholders perceive the problem will go a long way in formulating practical solutions.
Reference
Obeng-Odoom, F. (2012). Health, wealth and poverty in developing countries: Beyond the State, market, and civil society. Health Sociology Review, 21(2), 156–164.