BACKGROUND At the turn of the 21st century, India was plagued by significant rural-urban, inter-state and inter-district inequities in health. For example, in 2004, the infant mortality rate (IMR) was 24 points higher in rural areas compared to urban areas. To address these inequities, to strengthen the rural health system (a major determinant of health in itself) and to facilitate action on ot...

Background: Evaluation of existing oral health services showed that it is predominantly urban oriented, mostly curative in nature and accessible mainly to small a part of population, i.e., privileged few. Periodontal diseases are more prevalent in a rural population than the urban population. The socio demographic profi le is highly contrasting between the urban and rural population. It is esse...

INTRODUCTION Each day almost 500 newborns die in Pakistan, ranking this country close to Afghanistan and Iraq amongst developing countries in terms of neonatal mortality. This constitutes more than 70% of the infant mortality rate. Among the various determinants of neonatal mortality in Pakistan, most emerge from behaviors and inappropriate practices of mothers, particularly in rural communitie...

INTRODUCTION As part of maternal mortality reducing strategies, coverage of delivery care among sub-Saharan African rural poor will improve, with a range of facilities providing services. Whether high coverage will benefit all socio-economic groups is unknown. Iringa rural District, Southern Tanzania, with high facility delivery coverage, offers a paradigm to address this question. Delivery ser...

SETTING Despite the prioritisation of TB, HIV and STI programmes in South Africa, service targets are not achieved, have had little effect, and the magnitude of the epidemics continues to escalate. Objective. To report on a participatory quality improvement intervention designed to evaluate these priority programmes in primary health care (PHC) clinics in a rural district in KwaZulu-Natal. ME...

BACKGROUND Sustainable multifaceted outreach is crucial when equity between specialist services available to different sections of South Africa (SA)'s population is addressed. The healthcare disadvantage for rural compared with urban populations is exemplified in KwaZulu-Natal Province (KZN). Outreach to rural hospitals has reduced the need for patients to undergo journeys to regional or tertia...

Sustainable Livelihoods Approach emerged in the 1980s as a new analytical approach in the field of rural development inwhich the rural livelihood capitals form the basis of the villagers' empowerment and their ability to get involved in their own individual and social destiny. This study aimed to answer the question that how much the importance of each type of livelihood capitals is in the Cent...

The main purpose of this study was to investigate effect of access to health facilities on the health status of rural households at Kermanshah Province. Statistical pupation of this study consisted of all heads of rural households at Bisotoun district in Harsin Township, Kermanshah Province, Iran (N=1020), that 278 of them were selected by the cluster random sampling method. The main instrument...