feat, it seemed reasonable to assume that accessibility and distribution of abortion services in Canada would increase because all independent health care facilities could now offer the procedure without criminal penalties. However, while decriminalization and regulation under the Health Act gave abortion the same status as other medical procedures, controversy over its existence and its delive...

In view of the fact that the World Health Organization has recommended the use of the mycobacteria growth indicator tube (MGIT) 960 system for the diagnosis of tuberculosis and that there is as yet no evidence regarding the clinical impact of its use in health care systems, we conducted a pragmatic clinical trial to evaluate the clinical performance and cost-effectiveness of the use of MGIT 960...

OBJECTIVE To assess changes in the inequalities associated with maternal healthcare use according to economic status in the Philippines. DESIGN An analysis of four population-based data sets that were conducted between 1993 and 2008. SETTING Philippines. PARTICIPANTS Women aged 15-49 years who had a live-birth within 1 year in 1993 (n=1707), 1998 (n=1513), 2003 (n=1325) and 2008 (n=1209)....

OBJECTIVES The purpose of this study was to describe differences in childhood pesticide exposures between counties on the Texas-Mexico border and nonborder counties. METHOD The authors reviewed all pesticide exposures among children younger than 6 years reported to the South Texas Poison Center during 1997 through 2000. RESULTS Nonborder counties had twice the reported exposure rate of bord...

This paper discusses a human rights-based initiative developed in Puno, Peru, in which indigenous women seek to address problems with access and quality of care by monitoring their government-run health facilities. The evidence of impact presented here is based on a qualitative study of the rights-based monitoring initiative (53 key informant interviews in 2010-2011), corroborated by findings f...

Amid continued attention toward cutting the cost of Medicare, medical imaging continues to be an area that legislators focus on for reducing expenditures, which ultimately affects the amount of money available in health care facilities to provide services and pay personnel. These issues support the need for medical imaging and radiation therapy professionals to understand how the Medicare progr...

One of the most serious problems for tuberculosis (TB) control is non-adherence to TB treatment. We studied the factors influencing non-adherence to TB treatment in Indonesia to inform TB treatment adherence strategies. We con- ducted semi-structured interviews with non-adherent patients and key informants in Jepara, Central Java, Indonesia. Three major themes were found in reasons for non-adhe...

To estimate additional total cost and average cost of integrating the demand-based reproductive health commodity model into the existing Government and NGO facilities in Bangladesh. Activity based cost analysis was conducted during 2006-2008 in two low performing rural sub-districts (Nabigong and Raipur sub-district) and one urban slum area in Dhaka city, Bangladesh. Activity-based cost data we...

BACKGROUND Assessment of physical access to health services is extremely important for planning. Complex methods that incorporate data inputs from road networks and transport systems are used to assess physical access to healthcare in industrialised countries. However, such data inputs hardly exist in many developing countries. Straight-line distances between the service provider and resident p...