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Objective: To determine the potential effect of environment variables on cutaneous leishmaniasis occurrence using time-series models and compare the predictive ability of seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average (SARIMA) models and Markov switching model (MSM). Methods: This descriptive study employed yearly and monthly data of 49 364 parasitologically-confirmed cases of cutaneous leishmaniasis in Isfahan province, located in the center of Iran from January 2000 to December 2019. The data were provided by the leishmaniasis national surveillance system, the meteorological organization of Isfahan province, and Iranian Space Agency for vegetation information. The SARIMA and MSM models were implemented to examine the environmental factors of cutaneous leishmaniasis epidemics. Results: The minimum relative humidity, maximum relative humidity, minimum wind speed, and maximum wind speed were significantly associated with cutaneous leishmaniasis epidemics in different lags (P<0.05). Comparing SARIMA and MSM, Akaikes information criterion (AIC), and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) in MSM were much smaller than SARIMA models (MSM: AIC=0.95, MAPE=3.5%; SARIMA: AIC=158.93, MAPE:11.45%). Conclusions: SARIMA and MSM can be a useful tool for predicting cutaneous leishmaniasis in Isfahan province. Since cutaneous leishmaniasis falls into one of two states of epidemic and non-epidemic, the use of MSM (dynamic) is recommended, which can provide more information compared to models that use a single distribution for all observations (Box-Jenkins SARIMA model).
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Introduction: Achievement of economic growth, as one of the most important macroeconomic variables, depends on the precise understanding of potential routes and the factors affecting on it. The aim of this study was to evaluate the health care sector's effect on Iran Gross Domestic Product [GDP], as the status of economy
Method: Artificial Neural Network [ANN] and Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares [DOLS] were performed according to Iran GDP as the output variable and the input variables of life expectancy at birth, under five mortality rates, public health expenditures, the number of doctors and hospital beds during 1961-2012 in Iran. Data were collected from the Statistical Center of Iran, the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the World Health Organization and the World Bank databases. Data management and analysis were performed using Eviewes 7, stata 11 and also Mathlab. MSE, MAE and R2 were calculated to assess and compare the models
Results: One percent reduction in deaths of children under 5-years could improve Iran GDP as much as 1.9%. Additionally, one percent increment in the number of doctors, hospital beds or health expenditure would increase GDP by 0.37%, 0.27% and 0.29%, respectively. Mean Absolute Error [MAE] demonstrated the superiority of DOLS in the model estimation
Conclusion: The lack of sufficient considerations and excellent models in the health care sector is the main reason for underestimating the effect of this sector on economy. This limitation leads to neglecting the resource allocation to the health care sector, as the great potential motivation of the economic growth
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Introduction: Justice and its realization has always been a goal of utopian reformers and leaders in various governments throughout the history. Achieving this goal is the most basic principle of social systems during different periods of human intellectual and social life. Inequities should be decreased between social subgroups in order to gain justice. Attention to inequalities are necessary to ensure all sections of society's access to health resources and optimum resource allocation. Because of the importance of pharmacies in delivering drugs to people and consequently preventing from intensity of diseases and reducing the days lost from work and increasing national production, in this paper the distribution of pharmacies has been studied in 2006-2011
Method: This survey was a retrospective practical study. Data was gathered from Statistical Center of Iran and Kerman Food and Drugs Administration of Kerman Medical University in 2006-2011. After entering the data into the software and sorting it from the lowest to the highest, the researchers calculated the share of population and sectors' share of pharmacies from the total of them and then cumulative percentage of the population and pharmacies. In the last section, Lorenz curve was plotted putting the cumulative percentage of variables against each other. Gini index was calculated using the software Stata 11
Results: Gini coefficient had a decreasing trend in Kerman in the period between 2006-2011. Gini index is about 0.4 during the period of 2006-2009 and 0.3 during 2009-2011. So the distribution of pharmacies was in equitable, and redistribution of some of them was necessary
Conclusion: Access to pharmacies to receive medicines for patients, especially in rural and deprived areas, are important. As reasons of the unequal distribution of pharmacies one can mention lack of attention to age and gender density and the burden of disease in the region and also paying too much attention to economic situation of communities. Government intervention and its participation in the investment with private sector in the establishment of pharmacies in underserved areas can reduce inequality and help timely access to drugs for people
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Introduction: Cost is becoming a growing concern for the managers of health and treatment institutes both in private and public sectors. Based on the opinions of pathology and radiology specialists and experts, one private and one public center for radiology and laboratory were selected to study in Kerman City
Method: This is a cross-sectional and applied study. The two centers were similar in frequency of their services, different tests they were conducting, and their number of personnel. Afterwards, the costs of services in both fields were determined using the activity-based costing method. This study was carried out from March 21 to September 22, 2014. The costs of services in both private and public sectors were compared to the tariffs of the Ministry of Health in 2014
Results: Laboratory results indicated that the costs in all the selected tests were higher than the tariffs and the largest difference [app. 84,930 Rls] was observed in the TSH test while the smallest difference was observed in the ferritin test [11,940 Rls]. However in the private sector, vitamin D and FBS tests were not profitable with differences of about 5500 and 6500 Rls, respectively. In other tests, the costs in the private sector were lower than the tariffs for the private sector. In the private sector radiology center, only the MRI services were not profitable but the other services were. The cost of MRI services in the private sector studied in this research was 190,000 Rls higher than the private sector tariffs
Conclusion: In this study, the results showed that CT scan services were the most profitable services and the price difference was about 203,000 Rls per service. However, all of the radiology services were unprofitable in the public sector and the largest price difference was seen in MRI services which was about 590,000 Rls per service
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Background: The development supplementary insurance and the increasing of insurance coverage results to increase the level of health of society and helps to provide more services. The aim of this study was estimate price elasticity demand for supplementary insurance and effective factors on its use or non-use, among board's members and staffs of health faculty of Tehran University of medical sciences in 2011.
Methods: This was a descriptive analytic cross-sectional study. The data collection tool was a questionnaire. For data analysis from SPSS 20 version was used. Also, descriptive and inferential statistics such as average test and logistic regression were used.
Result: Price elasticity of demand for supplementary insurance was 0.53. Also, the results showed the cost of health care, education level and health status is a significant correlation with demand for supplementary health insurance.
Conclusion: Increasing quality of services and expanding package of suggested services such as dental services can be results to increase of demand for health insurances even if the premium is risen.
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Human Development Index [HDI] is a composite indicator that can show the impact of economic strategies on human life standards. The index is calculated by three main factors of income, education and health. This research studies the status of HDI across the Iranian provinces, its changes over time and the efficiency of provinces in using resources. The data for 2001 and 2009 was obtained from the Iranian Center of Statistics. Data envelopment analysis technique was used to analyze the data. To calculate the efficiency, Banker, Charnes and Cooper's model was used. The national mean for the HDI in 2001 was 0.717 while it grew to 0.747 in 2009. Except for one province, all others had an improved human development index. Low ranked provinces such as Sistan and Baluchistan and Kurdistan stayed at the bottom in 2009 as well. Some provinces such as Bushehr with developing oil industries, or those purposively benefited from national oil income showed good growth. In some provinces, such as Hormozgan, out-migration of manpower to its neighboring province, Bushehr, was associated with decrease of the provincial income level. The number of efficient provinces increased from 5 to 13 in 2009. Iran falls among countries with high human development index based on the 2009 data. However, the distribution of HDI status across provinces was highly varied and the difference between high- and low-developed provinces increased in 2009. The government needs to revise policies concerning distribution of resources among the provinces