ABSTRACT
Urbanization is a world-wide process and it is a cause and effect of heightened economic progress in a region. It plays an enormous role in social transformation and economic mobility all over the world. In fact, the process and level of urbanization has been transforming the developing countries from 'countries of villages' to 'countries of towns and cities'. With 31.16 percent urbanites lived in 2011, India is at a low level of urbanization compared with the developed nations. There exists large inter-regional disparities in different parts of the nation as far as level of urbanization is concerned. The present paper is an attempt to study the trends, degrees and tempo of urbanization and urban morphology in Karnataka from 1901 to 2011. It is the 7th largest state in India with 38.67 percent of urbanites living in 347 towns and cities as of 2011, which is 7.51 points above the national average in terms of urbanization and plays a signicant role in the state's as well as country's economy and progress of IT and BT sector. The paper is an effort to analyses the regional disparity in the process and level of urbanization among the districts of the state from 1991 to 2011. Finally, the study also enlightens the socio-economic consequences of this inter-regional disparity in urbanization in Karnataka. Present study is mainly based on the secondary sources of data and is collected from Indian Census Handbooks of Karnataka and other related reports. After collecting data, these were analysed in a suitable manner by using appropriate statistical and cartographic techniques. Results show that the state exhibits a uctuating trend in level of urbanization with a high regional variation and a high disparity in the concentration of urbanities. Disparities exist at the levels of urbanization in state shown that, Bangalore is the most urbanized district with 90.94 percent followed by Dharwad (56.82 percent) district and on the other end of this scale Kodagu with 14.61 percent, was the least urbanized district in the state. 78.24 percent of urbanities lived in only 19 percent of urban centres and the remaining 81 percent of towns contained only 21.76 percent of the state's urbanities. Thus, urbanization in Karnataka is a by-product of the demographic explosion, poverty encouraged rural-urban migration and reclassication of towns and it also reects uneven economic progresses across the state and needs special attention.
ABSTRACT
It is the most important for young cardiovascular surgeon that ensure the number of cases to obtain and renew the specialties qualifications. Regional disparities such as concentration of facilities in urban areas and shortage of physicians in rural areas, may be affecting the lack of cases. I compared the population of each medical region with the number of cardiac surgery training facilities to examine regional disparities in cardiovascular surgery. As one way to solve the regional disparity problem, I make a suggestion to decentralize young doctors from urban areas to rural areas.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND@#Regional disparities in the working conditions of medical doctors have not been fully assessed in Japan. We aimed to clarify these differences in hospital characteristics: doctors' workload, wages, and popularity among medical students by city population sizes.@*METHODS@#We targeted 423 teaching hospitals certified by the Japanese Society of Internal Medicine and assessed the working conditions of physicians specializing in internal medicine. We calculated their workload (the annual number of discharged patients per physician) and retrieved data on junior residents' monthly wages from the Resinavi Book which is popular among medical students in Japan to know the teaching hospital's information and each hospital's website. Furthermore, we explored the interim matching rate of each hospital as its popularity among medical students. Next, we classified cities in which all hospitals were located into eight groups based on their population size and compared the characteristics of these hospitals using a one-way analysis of variance.@*RESULTS@#The average workload was 110.3, while the average workload in hospitals located in most populated cities (≥ 2,000,000) was 88.4 (p < 0.05). The average monthly wage was 351,199 Japanese yen, while that in most populated cities was 305,635.1 Japanese yen. The average popularity (matching rate) was 101.9%, and the rate in most populated areas was 142.7%, which was significantly higher than in other areas.@*CONCLUSIONS@#Hospitals in most populated areas had significantly lower workloads and wages; however, they were more popular among medical students than those in other areas. This study was the first to quantify the regional disparities in physicians' working conditions in Japan, and such disparities need to be corrected.
