ABSTRACT
Background: Sufficient and quality healthcare services are basic requirement for overall development of a nation. Public healthcare infrastructure is one of the major determinants of health outcomes in a country, and public healthcare services have a considerable impact on people's health status. The rural population primarily relies on public healthcare services. Assam is not an exception in this regard, where the insufficiency of public healthcare services is still an issue. 86 % of the population of Assam lives in rural areas. Objectives: The present work attempts to study the inter-district variation regarding public health infrastructure in 33 districts of Assam. Methods: The Inter district variation is estimated with a composite index of public health infrastructure. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is adopted to construct a composite index using nine health infrastructure indicators. Results: The study has observed variations in health infrastructure among the various districts of Assam, reflecting the shortage of health infrastructure-physical and human in rural and remote areas of the state. The study finds inter-district variations in the state.
ABSTRACT
Healthcare system in Korea was found to be very vulnerable to public health emergency preparedness and response as demonstrated in the recent outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus. We need to redefine the function of and improve the capability of local district public hospital and local health center to cope with potential threats by newly emerging infectious disease in the nearer future. While central government may be responsible for early detection of newly emerging infectious disease transmitted from outside of the country, local government and its district-level public healthcare agencies need to primarily control over spread of the disease among the local residents. Governance setting for rapid response required in public health crisis situation appears to be possible based on strong local public health infrastructure for health promotion and disease prevention at si-gun-gu district level. Proper and sustainable investment is also needed for local public hospital with high standard facilities and skilled healthcare manpower since there seems little economic incentives to maintain such facilities in private hospitals. In conclusion, it would be urgent task to improve prevention activities for infectious disease of local health centers and clinical activities of local public hospital. Especially, role and competencies of public health physicians working at the public health center need to be specified as an essential component of public health infrastructure.