Understanding the changing health of the Iranian people
The 2004 reform focused on the creation of a Rural Family Physician Programme and has not been extended to urban areas. [...]any effect would be obscured unless urban and rural areas were analysed separately, with only 24% of the population currently living in rural areas. The 2014 reform was more w...
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Published in: | The Lancet (British edition) Vol. 399; no. 10335; pp. 1577 - 1578 |
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Main Authors: | , |
Format: | Journal Article |
Language: | English |
Published: |
England
Elsevier Ltd
23-04-2022
Elsevier Limited |
Subjects: | |
Online Access: | Get full text |
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Summary: | The 2004 reform focused on the creation of a Rural Family Physician Programme and has not been extended to urban areas. [...]any effect would be obscured unless urban and rural areas were analysed separately, with only 24% of the population currently living in rural areas. The 2014 reform was more wide-ranging, addressing financing and delivery systems, so one might expect to be able to detect a benefit, with other research showing a reduction in out-of-pocket spending for people who are poor.9 However, the 2014 reform was less successful in strengthening the health workforce in poorer rural areas and had little effect on access.10 It also struggled to achieve its stated goal of increasing affordability of medicines because of the continued effect of sanctions. [...]the tightening of sanctions in 2011, used as a demarcation point by the authors, was only one episode in a long series of measures taken by the UN Security Council, the USA, the EU, and other entities going back to 1984.13 The Iranian economy has fluctuated markedly over this time, reflecting the effects of both changing sanction regimes and measures taken to counter their effects.14 There is a wealth of evidence that political decisions, whether related directly to health, such as health-care reforms, or indirectly, such as those in the geopolitical arena, can have profound consequences for health,15 but disentangling the complex causal pathways is challenging. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 0140-6736 1474-547X |
DOI: | 10.1016/S0140-6736(22)00483-4 |