Beginning this month, VOA begins presenting a series of 10 radio and five TV reports on challenges to world health care systems. The reports, which will also appear on VOANews.com, will focus on the broad social effects of health problems around the world. Some national health care systems suffer from a shortage of personnel, and many lack sufficient funding. In some countries, poor people have no access to, or are unable to pay for, even basic health care. And now health authorities are facing new threats such as the growing problem of counterfeit drugs and the rapidly increasing development of diseases that are drug-resistant.

RUSSIA'S HEALTH CRISIS: Russia's health care system is as sick as its patients, so the government has decided to spend some of its oil revenues to reform it. The plan is to emphasize basic care rather than specialist treatment. But some Russian doctors are worried that this will create more problems than solutions.

HUMAN MEDICAL TRIALS: Human trials of new drugs carry risks for volunteers. There have been calls for stricter rules for drug tests. But researchers continue to test experimental vaccines on human subjects as part of efforts to combat the potential global bird flu pandemic.

DRUG-RESISTANT DISEASES: No medicine can kill every single disease-causing microbe. There are always a few germs that survive drug treatment and, over time, can predominate and render formerly effective medicine useless. We'll look at the case of Uganda, where the fight against disease is a race against drug resistance.

HEALTH CARE ACCESS/PERU: Peru has one of the highest mortality rates in Latin America, but its under-funded public health system does not reach many remote communities in the Andes or the Amazon jungle. Along with the problem of access to care, many people do not have the resources to pay for even basic health care.

PHILIPPINE MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS: The Philippines is facing a serious crisis in its health system as doctors and nurses leave the country for higher paying jobs overseas. Some provincial hospitals are closing as a result of the personnel shortage, and more and more people are finding it difficult to get adequate care.

COUNTERFEIT DRUGS: Modern medicines have revolutionized the way doctors treat patients and increased life expectancy. But pharmaceuticals are a multi-billion dollar business, and criminal elements are trying to cash in, with often-deadly consequences, by producing counterfeit and sub-standard drugs.

U.S. HEALTH INSURANCE CRISIS: The United States is one of the wealthiest nations on earth, and its medical technology one of the most advanced. But U.S. health insurance is the most expensive in the world, and 46 million Americans live in fear of serious illness because they don't have health insurance that would help pay their medical bills.

CHINA'S RURAL HEALTH EMERGENCY: The social safety net that was once characterized by free health care in every Chinese village and factory has fallen apart. Now under-funded hospitals are refusing treatment to anyone unable to pay for it. Medical professionals are leaving impoverished rural areas. So, as the growing urbanized middle class gets access to good health care, hundreds of millions of people in the countryside are left with almost no care at all.

PUBLIC VS. PRIVATE HEALTH CARE IN INDIA: India's public health system cannot cope with the needs of hundreds of millions of poor people. There are shortages of everything from beds to vaccines. But private health care is booming, and modern hospitals are even attracting patients from abroad for transplants and heart surgery.

THAILAND'S PUBLIC HEALTH SYSTEM: The public health system is overburdened as a result of a government order to cut fees to 75 cents per visit, no matter what services patients receive. Hospital staff is now so overworked that many doctors are quitting, and funds for public hospitals are getting stretched thin.

HEALTH CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA: When the HIV/AIDS pandemic hit South Africa with sudden and catastrophic force in the mid-1990s, the country's health system was already groaning under the demands of transforming it from the white-centered system of the apartheid era to one that catered to the entire population. A decade later, there are indications that it is beginning to recover.

EMERGENCY CARE IN EGYPT: Getting emergency care in Egypt can be a precarious affair. In Cairo's traffic, it can take a long time for an ambulance to get to the hospital. Ambulances also usually demand payment before they are willing to transport someone to the hospital, and many ambulances don't often carry paramedics.