Global health assistance: a new perspective

Health care priorities for many emerging economies have undergone a dramatic transition in the recent past because of the rise in chronic illness, increased longevity, and lessened infant mortality. Two additional major societal forces, democratization and the information revolution, will alter the nature of global health assistance. Because of democratization, governments will feel increasing pressure to provide adequate health care. Because of the information revolution, all practitioners will know what is available. The convergence of these three forces will create an enormous financial burden for emerging economies. Adapting to these new realities will be the challenge to donor organizations. What is likely to emerge as a critical health care problem around the world is the need to balance priorities between acute care and prevention or modification of chronic disease. These efforts will be directed at different populations, one manifestly ill and one potentially so, and each will need to be recognized politically as having valid claims on governmental resources. External support will need to include demonstration within the recipient communities that data collection permits an accurate identification of disease burden, that risk factor modification ameliorates the impact of disease, that continuity of care is essential to long term outcomes, and that therapy of developed disease can be rationally carried out utilizing evidence based medicine to insure efficiency and appropriateness.