Social cost of mining-related lead (Pb) pollution in Kabwe, Zambia, and potential remediation measures.

Lead (Pb) pollution has been one of the major environmental problems of worldwide significance. It is a latent factor for several fatal illnesses, whereas the exposure to lead in early childhood causes a lifetime IQ loss. The social cost is the concept to aggregate various adverse effects in a single monetary unit, which is useful in describing the pollution problem and provides foundation for the design of interventions.

Universal health coverage and the poor: to what extent are health financing policies making a difference? Evidence from a benefit incidence analysis in Zambia.

Background: Zambia has invested in several healthcare financing reforms aimed at achieving universal access to health services. Several evaluations have investigated the effects of these reforms on the utilization of health services. However, only one study has assessed the distributional incidence of health spending across different socioeconomic groups, but without differentiating between public and overall health spending and between curative and maternal health services.

Assessing the population-wide exposure to lead pollution in Kabwe, Zambia: an econometric estimation based on survey data.

This study quantitatively assessed the population-wide lead poisoning conditions in Kabwe, Zambia, a town with severe lead pollution. While existing data have reported concerning blood lead levels (BLLs) of residents in pollution hotspots, the data representing the entire population are lacking. Further, selection bias is a concern.

Myriad of Health Care Financing Reforms in Zambia: Have the Poor Benefited?

Zambia has implemented a number of financing and organizational reforms since the 1990s aimed at increasing efficiency, enhancing equity, and improving health outcomes. This study reviews the distributional impact of these health reforms on enhancing equity at the regional level and for different socioeconomic groups. Data from three nationally representative household surveys were collected, and a benefit incidence analysis was conducted to determine the distributional impact over the period 2010-2015.

Costing of Paediatric Treatment alongside Clinical Trials under Low Resource Constraint Environments: Cotrimoxazole and Antiretroviral Medications in Children Living with HIV/AIDS.

. Costing evidence is essential for policy makers for priority setting and resource allocation. It is in this context that the clinical trials of ARVs and cotrimoxazole provided a costing component to provide evidence for budgeting and resource needs alongside the clinical efficacy studies.

Multi-country analysis of treatment costs for HIV/AIDS (MATCH): facility-level ART unit cost analysis in Ethiopia, Malawi, Rwanda, South Africa and Zambia.

Background: Today's uncertain HIV funding landscape threatens to slow progress towards treatment goals. Understanding the costs of antiretroviral therapy (ART) will be essential for governments to make informed policy decisions about the pace of scale-up under the 2013 WHO HIV Treatment Guidelines, which increase the number of people eligible for treatment from 17.6 million to 28.

From targeted exemptions to user fee abolition in health care: experience from rural Zambia.

Poor access to health care is one of the greatest impediments to improved health in Africa. In Zambia, user fees are considered to be partly responsible for substantial disparities in access to health care. When the Government introduced user fees in 1993, considerable concern was expressed about the adverse effects on utilisation and access.

The cost-effectiveness of cotrimoxazole prophylaxis in HIV-infected children in Zambia.

Objective: To assess the cost-effectiveness of cotrimoxazole prophylaxis in HIV-infected children in Zambia, as implementation at the local health centre level has yet to be undertaken in many resource-limited countries despite recommendations in recent updated World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines.

Design: A probabilistic decision analytical model of HIV/AIDS progression in children based on the CD4 cell percentage (CD4%) was populated with data from the placebo-controlled Children with HIV Antibiotic Prophylaxis trial that had reported a 43% reduction in mortality with cotrimoxazole prophylaxis in HIV-infected children aged 1-14 years.

Methods: Unit costs (US$ in 2006) were measured at University Teaching Hospital, Lusaka.

A cost-effectiveness analysis of artemether lumefantrine for treatment of uncomplicated malaria in Zambia.

Background: Malaria remains a leading cause of morbidity, mortality and non-fatal disability in Zambia, especially among children, pregnant women and the poor. Data gathered by the National Malaria Control Centre has shown that recently observed widespread treatment failure of SP and chloroquine precipitated a surge in malaria-related morbidity and mortality. As a result, the Government has recently replaced chloroquine and SP with combination therapy as first-line treatment for malaria.