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Palestine has a short history of medical education: the first medical school opened in 1994 and a further three have opened since. Doctors are trained against a backdrop of military occupation and ineffective governance, complicating the development and delivery of effective education. Postgraduate education is a particular weakness, with disorganised residency programmes prioritising service provision over the training of specialists, leading to poorer patient care and low morale. This unfavourable learning environment leads into a situation where opportunities for continuing professional development are scarce. Links between healthcare and education providers in Palestine and countries with advanced health systems have great potential for allowing best practice in medical education to be shared and to provide high quality training opportunities that address gaps in Palestine's health education system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drag-cloth sampling is the most commonly used method to sample for ticks. A cloth is dragged along the ground and checked for ticks at regular intervals to count ticks before they drop off. The distance between drag-cloth checks differs between studies, which could result in lower density estimates for studies with greater distances between checks. Here, we measured this effect by 1) calculating the rate at which nymphal and adult Ixodes scapularis Say ticks drop off the cloth per meter dragged and 2) measuring tick density by drag-cloth sampling with three different drag-cloth check interval distances. We found a higher drop-off rate for adult ticks, 0.083/m, than nymphal ticks, 0.047/m. The estimated density of ticks decreased with increasing check interval distance. Our results not only highlight the importance of accounting for check interval distance when estimating tick density, but also provide the first estimate of nymphal I. scapularis drop-off rate., (© The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Entomological Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)