OBJECTIVE To examine the effects of gender and demographics of community treatment assistants (CTAs) on their performance of assigned tasks and quantity of speech during mass drug administration of azithromycin for trachoma in rural Tanzania. DESIGN Surveys of CTAs and audio recordings of interactions between CTAs and villagers during drug distribution. SETTING Mass drug administration prog...

Environmental justice concerns about adverse impacts of extractive mining industries challenge their claim of broad-based development. However, empirical evidence of negative externalities attributable to mining enterprises is thin. In this paper, we examine the burden of Acute Respiratory Illness and Malaria among villagers along a gradient of proximity to mining areas to generate evidence per...

How trust in providers affects health care-seeking behaviour is not well understood. Focus groups and household surveys were conducted in Cambodia to examine how villagers describe their trust in public and private providers, and to assess whether a difference exists in provider trust levels. Our findings suggest the reasons for trusting public and private providers differ, and that villagers' ...

BACKGROUND In recent years, natural disasters and the accompanying health risks have become more frequent, and rehabilitation work has become an important part of government performance. On one hand, social networks play an important role in participants' therapeutic community participation and physical & mental recovery. On the other hand, therapeutic communities with widespread participation ...

BACKGROUND The prevalence of methamphetamine use and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) incidence are high in lowland Thai society. Despite increasing social and cultural mixing among residents of highland and lowland Thai societies, however, little is known about methamphetamine use among ethnic minority villagers in the highlands. METHODS A cross-sectional survey examined Karen villagers fr...

INTRODUCTION Since the late 1970's, time-space clusters of sudden unexplained death (SUD) in northwest Yunnan, China have alarmed the public and health authorities. From 2006-2009, we initiated enhanced surveillance for SUD to identify a cause, and we warned villagers to avoid eating unfamiliar mushrooms. METHODS We established surveillance for SUD, defined as follows: sudden onset of serious...

A study was conducted to explore the views of villagers on the existence and functioning of local primary health-care (PHC) committees, village health workers (VHWs), skilled staff at government health facilities and their responsiveness to community health needs in Mkuranga district, Tanzania. Information was collected through separate group discussions with some members of households, local P...

A survey of 411 household heads was undertaken in Gokwe district, Zimbabwe, to assess villagers' knowledge, practices and perceptions about malaria and their implications for malaria control. Our results show that although the government has sustained an annual indoor insecticide spraying programme for over four decades, about 50% of respondents did not adequately understand its purpose, with 2...

INTRODUCTION The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of environment on the subjective well-being (SWB) of older Chinese villagers after controlling for personal and social characteristics. METHOD Data collected from the Chinese Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey Pilot Study were used to examine the relationship between (a) SWB (i.e., happiness and depressive symptoms) of C...

Reported are the results of a study of the knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP) about kala-azar of the inhabitants of two villages (Titaria and Haraincha) situated in terai (plain) areas of Nepal. The villagers had poor knowledge about the transmission of kala-azar, with most villagers perceiving that mosquitos, instead of sandflies, were responsible for transmission of the infection. Most ...