Original Article
Behavioral Health
Abubakar Abdallah Kheir
Abstract
Background: Persons Living with Disabilities in rural areas have continuously been denied access to basic needs like other humans; such as health services, food, proper housing and care, resulting to continuous inequality in access to services hence losing their dignity; this has adversely affected their ...
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Background: Persons Living with Disabilities in rural areas have continuously been denied access to basic needs like other humans; such as health services, food, proper housing and care, resulting to continuous inequality in access to services hence losing their dignity; this has adversely affected their mental health. The general objective of the study was to establish correlation between increases in disability cases to poverty level in rural areas.Methods: The study was conducted in Chakama location, Kilifi County across 40 villages, and data collected quantitatively with a total of 265 disabled interviewed on their status of disability among other factors. Frequencies, percentages and pie charts were used to analyze findings of disabled in Chakama. Respondents were selected based on snowball sampling from Wazee wa mtaa (locally known elders within a neighborhood of 10 households and are thought to know every member in the 10 household neighborhood) and interviewed disabled.Results: At least 77% interviewed disabled had severe cases limiting them from employment. There exists relationship of increase in poverty to development of severe forms of disabilities such as mobility and visual.Conclusion: Failure in responding to disability needs would increase chances of economic degradation and poverty especially in marginalized communities; there’s need of collective responsibility from society and relevant bodies to ensure disabled have access to prerequisite needs, improving medical services in health facilities within rural areas and building resilience among disabled to minimize dependency on family and aid.
Original Article
Clinical Epidemiology
Cristiane Faria de Oliveira Scarponi; Marcos Paulo Gomes Mol; Dirceu Bartolomeu Greco
Abstract
Background: Brazilian therapeutic guidelines for hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection were established in 2011, however data on adherence to medical practice are rare. Methods: This cross-sectional study compared the application of these guidelines to patient records from the Central Laboratory of Minas ...
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Background: Brazilian therapeutic guidelines for hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection were established in 2011, however data on adherence to medical practice are rare. Methods: This cross-sectional study compared the application of these guidelines to patient records from the Central Laboratory of Minas Gerais (January to June 2014). Results: Ninety HCV infected patients were assisted by 47 physicians from 33 municipalities. However, considering that 84.4% of naive treatment patients met the indication criteria to start therapy, the therapeutic guidelines were fully applied to only two patients. In contrast, 12 patients received treatment, and seven of them were treated with pegylated interferon associated with ribavirin (HCV-1 and 3 genotypes). Therapeutic response monitoring was reported in only two patients (six months after the end of treatment) and no retreatment has been reported. Conclusions: There was very little medical application to Brazilian therapeutic guidelines for HCV infection within the Public Health System. In clinical practice, these results support the idea that hepatitis C remains underdiagnosed and undertreated in Minas Gerais. There is a need to capacitate professionals to apply Clinical Protocol and Therapeutic Guidelines for Treatment of Viral Hepatitis C, aiming at both the timely indication of the treatment and laboratory follow-up of patients.
