Articles: health.
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Doctors in developing countries where the majority of the population live in rural areas are facing difficult adjustments of their roles to attain health for all of the rural population. In Thailand, doctors directing remote district hospitals act as the focal points of other health care facilities serving the entire population of the districts. To supplement the existing governmental health service network and in accordance with principles of primary health care, community primary health care volunteers are being developed to expand service coverage to rural communities. ⋯ Reorientation of the existing health system, including its health personnel, is needed. The critical factor in such a process is the development of appropriate attitudes at all levels of health services. This is a difficult but challenging task, as it involves long established medical institutions which hold firmly to old traditions and values.
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This survey studied the health and sleeping patterns of 92 physical education and sports science students highly involved in sport. A strong correlation was found between smoking and various complaints of ill health as well as between smoking and sleep duration and quality of sleep. The results suggest that there is a strong relationship between the constituents of tobacco smoke and poor sleeping habits.
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Supreme Court decisions have liberalized a woman's right to decide whether to obtain an abortion. Some state and local governments have tried to circumvent these decisions by enacting requirements designed to discourage abortions by, among other things, dictating to physicians an elaborate litany of specific information that must be communicated to a patient as a necessary precondition of her informed consent for an abortion. This article discusses the legal status of such requirements, their implications for the professional autonomy of physicians, and the role of the medical profession in challenging these restrictions, on its own behalf and in concert with its patients.