Table 1 Global community dermatology interventions
From: The wow factor as a determinant of funding for disorders of the skin
Country | Dermatological Interventions |
|---|---|
1) Mexico | Teams of doctors and nurses visit remote areas and provide diagnosis and management with government encouragement on a state-by-state basis [13, 30]. |
2) Tanzania | A Regional Dermatology Training Centre. Two-year training for allied health professions to provide skin care in 12 English-speaking African countries. An association of 260 graduates provides community dermatology over wide areas of the continent of Africa [13]. |
3) Mali | A health centre-based one-day course for managing the three most common skin problems: bacterial infections, fungal infections, and scabies. It improves diagnosis and eliminates expensive prescriptions for the wrong diagnosis [13, 21]. |
4) Nigeria | A course with a prime focus on leprosy mentored by Eric Post of the Netherlands. |
5) Rome | A programme for immigrant populations lead by Professor Aldo Morrone: a hospital with adequate interpreters that manages illegality and protects both the immigrants and the local populations from untreated infections [31]. |
6) Puerto Rico | A programme using medical students to provide yearly skin clinics in Puerto Rico [32]. |
7) South Africa | A nurse-led community dermatology model with outreach visits to health centres in South Africa [4, 33]. |
8) Haiti | USA dermatological and surgical teams expand dermatological and dermatopathological services, educating local physicians and providing telemedicine and medical supplies, led by Morrison B, Vega A, and Vega (E-mail: theskinclinic.haiti@gmail.com) and John Macdonald, Hospital Bernard Mevs Project Medishare, Port-au-Prince (E-mail: Trappermac@AOL.com). |
9) UK | Dermoscopy courses for family practitioners and other health professionals to detect skin malignancy. South Coast Dermoscopy Associates Integrated skin lesion recognition and dermoscopy run by Stephen Hayes (E-mail: hayes373@btinternet.com). |
10) UK | The Welsh School of Medicine provides family practitioner training globally through distance learning courses: MSC in Clinical Dermatology, Diploma in practical Dermatology and Introduction to Dermoscopy (www.dermatology.org.uk). |
11) Ethiopia | Focus on foot disorders (e.g., podoconiosis) for one million shoeless rural agricultural workers in irritant soil (www.podo.org). It provides microfinances for women who are concordant with washing and foot care. Recently added to the neglected tropical diseases [14]. |
12) UK | Self-help at a low cost: a programme of patient empowerment to develop clean water washing, oiling, skin protection, mobility, not smoking, elevation of legs, gardening (nutrition) for health [34] and to care for disfigurement. |
13) India | Three-month courses on community dermatology (three modules, three workshops and three evaluations, as well as courses for community nurse management (E-mail: neelimas1@gmail.com). |
14) Kerala | A programme for elephantiasis, vitiligo, wounds, and psoriasis, integrating Ayurveda, yoga and homeopathy with biomedicine and incorporating patient participation and environmental improvements [6]. |
15) Nepal | Dermatologists providing outreach programmes for skin care for some of the most remote and seasonally climate-affected peoples of the world [35, 36]. |
16) Patagonia | Clinical teaching and health programme aimed at rural communities run by an Argentinian dermatologist and helped by volunteers from dermatology departments throughout Argentina [13]. |
17) Argentina | One million immigrants from Europe: a campaign to manage the high prevalence of skin cancer by Gastón Galimberti Coordinador del Centro de Cancer de Piel. |
18) Cambodia | A programme designed to teach general medical officers dermatology at a basic level appropriate to the regional needs combined with a new programme to re-introduce specialist training in dermatology [13]. |
19) Africa | The building of diagnostic capacity in dermatopathology in resource-poor areas of East Sub-Saharan Africa (funded by the International Foundation for Dermatology (IFD) and European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology (EADV) and managed by Dr Helmut Bertramelli, [37]). |
20) China | A model led by burn units cooperating with trauma focusing on absent skin of all aetiologies to provide public education and, eventually, it is hoped, skin care for 56 ethnic groups especially in West China. Linked to this will be courses on rehabilitation planned at Oxford for young Chinese graduates sponsored by the burn and trauma care industry; a partnership between Oxford Brookes University and The Second Affiliated Hospital of Anhui University of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Details from TJ Ryan (E-mail: userry282@aol.com). |
21) India | The Bombay Leprosy Project (www.bombayleprosyproject.org) [38] is well established and has many years of experience managing leprosy in an agrarian to urban migration under very resource-poor conditions. |
22) Australia | Health interventions by medical students using their elective periods and young doctors and nurses for indigenous populations, both for continental Aboriginals and for Pacific islanders in Fiji to control scabies [16, 19]. |