BACKGROUND In India very few of those who need mental health care receive it, despite efforts of the 1982 National Mental Health Programme and its district-level component the District Mental Health Programme (DMHP) to improve mental health care coverage. AIMS To explore and unpack the political, cultural and other historical reasons for the DMHP's failures and successes since 1947 (post-inde...

BACKGROUND Under-five mortality is a major public health problem and one of the health indicators of health care in sub-Saharan Africa. In order to address inefficient health systems, there is a need to identify the spatial distribution of under-five mortality, especially areas of high mortality clustering. This study aimed to explore spatial and temporal clustering in under-five mortality in t...

Diabetes prevalence in Tanzania was estimated at 9.1% in 2012 among adults aged 24-65 years - higher than the HIV prevalence in the general population at that time. Health systems in lower- and middle-income countries are not designed for chronic health care, yet the rising burden of non-communicable diseases such as diabetes demands chronic care services. To inform policies on diabetes care, w...

Department of Medicine, North Shore Hospital, Waitemata District Health Board, Auckland, New Zealand, LabPlus, Auckland, New Zealand, Department of Molecular Medicine and Pathology, Faculty of Medicine and Health Science, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand, Department of Renal Medicine, North Shore Hospital, Waitemata District Health Board, Auckland, New Zealand and Department of Med...

Clinical Case Reports in mental health: the need for nuance and context Toby Raeburn, Debra Jackson, Garry Walter, Phil Escott & Michelle Cleary University of Sydney, Sydney Nursing School, Sydney, NSW, Australia University of Technology, Sydney, Australia University of Sydney, and Northern Sydney Local Health District, Sydney, NSW, Australia Sydney Local Health District Mental Health Service, ...

conclusions the results indicated that suitable facilities and equipment, human resources, and infrastructure were available in the district hospitals in iran. these findings showed that there is potential for the district hospitals to provide care in a wider spectrum. results in this study, 100% of the studied hospitals had oxygen cylinders, running water, electricity, anesthesia machines, eme...

Burundi recently introduced two fundamental reforms to its health system: a district health system (DHS) and performance-based financing (PBF) of the healthcare facilities. The authors of this article set out to conduct a simultaneous trial on implementation of DHS and PBF. The assessment refers to the six building blocks of health systems proposed by the WHO, and demonstrates that PBF can eith...

Globally, there is a shortage of health workers in rural areas. Effective health systems depend on having sufficient, accessible health workers with the right skills. In countries like Nepal, highly skilled health workers often prefer to work overseas or in urban centres, and therefore, in the short term, it may be pragmatic to focus on ensuring support and skills development of mid level or pa...

A range of AIDS prevention programmes suggested that cooperation between traditional healers and the biomedical primary health-care system would benefit patients. To assess the knowledge and attitudes of traditional healers in Cameroon towards Western medicine and evaluate their willingness to cooperate with the district health-care system, a qualitative study was undertaken. In this study, 16 ...