To overcome barriers to teaching requires more reciprocal links between hospital staff and medical schools, opportunities for consultants to understand and to comment on curricular and timetable developments, and, perhaps most importantly, recognition (in contractual, financial, managerial and personal terms) of the importance of undergraduate teaching in the competing triad of service, research and education.
Schistosomiasis is a chronic and debilitating parasitic disease acquired through contact with infested freshwater. An essential component of its control is passive case finding, which, in order to be effective, requires a detailed understanding of health-seeking behaviour. This study aimed to systematically review evidence on health-seeking behaviour for schistosomiasis, in order to determine factors influencing use or non-use of modern health services for the infection. Quantitative, qualitative and mixed method studies reporting on factors related to seeking treatment from modern health services for schistosomiasis were obtained, combining electronic and hand searching. Data extraction and quality assessment of the included articles were performed, with all studies qualitatively analysed using thematic synthesis. A total of 19 studies were included in the review. Six themes were identified from the analysis: biomedical knowledge on schistosomiasis, perceptions of modern treatment and health services, financial considerations of treatment, perceptions on the symptoms, stigma of the infection, and physical location and community. These findings were consistent across studies of different design, setting and quality. Many of the themes identified echo existing literature on health-seeking behaviour. The synthesis also highlighted the role of stigma, and aspects of the physical location and community that may affect treatment-seeking for schistosomiasis. Health education programmes that intend to improve the utilisation of modern health services for the infection need to acknowledge the multiple determinants influencing their use. Future research should move beyond describing health-seeking behaviour to identifying the factors that underlay such behaviour.
The objective of this chapter is to examine empirically the nature and extent of budget transparency in resource‐dependent countries, as a potential foundation for improving governance and development impact. The resource curse hypothesis claims that resource‐dependent countries, despite their riches, grow slower than resource‐poor countries. Recent research has attributed part of the explanation to the quality of governance and institutions. Based on data drawn from the Open Budget Initiative 2006, we developed an index of budget transparency and accountability for 24 resource‐dependent countries. While resource‐dependent countries do suffer from a transparency gap, their performance both with regard to budget transparency and to development outcomes varies greatly. While our index and the United Nations Human Development Index are positively correlated, this relationship cannot be interpreted as a causal one. In order to shed light on the links between the two variables we look at three case studies of countries with very different performances: Peru, Vietnam and Angola. Some of the factors that seem to contribute to shape these linkages include the type and degree of dependency on natural resource revenues, the nature of the political regime and the nature of budget institutions, and the existence of an active civil society.
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