Professional medical associations in low-income and middle-income countries

www.thelancet.com/lancetgh Vol 4 September 2016 e606 of Family Group Practitioners, the Association of Hospitals, and the Medical Accreditation Commission in Kyrgyzstan. Their role has included reorganisation of service delivery, new provider payment mechanisms, and new forms of accounting and reporting. These associations are highly dependent on donor assistance for their survival, but they have shown the ability to be efficient partners to the government in reforming health care and other issues related to regulation of medical practice and delivery of public services. This work highlights the importance of such organisations in improving health-care delivery, but also how associations can be used to address specifi c needs in a given context. Clearly much has to be done to help with the development of PMAs in low-income and middle-income countries, opening up the need for WHO and the World Medical Association to invest in this area of the health system. An approach to develop PMAs in low-income and middle-income countries could be through twinning programmes between medical associations in these settings and high-income settings. PMAs play a crucial role in shaping human resources for health, one of the six building blocks of the health system, but have yet to be supported and fully used in low-income and middle-income settings for the benefi t of the health of the populations they serve.