section_path: Poverty reduction/Increasing the supply of basic needs/Improving access to available basic needs
section_name: Improving access to available basic needs
paragraph_text: Improving access to available basic needs
  
  Even with new products, such as better seeds, or greater volumes of them, such as industrial production, the poor still require access to these products. Improving road and transportation infrastructure helps solve this major bottleneck. In Africa, it costs more to move fertilizer from an African seaport 100 kilometres (60 mi) inland than to ship it from the United States to Africa because of sparse, low-quality roads, leading to fertilizer costs two to six times the world average. Microfranchising models such as door-to-door distributors who earn commission-based income or Coca-Cola 's successful distribution system are used to disseminate basic needs to remote areas for below market prices.
  
  The loss of basic needs providers emigrating from impoverished countries has a damaging effect. As of 2004, there were more Ethiopia-trained doctors living in Chicago than in Ethiopia and this often leaves inadequately less skilled doctors to remain in their home countries. Proposals to mitigate the problem include compulsory government service for graduates of public medical and nursing schools and promoting medical tourism so that health care personnel have more incentive to practice in their home countries. Telehealth is the use of telecommunication technologies to deliver health services. For remotes communities in Alaska, telehealth has been found to reduce travel costs alone for the state by $13 million in 2021 and, according to one study, reduced the life expectancy gap between whites and American Indian population in Alaska from eight to five years.