BACKGROUND Access to medicines and the development of a strong national pharmaceutical industry are two longstanding pillars of health policy in Brazil. This is reflected in a clear emphasis by Brazil's Federal Government on improving access to medicine in national health plans and industrial policies aimed at promoting domestic pharmaceutical development. This research proposes that such polic...

Since the introduction of the full text online version of JMG, the number of people accessing JMG Online at www.jmedgenet.com has increased progressively. It appears, therefore, that the advantages of electronic publishing are appreciated by the JMG readership. While JMG Online has been an undoubted success, there are many ways in which the potential of electronic publishing can be exploited fu...

SUMMARY BACKGROUND In Ghana, a universal free delivery policy was implemented to improve access to delivery care in health facilities, thereby improving access to skilled attendance and reducing maternal mortality. OBJECTIVE A confidential enquiry was conducted to ascertain if changes had occurred in the care provided by reviewing the care given to a sample of maternal deaths before and after...

INTRODUCTION In South Africa, there are renewed efforts to strengthen primary health care and community health worker (CHW) programmes. This article examines three South African CHW programmes, a small local non-governmental organisation (NGO), a local satellite of a national NGO, and a government-initiated service, that provide a range of services from home-based care, childcare, and health pr...

Coastal managers need to incorporate socio-economic, cultural, and environmental factors, and their interactions, in a scientifically sound and timely manner (Burbridge, 1998; Westmacott, 2001). Resource managers and planners have increasingly used volunteer-based monitoring to augment data collection for a myriad of marine topics such as sediment transport and seasonal beach response (Bokuniew...