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Integrated care is provided by professionals with different disciplines, competencies and degree of specialization with the first objective to promote cooperation and with a final objective to promote quality and efficiency of care. Following the degree of integration four models can be distinguished: no integration, linkage, coordination and full integration. An optimal degree exists for integ...

SETTING Hlabisa health district, South Africa. OBJECTIVE To describe the integration of a 'vertical' tuberculosis control programme into an emerging 'horizontal' district health system, within the context of health sector reform. DESIGN Descriptive account of the process of integration of the programme into the health system. RESULTS A highly 'vertical' system of delivering tuberculosis t...

The South African prevention of mother to child transmission programme has made excellent progress in reducing vertical HIV transmission, and paediatric antiretroviral therapy programmes have demonstrated good outcomes with increasing treatment initiation in younger children and infants. However, both in South Africa and across sub-Saharan African, lack of boosted peri-partum prophylaxis for hi...

OBJECTIVE To explores the interface between vertical programmes (VPs) and general health services (GHS) in sub-Saharan Africa. METHODS Using semi-structured interviews, we analysed the perceptions of a selection of experienced mid-level managers of health systems and of VP originating in francophone Africa on the nature and quality of this interface. RESULTS The respondents acknowledged tha...

OBJECTIVE Disease-specific programmes have had a long history in India and their presence has increased over time. This study has two objectives: first, it reports on the interaction between local health systems and key disease-specific programmes in India—National AIDS Control Program (NACP) (HIV/AIDS), Revised National Tuberculosis Control Program (RNTCP) (TB) and National Vector Borne Diseas...

the term “system” is defined as «elements standing interaction». this implies that a change in any given element should bring about changes in other elements of the system and thus may be used to identify the boundaries of a system. a system can be a machine, a man, or a community. each of these may be part of a greater system (super system) or include several smaller systems (subsystems). syst...