Journal Special Issue
Measuring quality of care

The United Nations sustainable development goal (SDG) 3 seeks “to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all and at all ages”. To build healthcare systems that were able to progress towards the millennium development goals, many countries had to extend delivery systems to increase coverage. They also greatly improved measurement of people’s contacts with the health system.

However, with the reduction in disease burden due to specific infectious diseases and childhood illnesses, people tend to live longer, have multiple noncommunicable diseases and require more complex services. The focus on measuring access is not sufficient to capture whether people receive effective care..

This theme issue will provide a glimpse of current research on quality of health-care services in low- and middle-income countries. The authors make a strong case for the need for governments to both improve health-care quality and to be able to measure the effects of such improvements.