Second, this information was verified in commune-level meetings with farmers and herders.
Hypertension management at commune level was an important but challenging step in moving essential cardiac care services into primary health care sectors in Vietnam.
The development of a web-based decision support tool 10 became desirable to deal with commune level interventions (usually 5,000 10,000 persons), but absolutely essential when nine communes were added to our project in an 11-month period during September 2007 August 2008.
In addition eight group discussions were conducted: four with health workers from teams working at commune level and four with health workers, working at district level.
For instance, HIV testing is not available at commune level, so commune health workers cannot provide HIV testing.
Based on previous knowledge of poultry husbandry practices at commune level and the available data from northern Vietnam on commune size and number of flocks per commune, the commune was considered an epidemiological compartment for disease status purposes [ 34].
Influenza events include outbreaks in animals on farm, village or commune level, cases in wildlife or humans or positive surveillance findings in animals.
A multi-donor reproductive health project built a network of in-service trainings (clinical and management) for almost 2,000 health facilities at the national, provincial, district, and commune level in 17 provinces between 1994 and 2009, involving a total budget over 20 million dollars.
This measure has improved the overall numbers of medical doctors working at the commune level in Vietnam; however, there is wide variation between provinces.
More progress and better effectiveness would be achieved at the commune level in which the local authority was engaged and could provide specific support.
The extensive health care system in Hanoi reaches the commune level, but multisectoral and cross-programme collaboration to link the pillars of the World Health Organization's (WHO) comprehensive approach to PMTCT are weak [ 4].
