Health System in Zimbabwe and Delay in Seeking Health Care of Breast Cancer Among Women

Breast cancer, the most prevailing and only cancer considered universal among women worldwide. The rate of breast cancer per 100,000 women is higher in high income countries than in low income countries. However, mortality rates are high in low income countries due to the delay in seeking health care. A systematic literature review was carried out to document the health system implemented in Zimbabwe and its challenges that could be contributing to the delay in seeking health care of breast cancer among women in Zimbabwe. A content analysis was used to analyze articles, searching was done using the Boolean search strategy, articles from 2005 to 2021, which met the inclusion criteria were considered. Factors such as centralized services due to shortage of cancer specialists, lack of financial allocations on breast cancer health programs, shortage of screening and surgical equipment, lack of accurate data due to weak registration system and health management information system as well as poor governance and leadership have also been found to be challenges in the health system of Zimbabwe that may contribute to delay in seeking health care of breast cancer among women in Zimbabwe. Keywords: breast cancer, health system, health care, Zimbabwe

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Breast Cancer in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: An Emerging and Challenging Epidemic

Journal of Oncology ◽

10.1155/2010/490631 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 2010 ◽

pp. 1-5 ◽

Cited By ~ 32

Author(s):

Arafat Tfayli ◽

Sally Temraz ◽

Rachel Abou Mrad ◽

Ali Shamseddine

Keyword(s):

Breast Cancer ◽

Health Care ◽

Low Income ◽

Therapeutic Interventions ◽

Low Income Countries ◽

Middle Income ◽

Major Health ◽

Middle Income Countries ◽

Low And Middle Income

Breast cancer is a major health care problem that affects more than one million women yearly. While it is traditionally thought of as a disease of the industrialized world, around 45% of breast cancer cases and 55% of breast cancer deaths occur in low and middle income countries. Managing breast cancer in low income countries poses a different set of challenges including access to screening, stage at presentation, adequacy of management and availability of therapeutic interventions. In this paper, we will review the challenges faced in the management of breast cancer in low and middle income countries.

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Why Do Women with Breast Cancer Get Diagnosed and Treated Late in Sub-Saharan Africa Perspectives from Women and Patients in Bamako, Mali

Breast Care ◽

10.1159/000481087 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 13 (1) ◽

pp. 39-43 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Kirstin Grosse Frie ◽

Hatouma Samoura ◽

Samba Diop ◽

Bakarou Kamate ◽

Cheick Bougadari Traore ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Breast Cancer ◽

Health Care ◽

Cancer Patients ◽

Low Income ◽

Help Seeking ◽

Sub Saharan Africa ◽

Low Income Countries ◽

Breast Cancer Patients ◽

Cancer Knowledge ◽

Sub Saharan

Background: Breast cancer, the most common cancer among women worldwide, has a high mortality rate in low-income countries. In sub-Saharan Africa, most breast cancer patients are diagnosed with advanced disease. Some studies have quantified the time delay to diagnosis in sub-Saharan Africa, but very few have used qualitative methods to understand barriers leading to delay. This study analyses barriers throughout a breast cancer patient's pathway from symptom recognition to treatment in Mali. Method: Three focus group discussions were conducted. The model of pathways to treatment was used to structure the results into 4 time intervals: appraisal, help-seeking, diagnosis, and treatment, with a focus on barriers during each interval. Results: The main barriers during the appraisal interval were a low level of breast cancer knowledge among women, their families, and medical professionals, and during the help-seeking interval, mistrust in the community health care centers and economic hardship. Barriers during the diagnosis interval were low quality of health care services and lack of social support, and during the pretreatment interval high costs and lack of specialized services. Conclusion: Multilevel interventions are needed to ensure access, availability, and affordability of a minimum standard of care for breast cancer patients in sub-Saharan Africa.

