5,038 research outputs found
Willingness to Pay for Voluntary Health Insurance in Tanzania
To assess how willing people would be to join a voluntary health insurance scheme and to see how they respond to changes in the benefit package. We also examined willingness to cross-subsidise the poor. Cross-sectional study. Two thousand two hundread and twenty four households comprising of 1,163 uninsured household heads asked about their willingness to pay for insurance in seven districts/councils (three urban and four rural) and 1,061 insured households were asked about their willingness to pay for insurance premiums for the poor in their community. Uninsured respondents were presented with two scenarios, the first reflected the current design of the Community Health Fund/Tiba Kwa Kadi (CHF/TIKA), the second offered expanded benefits, and included inpatient care in public facilities and transport. Only 30 % of uninsured rural households were willing to pay more than Tsh 5,000 the current premium level, their average amount was Tsh 10,741, while in urban areas one percent of households were willing to pay more than Tsh 5,000. There was very limited willingness to pay more than 5,000 Tsh, even with an expanded package in rural areas. Household from rural areas were more willing to cross-subsidise the poor, but contribution levels were higher in urban areas. Communities need to be sensitised about the existence of the CHF/TIKA to encourage enrollment. Expanding the benefit package would further increase enrollment. However, few people would be willing to pay more than the current premium.\u
Exact numerical diagonalization of one-dimensional interacting electrons nonadiabatically coupled to phonons
We study the role of non-adiabatic Holstein electron-phonon coupling on the
neutral-ionic phase transition of charge transfer crystals which can be tuned
from continuous to discontinuous, using exact numerical diagonalization. The
variation of electronic properties through the transition is smoothed by
nonadiabaticity. Lattice properties are strongly affected, and we observe both
squeezing and antisqueezing, depending on details of the adiabatic potentials,
and identify the quantum uncertainty of the phonons as the most sensitive
measure of nonadiabaticity. The adiabatic limit is regular for a continuous
transition but turns out completely inadequate near a discontinuous transition.
The relevance of coherent state approaches is assessed critically.Comment: latex manuscript (7 pages), 3 eps figures; revised version, better
discussion, one figure replaced; to be published in Europhys. Let
Strongly correlated metal interfaces in the Gutzwiller approximation
We study the effect of spatial inhomogeneity on the physics of a strongly
correlated electron system exhibiting a metallic phase and a Mott insulating
phase, represented by the simple Hubbard model. In three dimensions, we
consider various geometries, including vacuum-metal-vacuum, a junction between
a weakly and a strongly correlated metal, and finally the double junctions
metal-Mott insulator-metal and metal-strongly correlated metal- metal. We
applied to these problems the self-consistent Gutzwiller technique recently
developed in our group, whose approximate nature is compensated by an extreme
flexibility,ability to treat very large systems, and physical transparency. The
main general result is a clear characterization of the position dependent
metallic quasiparticle spectral weight. Its behavior at interfaces reveals the
ubiquitous presence of exponential decays and crossovers, with decay lengths of
clear physical significance. The decay length of metallic strength in a
weakly-strongly correlated metal interface is due to poor screening in the
strongly correlated side. The decay length of metallic strength from a metal
into a Mott insulator (or into vacuum) is due to tunneling. In both cases, the
decay length is a bulk property, and diverges with a critical exponent ( in the present approximation, mean field in character) as the (continuous,
paramagnetic) Mott transition is approached.Comment: 19 pages, 19 figure
Costs of publicly provided maternity services in Rosario, Argentina
This material is posted here with permission of the publishers, Instituto Nacional de Salud PĂșblica. Internal or personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material must be obtained from the Publisher.Objective. This study estimates the costs of maternal health services in Rosario, Argentina. Material and Methods. The rovider costs (US114.62. The average cost of a caesarean section (105.61). A normal delivery costs less at the general
hospital and a c-section less at the aternity hospital. The average cost of an antenatal visit is 4.70. Direct costs are minimal compared to indirect costs of travel and waiting time. Conclusions. These results suggest the potential for increasing the efficiency of resource use by promoting antenatal care visits at the primary level. Women could also benefit from reduced travel and waiting time. Similar benefits could accrue to the provider by encouraging normal delivery at general hospitals, and complicated deliveries at specialised maternity hospitals.Josephine Borghi is funded by the Department for International Development through the Maternal Health Programme at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. This project was conducted for and funded by the Human Reproduction Programme at WHO, Geneva
High frequency electro-optic measurement of strained silicon racetrack resonators
The observation of the electro-optic effect in strained silicon waveguides
has been considered as a direct manifestation of an induced
non-linearity in the material. In this work, we perform high frequency
measurements on strained silicon racetrack resonators. Strain is controlled by
a mechanical deformation of the waveguide. It is shown that any optical
modulation vanishes independently of the applied strain when the applied
voltage varies much faster than the carrier effective lifetime, and that the DC
modulation is also largely independent of the applied strain. This demonstrates
that plasma carrier dispersion is responsible for the observed electro-optic
effect. After normalizing out free carrier effects, our results set an upper
limit of to the induced high-speed tensor
element at an applied stress of . This upper limit is about one
order of magnitude lower than the previously reported values for static
electro-optic measurements
Community Health Insurance:A Financially Sustainable Approach to Universal Coverage in Africa? Insights From Tanzania
Comparison of Costs of Home and Facility-based Basic Obstetric Care in Rural Bangladesh
This study compared the costs of providing antenatal, delivery and postnatal care in the home and in a basic obstetric facility in rural Bangladesh. The average costs were estimated by interviewing midwives and from institutional records. The main determinants of cost in each setting were also assessed. The cost of basic obstetric care in the home and in a facility was very similar, although care in the home was cheaper. Deliveries in the home took more time but this was offset by the capital costs associated with facility-based care. As use-rates increase, deliveries in a facility will become cheaper. Antenatal and postnatal care was much cheaper to provide in the facility than in the home. Facility-based delivery care is likely to be a cheaper and more feasible method for the care provider as demand rises. In settings where skilled attendance rates are very low, home-based care will be cheaper
Characterisation of Hybrid Pixel Detectors with capacitive charge division
In order to fully exploit the physics potential of the future high energy e+
e- linear collider, a Vertex Tracker providing high resolution track
reconstruction is required. Hybrid pixel sensors are an attractive technology
due to their fast read-out capabilities and radiation hardness. A novel pixel
detector layout with interleaved cells between the readout nodes has been
developed to improve the single point resolution. The results of the
characterisation of the first processed prototypes are reported.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, presented at LCWS2000, Linear Collider Workshop,
October 24-28 2000, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Batavia, Illinois,
U.S.A. Proceedings to be published by the American Institute of Physic
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