23-Jan-17 The influx of NGOs in Cambodia may have weakened the government health sector. A report has found that Cambodia has been more dependent on health NGOs than other case studies. While “international aid was critical to support the country’s reconstruction”, the study also claims that conflicting agendas “did not help strengthening government stewardship and ownership of health sector development”. [image: Tang Chhin Sothy / AFP]

20-Jan-17 Poor spending on healthcare is a major concern in India, where most cannot afford private healthcare. India ranks abysmally low on public healthcare expenditure. The objective laid out in the National Health Policy to increase expenditure 1.04 per cent of GDP to 2.5 per cent by 2020, with 70 per cent for primary care, has been a welcome step. [image: Business Standard]

31-Dec-16 As throngs of Venezuelans trek to Brazil in search of food and medicine, hospitals along Brazil’s northern border are struggling to pick up the pieces of Venezuela’s failing healthcare system. An economic crisis and hyperinflation have cleaned Venezuelan hospitals of supplies. Desperate for care and often undocumented, patients are overwhelming Brazilian emergency rooms as they turn up by the thousands. [image: Marina Lopes / The Washington Post]

18-Nov-16 2016 marked another major milestone in China, as health became an explicit national priority under the Healthy China 2030 plan. This is an exceptional recognition of the political power of health. But some formidable new threats have arrived. Population-wide increases in body weight warn of a wave of lifestyle-related diseases including heart disease, diabetes and diet-related cancers. [image: China Topix]

25-Oct-16 Among patients diagnosed with diabetes, only 20-30 percent of East Asian patients have normal insulin secretion, lower than the 50 percent of Western patients. A Japanese retrospective study showed that while about 80 percent of Westerners with type 2 diabetes were obese, only 30-40 percent of Taiwanese were obese and the average age of onset was younger. [image: BBC]