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Nurses' Viewpoints on the Quality of Care: A Qualitative Study in Timor-Leste

10.21203/rs.2.23919/v1 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Bernadethe Marheni Luan ◽

Paulo Lopes ◽

Domingos Soares

Keyword(s):

Health Care ◽

Quality Of Care ◽

Health System ◽

Low Income ◽

Quality Care ◽

Low Income Countries ◽

Small Island ◽

Skill Mix ◽

Timor Leste

Abstract Background Research on quality of care revealed nurse-to-patient ratio and skill mix served as key elements in quality of care. However, those studies were done in countries where nursing workforce had reasonable proportion of professional nurses with bachelor degrees. Findings of these researches may overlook challenges in health system as well as the nature of nursing service in small island low-income countries that has a huge proportion of auxiliary nurses. Working in under-sourced places, nurses in Timor-Leste might have different viewpoints on what aspect contribute to quality of care. Methods Focus group discussions (FGDs) were done in 2017, in three districts that included staff nurses and senior nurses from three levels of health care facilities: primary, secondary, and tertiary. Data were analyzed using content analysis method. Results Two themes were emerged from the FGDs data: “patients as the center of the service” and “gaps in providing quality of care”. Aside from attributes of quality care such as equality, efficiency, and patient-centeredness in the delivery of care, the first theme also covered the importance of employing nurses’ value system in order to uphold quality of care. The second theme included quality care milieu amplifying distinctive factors facing health system in under-resources places. Problems related with facility infrastructure, equipment and supplies, financing, management, and staffing were narrated. While an inadequacy or a deficiency of these factors implies the country’s struggles to maintain a functioning health care facility, it incapacitated nurses to improve quality of care. Conclusions Compared to nurses in countries with better skill mix, nurses in under-resources places and small island low-income countries face different challenging situations that go beyond nursing realm, forcing nurses to describe quality care uniquely. Findings from this study provide evidence that it is urgent to develop policies of human resources for health (HRH) within the context of the health policies that contributes to professional management of the largest cadre, thus strengthens their ability to improve patient care service.

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Using Prospective Methods to Identify Fieldwork Locations Favourable to Understanding Divergences in Health Care Accessibility

ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information ◽

10.3390/ijgi10080506 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 10 (8) ◽

pp. 506

Author(s):

Jan Ketil Rød ◽

Arne H. Eide ◽

Thomas Halvorsen ◽

Alister Munthali

Keyword(s):

Health Care ◽

Low Income ◽

Access To Health Care ◽

Health Care Services ◽

Good Health ◽

Low Income Countries ◽

Care Services ◽

Health Care Accessibility ◽

Barriers To Health ◽

Walking Time

Central to this article is the issue of choosing sites for where a fieldwork could provide a better understanding of divergences in health care accessibility. Access to health care is critical to good health, but inhabitants may experience barriers to health care limiting their ability to obtain the care they need. Most inhabitants of low-income countries need to walk long distances along meandering paths to get to health care services. Individuals in Malawi responded to a survey with a battery of questions on perceived difficulties in accessing health care services. Using both vertical and horizontal impedance, we modelled walking time between household locations for the individuals in our sample and the health care centres they were using. The digital elevation model and Tobler’s hiking function were used to represent vertical impedance, while OpenStreetMap integrated with land cover map were used to represent horizontal impedance. Combining measures of walking time and perceived accessibility in Malawi, we used spatial statistics and found spatial clusters with substantial discrepancies in health care accessibility, which represented fieldwork locations favourable for providing a better understanding of barriers to health access.

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Results From Screening Immigrants of Low‐Income Countries: Data From a Public Primary Health Care

Journal of Travel Medicine ◽

10.1111/jtm.12083 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 21 (2) ◽

pp. 92-98 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Olga Hladun ◽

Albert Grau ◽

Esther Esteban ◽

Josep M. Jansà

Keyword(s):

Health Care ◽

Primary Health Care ◽

Low Income ◽

Low Income Countries ◽

Primary Health

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Prediction of benign and malignant breast cancer using data mining techniques

Journal of Algorithms & Computational Technology ◽

10.1177/1748301818756225 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 12 (2) ◽

pp. 119-126 ◽

Cited By ~ 43

Author(s):

Vikas Chaurasia ◽

Saurabh Pal ◽

BB Tiwari

Keyword(s):

