Health care Systems and Their Transformation: A Comparing the Health Care System of Three Selected Countries

Abstract

Background: Health is known as one of the important rights of every human being. Therefore, access
to health care should be possible for all people based on their needs, as such; this protects, maintains and
promotes their health without risk of financial hardship. This article comprehensively analyses healthcare
systems of three selected countries.
Objective: In this study, we sought to compare the healthcare system of Afghanistan with Iran and Australia.
Method: Descriptive-comparative study was used to compare the health system of Afghanistan with that
of Iran and Australia based on the conceptual framework for healthcare system comparison by Wendt.
According to Wendt’s conceptual framework, comparison focuses on the contribution of three actors in
health system that is: the government, private sectors and societal scheme in three dimensions of health
system financing, provision and regulation.
Results: The result of this study showed that the Afghanistan health care system is state based mixed type
which is similar with that of Iran and Australia in some aspects. But difference exists in the contribution
of each of three actors in dimensions of health care system. In Afghanistan, regulation dimension of health
care system is highly centralized; all decisions related to goals, monitoring, evaluation, policies and finance
are made in Ministry of Public Health (MOPH). This aspect is quit similar with that observed in the Iranian
Healthcare system outlook.
Conclusion: Findings of this study showed that the success of health system in two other countries, it
seems that the applying the decentralization of regulation and contribution of private and societal scheme in
financing and provision of health care is the best choice for improving the health care system in Afghanistan.
Also, government should decrease dependency in donors.