The world health report 1999: making a difference

Abstract

This report challenges the international community to examine the difference health can make in humanity's continuing progress. Issued by WHO Director-General Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland as WHO itself undergoes comprehensive reform, the report shows how the pursuit of lasting improvements in health, when supported by vision and leadership can also secure considerable social and economic gains. It gathers the arguments and evidence that give health messages their persuasive power in the formulation of national policies and the direction of international aid. It explanins how lessons learned from past successes and failures can guide a more targeted and pragmatic approach to current and emerging health challenges. It warns of the unprecedented comlexity of these challenges, and offers strategic directions for tackling them...more than 1 billion people today have not share in the gains of health progress... The treat posed by infectious diseases is being accompanied by the growing prominence of noncommunicable diseases...In contrats to a "universalism" that advocated government finance and provision of all services for everyone, the report-and WHO-argue for a "new universalims". This would maintain government responsibility for financing and leadership, while recognizing government's own limits. Public finance for all entails that not all things can be publicly financed. Private sector revision of publicly financed services is compatible with government responsibilities for health for all, but requires a clear regulatory role of governments