Urban health insurance reform and coverage in China using data from National Health Services Surveys in 1998 and 2003.

Background: In 1997 there was a major reform of the government run urban health insurance system in China. The principal aims of the reform were to widen coverage of health insurance for the urban employed and contain medical costs. Following this reform there has been a transition from the dual system of the Government Insurance Scheme (GIS) and Labour Insurance Scheme (LIS) to the new Urban Employee Basic Health Insurance Scheme (BHIS).

Decentralisation and TB control in Nepal: understanding the views of TB control staff.

Experience shows that planners need to consider the effect of the process of decentralisation on national health programmes. The aim of this article is to explore the relationship between decentralisation and a national disease control programme by seeking to understand the views and attitudes of staff working in a national TB control programme on the process of change and their involvement in that change. The study to which this paper refers was performed in Nepal, where, in common with several low- and middle-income countries, a Local Self Governance Act has been passed and decentralisation is in the process of being introduced in the health sector.

The relationship between disease control strategies and health system development: the case of TB.

This paper focuses on the lack of dialogue and policy consonance between those taking the lead in health systems change and those developing specific disease control strategies. In the first part, the origins and characteristics of this situation are explained using, as an example, TB control. Attention is then paid to the development of disease control friendly health systems.