Zambia

Inside we spoke to the owner who told us. "I started this business in 2001, I did a six month course in Pharmacy but couldn't continue due to a lack of funds for my school fees. This is a profitable business because people in this community believe in self-medication rather than going to clinics.

Photo: Sorrotie Banda

Takijistan

Davlatbi Davlatova is a trained nurse and works in the Shibanai village health centre. "We have lots of problems with typhoid and malaria. Some people who have the money will go straight to the chemist and get what they need. But for poorer families it's a real struggle. Often they have to rely on middlemen who come into the villages selling medicines."

Photo: Karen Robinson/Oxfam

Kenya

Prescribing medicines is often inconsistent and erratic. This is a major problem in government health services in East Africa, but is worse in the private pharmacies and clinics, which often have no trained staff.

Margaret Atieno's baby, Maureen, suffers bouts of malaria. She finds it difficult to afford to keep paying for medicines.

Photo: Ami Vitale/Oxfam

Kenya

When people need medicines they usually have to turn to private pharmacies, if they can afford to.

Rural incomes in Kenya have suffered because of the collapse of coffee prices. Farmers are less able to pay for heath-care.

Photo: Ami Vitale/Oxfam

India

The public health sector in India is chronically under-funded. Due to a lack of investment, scores of patients are forced to lie on the floor as the public referral hospital in Bihar currently only has 6 beds. It's awaiting the arrival of sanctioned beds and equipment.

India has some of the lowest levels of investment into the public sector in the world, with less than 20 per cent of the government's healthcare budget going to public sector hospitals and clinics, healthworkers and life-saving medicines.

Photo: Ranjan Rahi

India

Two months ago Gopal Singh, pictured above receiving an injection, got a small boil on his left foot. Without knowing he was diabetic, the 'private doctor' in his village operated upon him. The wound has been worsening ever since.

"I cannot afford to go to the big private hospitals or the expensive private clinics. The private doctors are for the cities and the rich.

"If I knew for sure that the government hospital will have doctors and medicines available at all times and the staff will be polite and concerned then I would definitely go there," says Gopal Singh.

Photo: Ranjan Rahi

India

This scene shows people waiting to get registered at Motihari District Government Hospital in East Champaran, Bihar. With so few doctors employed to work in the public sector of health-care in India, this scene is typical.

It's clear that achieving universal and equitable health-care for all will require a massive expansion of public health services. In fact, there are more Indian doctors working in the UK's NHS than in Indian public hospitals.

Photo: Ranjan Rahi

India

This is the reality of 'private care' for many poor people.

In India, 82% of outpatient care is provided by the private sector. Half of the mothers in India receive no medical assistance during childbirth.

Photo: Ranjan Rahi