DISPROPORTIONATE ACCESS:

• People in rural communities have poorer health status and greater needs for primary healthcare, yet they are not as well served and have more difficulty accessing health care services than people in urban centres.

• Access to care that urban dwellers consider routine, such as mental health services, counselling, care of handicapped children, speech therapy, physiotherapy, occupational and work therapy, support groups and so on, is either rarely found in rural areas or is improvised by the very practitioners who are in such short supply.

• Problems with access to health services stem from severe shortages of health care providers for even the most basic health services. Rural communities often have difficulty accessing primary health care and keeping health care providers in their towns, let alone accessing diagnostic services and other more advanced treatments.