Search results for "poverty"

Vaccination greatly reduces disease, disability, death and inequity worldwide

2007

In low-income countries, infectious diseases still account for a large proportion of deaths, highlighting health inequities largely caused by economic differences. Vaccination can cut health-care costs and reduce these inequities. Disease control, elimination or eradication can save billions of US dollars for communities and countries. Vaccines have lowered the incidence of hepatocellular carcinoma and will control cervical cancer. Travellers can be protected against "exotic" diseases by appropriate vaccination. Vaccines are considered indispensable against bioterrorism. They can combat resistance to antibiotics in some pathogens. Noncommunicable diseases, such as ischaemic heart disease, c…

Dismantling the rhetoric of alternative medicine: Smokescreens, errors, conspiracies, and follies

2017

Alternative medicine is popular, and one of the reasons for this phenomenon is that it is relentlessly being promoted with the use of a wide range of fallacies, arguments which appear to be logic and true but which turn out on closer inspection to be illogical and false. In this article, I use my experience in alternative medicine research to discuss some of the most commonly employed fallacies. I conclude that they are used by proponents of alternative medicine to mislead the public such that even the most extravagant absurdities appear plausible. Collectively these fallacies constitute attacks upon rationality and progress in healthcare.

Überschuldung und Zuzahlungen im deutschen Gesundheitssystem – Benachteiligung bei Ausgabenarmut

2009

Aim of the study In the past few years, the number of over-indebted private households in Germany has steadily increased and is currently estimated to have reached 3.13 million. Financial difficulties culminating in private insolvencies of the persons concerned may lead to a restrained usage of health-care services that require additional payment. For the first time ever this study has examined whether over-indebted individuals refrain from seeking medical treatment or from buying prescribed medicine because of their financial situation. Methods The cross-sectional study covered over-indebted persons in Rhineland-Palatinate and was conducted between July 2006 and March 2007. In cooperation …

The costs of friendship: severe mental illness, poverty and social isolation

2016

Background: The relationship between severe mental illness, poverty and social isolation has been explored in a number of studies.Aim: The purpose of the study was to explore the relationship betwe ...

2018

Background Global development goals increasingly rely on country-specific estimates for benchmarking a nation's progress. To meet this need, the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2016 estimated global, regional, national, and, for selected locations, subnational cause-specific mortality beginning in the year 1980. Here we report an update to that study, making use of newly available data and improved methods. GBD 2017 provides a comprehensive assessment of cause-specific mortality for 282 causes in 195 countries and territories from 1980 to 2017. Methods The causes of death database is composed of vital registration (VR), verbal autopsy (VA), registry, survey…

2019

Abstract Objectives To use the estimates from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016 to describe patterns of suicide mortality globally, regionally, and for 195 countries and territories by age, sex, and Socio-demographic index, and to describe temporal trends between 1990 and 2016. Design Systematic analysis. Main outcome measures Crude and age standardised rates from suicide mortality and years of life lost were compared across regions and countries, and by age, sex, and Socio-demographic index (a composite measure of fertility, income, and education). Results The total number of deaths from suicide increased by 6.7% (95% uncertainty interval 0.4% to 15.6%) globally over the 27 year stud…

Health and Demographic Characteristics of Patients Attending a Newly-Opened Medical Facility in a Remote Amazonian Community: A Descriptive Study

2018

Peru is a country with wide regional disparities in health. Remote Amazonian communities have high rates of poverty and poor access to health services. There is a lack of data on morbidity and use of health services in the region. We describe a descriptive, cross-sectional study of the demographic characteristics and presenting complaints of attendees to a newly-opened primary care facility in a remote community. This was supplemented by structured interviews of adult attendees to build a picture of sociocultural determinants of health locally, including engagement with traditional forms of medicine. Our study provides novel insights into an under-studied and under-resourced area. We found …

Mobile money and the impact of mobile phone regulatory enforcement among the urban poor in Tanzania

2021

Mobile money provides a tool for survival, particularly in urban conditions shaped by city regulations that make microvending difficult for the poor. An analysis of 165 interviews conducted in two low-income neighborhoods in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania over 8 years demonstrates how interlocked layers of technology and interaction make mobile money services semiformal. I introduce two mobile money-enabled survival strategies: intrahousehold transfers for day-to-day survival (transfers within the same city) and resource safeguarding through kin remittances of start-up capital (home-based subsistence business capital stored for kin access in emergencies). The recent tightening of mobile phone regu…

Exploring Obutyamye as Material Citizenship in Busoga Subregion, Uganda

2022

This article explores how being a citizen is inexorably bound up with the resources individuals own and deploy to support livelihoods in the rural locations of postcolonial states. Drawing on the works of Kabeer (2006) and Baglioni (2016), the article zooms in on how citizenship is manifestly and inescapably material in the Busoga subregion of eastern Uganda. Data for the article were collected using qualitative methods among beneficiaries of antipoverty programmes implemented by Action for Development (ACFODE), a national non-governmental organization (NGO). Findings show that, locally, citizenship is understood as obutyamye, connoting an (un)equal experience of being in, for and with the …

Dynamiques de développement et inégalités régionales en Chine

2009

Le rapide développement économique de la Chine a généré des inégalités socio-spatiales croissantes, qui se marquent par un décalage croissant entre provinces littorales et intérieures, et entre villes et campagnes. À partir de l’examen des données statistiques officielles chinoises, on peut clairement repérer une aggravation des déséquilibres internes de la Chine, qui sont des facteurs potentiels de déstabilisation sociale, en particulier dans le cas des paysans venus tenter leur chance dans les grandes aires urbaines littorales, ou chassés de leurs terres par l’expansion périmétropolitaine. Cela entraîne aujourd’hui une politique différenciée d’aménagement du territoire chinois visant à co…