[e-drug] Revolving Drug Funds at village level

["Bigdeli, Ms Maryam (LAO)" <bigdelim@lao.wpro.who.int>]

E-DRUG: Revolving Drug Funds at village level
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Dear e-druggers,

I am currently finishing the analysis of an operational research study on village revolving drug funds in Lao PDR. Preliminary results of this study were presented at ICIUM conference in Chiang Mai.
[See www.icium.org  WB]

When you speak about village revolving funds in the international community, experts always say they "don't work". But when you search the literature, you find very few evidence of this. Mind you: a lot of publishing has been done on Bamako Initiative and revolving funds in facilities (health centers, clinics, hospitals).

But so far, I have only found one published article on community or village RDFs (Financing health care at local level: the community drug funds of Honduras - by Fiedler and Wight in International Journal of Health Planning and Management, 2000). This article also refers to one other article published by McPake and Mills in Social Sciences and Medicine in 1993. So far, I have no other published reference...

Well, and THE published article actually shows the CDFs "work", although it raises issues of sustainability.

I would assume researchers and journals in this field have the same bad habit as in other fields: i.e. "negative" results do not get often published. And if I beleive the international rumour, there might be more negative than positive results.

So, I would like to know if you know of any other published reference. Or if any of your personal experiences or researches could feed the discussion of our study.

Thanks in advance

Maryam Bigdeli
Health Systems
WHO Laos - PO BOX 343 - Vientiane, Lao PDR
Phone +856 21 413 431 / 413 023
Fax +856 21 413 432
Email: bigdelim@lao.wpro.who.int