Forty years of USAID health cooperation in Bolivia. A lose-lose game?

The present article proposes an analysis of the USA-Bolivia relationships in the health sector between 1971 and 2010 based on a grey and scientific literature review and on interviews. We examined United States Agency for International Development (USAID) interventions, objectives, consistency with Bolivian needs, and impact on health system integration. USAID operational objectives--decentralization, fertility and disease control, and maternal and child health--may have worked against each other while competing for limited Ministry of Health resources.

International health policy and stagnating maternal mortality: is there a causal link?

This paper examines why progress towards Millennium Development Goal 5 on maternal health appears to have stagnated in much of the global south. We contend that besides the widely recognised existence of weak health systems, including weak services, low staffing levels, managerial weaknesses, and lack of infrastructure and information, this stagnation relates to the inability of most countries to meet two essential conditions: to develop access to publicly funded, comprehensive health care, and to provide the not-for-profit sector with needed political, technical and financial support. This paper offers a critical perspective on the past 15 years of international health policies as a possible cofactor of high maternal mortality, because of their emphasis on disease control in public health services at the expense of access to comprehensive health care, and failures of contracting out and public-private partnerships in health care.