n This overview of rural health care today shows the role that internal medicine can and should play in delivering primary care to rural populations. The American College of Physicians recommends changes to improve access to and delivery of primary care in rural areas. There are six specific recommendations. 1. Implementing universal health care coverage through a system that makes primary care...

BACKGROUND Lebanon is faced with a particular challenge because of large socioeconomic inequality and accelerated demographic transition. Rural residents seem more vulnerable because of limited access to transport, health and social services. No information is available regarding health, nutrition and living conditions of this specific population. The purpose of the AMEL (Aging and Malnutrition...

OBJECTIVE To determine whether bioethicists are distributed along a rural-to-urban continuum in a way that reflects potential need of those resources as determined by the general population, hospital facilities and hospital beds. METHODS US members of a large, multidisciplinary professional society, the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH), the US population, hospital facilitie...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to describe and to compare the cancer mortality rates in urban and rural residents in Lithuania. METHODS Cancer mortality has been studied using the materials of the Lithuanian cancer registry. For the period 1993-2004 age-standardized urban and rural population mortality rates (World standard) were calculated for all malignant neoplasm's and for stomach, ...

BACKGROUND The availability of reliable and comprehensive information on the health workforce is crucial for workforce planning. In India, routine information sources on the health workforce are incomplete and unreliable. This paper addresses this issue and provides a comprehensive picture of India's health workforce. METHODS Data from the 68th round (July 2011 to June 2012) of the National S...

The plight of rural people has been highlighted by numerous policy studies and considerable public awareness has been created via the media. Whereas 50% of the population of South Africa is rural, the rural areas contain 72% of those members of the total population who are poor. Compared to their urban counterparts, rural people also have vastly inferior access to basic social services and the ...

CONTEXT People living in rural or remote Brazil, as in other sub-tropical or tropical nations, are vulnerable to infections that would not normally occur in urban areas or wealthier nations. Brazil is a geographically extensive nation, historically marked by vast socioeconomic inequalities. Approximately 16% of the population live in rural areas. ISSUE This clinical case report demonstrates t...

BACKGROUND Alcohol is one of the leading causes of death and disability globally and in India. Information on quantum and pattern of consumption is crucial to formulate intervention programs. OBJECTIVES To identify the extent and pattern of alcohol use in urban, rural, town and slum populations using a uniform methodology. MATERIALS AND METHODS Door-to-door survey was undertaken and simple ...