The internal migration between public and faith-based health providers: a cross-sectional, retrospective and multicentre study from southern Tanzania.

Objective: To assess the magnitude, direction and underlying dynamics of internal health worker migration between public and faith-based health providers from a hospital perspective.

Methods: Two complementary tools were implemented in 10 public and six faith-based hospitals in southern Tanzania. A hospital questionnaire assessed magnitude and direction of staff migration between January 2006 and June 2009.

The role of research in a technical assistance agency: the case of the 'German Agency for Technical Co-operation'.

Technical assistance agencies have a sustainable impact on the health systems of the countries they are operating in. As well as policy-makers at the national level, technical assistance agencies see themselves confronted that their interventions should be based on evidence, usually meaning the results of research. This study has the aim to analyse role of research in the implementation of technical assistance.

The influence of health sector reform and external assistance in Burkina Faso.

Despite health reform and increasing public investment in the health sector, utilization of curative health services, immunization coverage and patient satisfaction with the public health care system are steadily decreasing in Burkina Faso. It seems that the health care system itself is "ill". This paper examines the major symptoms associated with this illness.

Sterilizing vaccines or the politics of the womb: retrospective study of a rumor in Cameroon.

In 1990 a rumor that public health workers were administering a vaccine to sterilize girls and women spread throughout Cameroon. Schoolgirls leapt from windows to escape the vaccination teams, and the vaccination campaign (part of the Year of Universal Child Immunization) was aborted. This article traces the origin and development of this rumor.

Indigence and access to health care in sub-Saharan Africa.

Access to health care services for the poor and indigent is hampered by current policies of health care financing in sub-Saharan Africa. This paper reviews the issue as it is discussed in the international literature. No real strategies seem to exist for covering the health care of the indigent.