Volume seventeen, Issue 3

Deployment and retention of a sufficient number of skilled and motivated human resources for health at the right place and at the right time are critical to ensure people's right to access a universal quality of health care. This study identifies the factors that determine the retention of qualified healthcare workers in rural areas of Senegal.

Delay in initiation of tuberculosis (TB) treatment may have an enormous impact on disease transmission, development of drug resistance, outcome and overall survival of TB patients. Delay in initiation of treatment after diagnosis is mostly due to health system failure and has immense programmatic implications; this is the first study of TB treatment delay in an Indian setting.

This study found a disparity between dental care service utilization in urban and rural areas in Taiwan, despite 15 years of universal health insurance coverage. This suggests that factors other than affordability may play a role.

An oral health care program (professional care and eight weeks of education) administered at rural public health sub-centers for Korean rural residents older than 40 years resulted in a change in oral health behaviors and a substantial reduction in gingival bleeding.

This study of spatial access to cancer centers in British Colombia, Canada, uses GIS mapping to explore the relationship between socioeconomic status and travel time in urban, suburban and rural areas. Longer travel times were found for patients living in the most socioeconomically deprived neighborhoods, and the authors suggest the combination of spatial and socioeconomic barriers may significantly impact low-SES patients' ability to receive cancer treatment.

Difficulties in accessing allied health services, especially in rural and remote areas appears to be driving the use of telethealth services to children in schools. This study investigated the experiences and views of school executive staff and therapy assistants regarding the feasibility and acceptability of a speech-language pathology telehealth program for children attending schools in rural and remote New South Wales, Australia.

Community based rehabilitation (CBR) focuses on empowering persons with disabilities to access a wide range of services, and the essence of CBR is captured in several global frameworks. This study used proof-of-concept methodology to determine the extent to which countries in southern Africa have adapted the global frameworks available for CBR. In the countries that do have policies to guide CBR, the content and structure of the policies is weak and focused on health interventions only, missing several key concepts from the global frameworks and disadvantaging persons with disabilities living in rural and remote communities in southern Africa.

Medical student professional development has been linked to their participation in patient care. This study found a relationship between community size and the extent to which students felt valued and the likelihood of them participating in patient care. Perceptions of value and the likelihood of participation decreased as community size increased.

International fee-paying (IFP) graduates from the Tasmanian medical program make an important contribution to the Australian mainland metropolitan medical workforce, but play only a small role in workforce development for Tasmania and rural and remote Australia. Most IFPs do not choose to work rurally. Rurally focused medical programs need to consider how they place IFP students to meet both the learning and career needs of IFP students and the goal of the rural medical programs in developing a rural workforce.

Globally, sustained smoking reduction campaigns are targeted toward reducing individual and public risk and harm caused by tobacco smoking, but the research examining the effect of smokeless tobacco is remarkably scant. This paper reports on the chewing of wild tobacco, commonly known as pituri and mingkulpa, as is practiced by Australian Aboriginal groups across a broad geographical area.

This study documents the limited focus on rural oral health that exists in national oral health policies from eight different English-speaking countries. It supports the need for an increased focus on rural oral health issues in oral health policies, particularly as increased oral health is clearly associated with increased general health.

Little evidence exists about the impact of strategies to increase rural retention in developing countries. To address Thailand's long-lasting critical shortage of doctors, two new government-funded projects to increase the production of rural doctors have been employed through collaboration between the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Public Health. This study describes the impact of this national collaborative approach on the production and retention of doctors in rural health services.

Understanding the contextual conditions for building rapport between health professional learners, and reflecting on these, potentially will lay the foundation for collaborative practice when these learners become health professionals. This commentary focuses on how the core contextual conditions for interprofessional-rapport-building opportunities (shared space, adequate time and balance of disciplines) were considered in one rural centre.

This paper reports on the key findings from seven CRE service evaluations to better understand what made these primary health care (PHC) models work where they worked, and why.

Telehealth may be cost effective for healthcare delivery, but it is unclear how well used or how appropriate it is for chronic conditions management for Indigenous peoples. This review of primary research studies worldwide found that although telehealth is promising, a lack of robust studies make tangible conclusions difficult. A better overall understanding of telehealth use with Indigenous peoples, including delivery of culturally competent health care, true consultation and cultural competency of the professionals involved would be helpful.

Employment and working conditions have powerful effects on health equity and agriculture is one of the most hazardous sectors. This study examines the 1-year incidence of accidents among agricultural workers in Oguzeli district, Gaziantep, Turkey, and determines the types and causes of injury, and influencing factors, as well as identifying possible intervention issues for prevention.

Sickle cell anaemia occurs globally and over 230,000 infants are born with the condition in Africa annually, 50-80% of whom die before the age of 5 years. The financial impact is hugely devastating, especially for rural households in Sub-Saharan Africa - where 60% of the entire population live - with very limited access to even routine health care. There is an urgent need for health policy makers to pay attention to recent developments in gene therapy for Sickle Cell Disease, a treatment approach directed principally at treating the cause rather than the symptoms of genetic diseases.