Subject(s)
Cities/statistics & numerical data , Geography , Hospitals, Teaching/statistics & numerical data , Japan , Physicians/statistics & numerical data , Population Density , Salaries and Fringe Benefits/statistics & numerical data , Students, Medical/psychology , Workload/statistics & numerical dataABSTRACT
Objective: Regional disparities in health services is a crucial problem in Cambodia. Particularly, a number of NCD risk factors are more common among the rural poor. Fortunately, 80% of NCDs are preventable and cost-effective interventions exist. Therefore, health care needs assessments regarding NCDs in poor rural areas are vital. The object of this pilot study was to identify health care needs regarding NCDs among residents in poor rural areas in Cambodia.Materials and Methods: A medical health check-up and questionnaire survey were conducted with 208 rural residents who participated in a free health check-up and doctor consultation in Kaoh Peam Reang.Results: One hundred sixteen (55.8%) females were included in the total sample size of 208 participants; the majority (52.9%) were between 35 and 65 years of age. Twenty-five participants (12%) were current smokers, and 44 (21%) were current alcohol drinkers. Eighty (38.5%) participants had hypertension and 44 participants (21.2%) had a body mass index over 25. Alcohol drinking and smoking habits were more common among men. The five most frequent medical complaints were headache (18.3%), lower back pain (14.4%), foot and hand pain (13.9%), joint pain (10.1%), and difficulty breathing (10.1%).Conclusions: The medical need for doctor consultations regarding chronic disease and chronic pain might be higher in poor rural areas in Cambodia.
ABSTRACT
This paper attempts to review the long-term care insurance policies which have been issued in 13 national pilot cities such as Qingdao and Haidian district,Beijing. The paper investigates the problems and challen-ges China's long-term care insurance system faces with,and put forward the construction of long-term care insurance system. The preliminary thinking on some issues, such as the relationship between welfare and marketization when the long-term care insurance has been put into practice on a trial basis,the relationship between long-term care insur-ance and medical insurance,and the specific implementation plan of the long-term insurance. According to the issued documents issued by pilot regions,it was found that there are not only differences but also similarities among the pilot cities in who are insured,who pays the insurance fee,what might be covered,what the levels of insurance are,and what kind of service will be provided. Although the long term care insurance system has been initially established in these cities, the specific implementation remains to be demonstrated, e. g. supervision and management, nursing service provision. In addition,local governments need to continuously expand the benefit range of long-term care in-surance to ensure long-term success,do good coordination and connection of long-term care insurance and pension in-surance,and reasonably allocate the medical insurance,pension,and health care resources.
ABSTRACT
Objective To explore the regional disparity in life expectancy (LE), active life expectancy (ALE), active life expectancy/life expectancy (ALE/LE) of the elderly in Beijing and to express the impact of hypertension upon those indices. Methods The sample was derived from a 'Beijing multidimensional longitudinal study on aging', including those from urban district (Xuanwu), rural district (Daxing and Huairou) by well-established statistical sampling techniques. Baseline survey comprised 1847 people aged 60 years or over, living in the communities in Beijing in 2004. The subjects under research were investigated with questionnaires at home by well-trained interviews and the contents would include: degree of education, occupation, medical history of hypertension together with repeated blood pressure measurements. Someone being 'active' was defined as the ability in performing activities of daily life (ADL). IMaCH software for multi-state life table method was used to calculate the life expectancy (LE), active life expectancy (ALE) and active life expectancy/life expectancy (ALF/LE) in different district and the hypertensive exert influence on those indices. Results Data from the study showed that people inhabited in the rural district had lower LE, ALE and degree of education (illiteracy account for 66.2 percentage), but with more physical activities (account for 95.5 percentage) and higher ALE/LE than urban district people.Regional disparity in Females was obvious than in males while hypertension would exert more influence on LE of the urban women, which widened the gap in LE, ALE of males and ALE of females between the urban and rural areas. Conclusion Regional disparity was found existing in LE,ALE, ALE/LE of the elderly from Beijing, particularly in females. Hypertension widened the gap and decreased the quality of life on senior citizens in the rural areas. This finding underlined the influence of habitation on the quality of life which manifested the importance of prevention regarding high blood pressure.