Breast Cancer ◽

Data Mining ◽

Low Income ◽

Prediction Models ◽

Naive Bayes ◽

Naïve Bayes ◽

Low Income Countries ◽

Breast Cancer Dataset ◽

Cancer Dataset ◽

Rbf Network

Breast cancer is the second most leading cancer occurring in women compared to all other cancers. Around 1.1 million cases were recorded in 2004. Observed rates of this cancer increase with industrialization and urbanization and also with facilities for early detection. It remains much more common in high-income countries but is now increasing rapidly in middle- and low-income countries including within Africa, much of Asia, and Latin America. Breast cancer is fatal in under half of all cases and is the leading cause of death from cancer in women, accounting for 16% of all cancer deaths worldwide. The objective of this research paper is to present a report on breast cancer where we took advantage of those available technological advancements to develop prediction models for breast cancer survivability. We used three popular data mining algorithms (Naïve Bayes, RBF Network, J48) to develop the prediction models using a large dataset (683 breast cancer cases). We also used 10-fold cross-validation methods to measure the unbiased estimate of the three prediction models for performance comparison purposes. The results (based on average accuracy Breast Cancer dataset) indicated that the Naïve Bayes is the best predictor with 97.36% accuracy on the holdout sample (this prediction accuracy is better than any reported in the literature), RBF Network came out to be the second with 96.77% accuracy, J48 came out third with 93.41% accuracy.

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Satisfaction with health care system: A comparative study between market-based insurance model of the United States and “out-of-pocket” model in developing and low-income countries

International Journal of Healthcare ◽

10.5430/ijh.v6n1p41 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

pp. 41

Author(s):

Ram Lakhan ◽

Sean Y. Gillette ◽

Sean Lee ◽

Manoj Sharma

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Health Care ◽

Health Care System ◽

Undergraduate Students ◽

Low Income ◽

Access To Health Care ◽

The United States ◽

Low Income Countries ◽

Healthcare Needs ◽

Care System

Background and purpose: Access to healthcare services is an essential component for ensuring the quality of life. Globally, there is inequity and disparities regarding access to health care. To meet the global healthcare needs, different models of healthcare have been adopted around the world. However, all healthcare models have some strengths and weaknesses. The purpose of this study was to examine the satisfaction among a group of undergraduate students from different countries with their health care models namely, insurance-based model in the United States and “out-of-pocket” model prevalent in low-income countries.Methods and materials: The study utilized a cross-sectional research design. Undergraduate students, representing different nationalities from a private Southeastern College, were administered a researcher-designed 14-item self-reported electronic questionnaire. Independent t-test and χ2 statistics were used to examine the differences between two health care systems and the qualitative responses were analyzed thematically.Results: Satisfaction towards health care system between the United States and low-income countries was found significantly different (p < .05). However, students in both settings experienced an inability toward affording quality healthcare due to economic factors and disparities.Conclusions: There is dissatisfaction with health care both in the United States and low-income developing countries among a sample of undergraduate students representing these countries. Efforts to ensure low-cost affordable health care should be a global goal.

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Ethnobotanical Study of Medicinal Plants Used for Human Health Care in Yem Culture, South Ethiopia

10.21203/rs.3.rs-325128/v1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Gideon Woldemariam ◽

Sebsebe Demissew ◽

Zemede Asfaw

Keyword(s):

Health Care ◽

Medicinal Plants ◽

Indigenous Knowledge ◽

Human Health ◽

Traditional Knowledge ◽

Low Income ◽

Health Care Systems ◽

Low Income Countries ◽

Ethnobotanical Study ◽

Care Systems

Abstract BackgroundIndigenous or traditional herbal medicine has been widely regarded as a resource for strengthening the health care systems among communities of low income countries including Ethiopia. The Yem people in Ethiopia have deep-rooted and ancient traditional knowledge of managing human ailments and health conditions using medicinal plants (mps). On the other hand, mps and the associated indigenous knowledge are under erosion due to human-induced and natural factors. Therefore, documenting the plant biodiversity along with the associated indigenous knowledge is of urgent task for conservation. MethodsThis study was conducted in April, 2013, October, 2016 and July, 2016 with the objective of documenting traditional mps in different land uses that are used for treating human ailments. Ethnobotanical data were collected from 69 informants that were selected by stratified random sampling and purposive sampling. Vegetation data were obtained from 30, 30x30 m quadrats. Ethnobotanical data were analysed using paired ranking, Informant consensus factor and Fidelity Level index. ResultsAbout 213 medicinal plant species that are used for treating 117 human ailments were recorded. ICF calculated depicted a highest ICF value of 0.82 for Gastrointestinal & Visceral organs ailments. Haplocarpha rueppellii, Carduus schimperi and Inula confortiflora each 100%, Maesa lanceolata 80% and Rumex abyssinicus 75%. Vegetation analysis showed three plant communities.ConclusionThe Yem people have rich traditional knowledge of utilising plants side by side with the mainstream biomedical system for maintaining human health care.

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