Two commonly used metrics for assessing progress toward universal health coverage involve assessing citizens’ rights to health care and counting the number of people who are in a financial protection scheme that safeguards them from high health care payments. On these metrics most countries in Latin America have already “reached” universal health coverage. Neither metric indicates, however, whether a country has achieved universal health coverage in the now commonly accepted sense of the term: that everyone—irrespective of their ability to pay—gets the health services they need without suffering undue financial hardship. We operationalized a framework proposed by the World Bank and the World Health Organization to monitor progress under this definition and then constructed an overall index of universal health coverage achievement. We applied the approach using data from 112 household surveys from 1990 to 2013 for all twenty Latin American countries. No country has achieved a perfect universal health cover...

Sarti, F. M., C. Adams, C. Morsello, N. Van Vliet, T. Schor, B. Yagüe, L. Tellez, M. Quiceno-Mesa, and D. Cruz. 2015. Beyond protein intake: bushmeat as source of micronutrients in the Amazon. Ecology and Society 20(4):22.http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-07934-200422

To analyze costs associated with dementia based on a cross-sectional study in the Brazilian health system. Direct and indirect costs were estimated by conducting comprehensive interviews on the use of resources in a sample of 156 patients with dementia treated at an outpatient memory clinic of a tertiary hospital. A regression model was used to determine the main determinants of costs associated with dementia. Global costs of dementia were US$1,012.35; US$1,683.18 and US$1,372.30 per patient/month for mild, moderate and severe stages, respectively. Indirect costs ranged from US$536.62 to US$545.17 according to severity. Dementia costs were influenced by medication, FAST score, and educational level of caregiver. The study represents an original contribution toward establishing direct and indirect costs of dementia in Brazil. Results indicate significant economic impacts, including projection of annual costs of US$16,548.24 per patient.