Improvement in coverage of primary health care in a developing country through use of food incentives.
To improve attendance at mobile clinics for children food incentives were offered to attenders in a rural municipality in northern Nicaragua. Clinic attendance in villages where food incentives were offered was higher than that in control villages (96.5% vs 63.3% of child population, p less than 0.005). When food was later offered in control villages, attendance rose by 60.2% to full attendance (p less than 0.001). Some of the large amounts of non-emergency food aid available could be offered as incentives to increase the use of basic health services in developing countries.
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D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D003153:Community Health Services; D003906:Developing Countries; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D005260:Female; D005502:Food; D006801:Humans; D008952:Mobile Health Units; D009042:Motivation; D009527:Nicaragua; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000379:methods*; D012423:Rural Health; D014611:Vaccination