Functioning Problems Associated with Health Conditions with Greatest Disease Burden in South Africa: A Scoping Review
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The scoping review is very well structured, ideas are clear and the writing is concise and argumentative. Your article is comprehensive and you managed to successfully discuss the importance of your proposal, although some further discussion on South Africa's health care system and its major problems ( e.g. diffrence between private and public healthcare sistems; difficulty in accessing treatment for a very high percentage of the population) would have strengthened your introduction, giving the reader a broader and more comprehensive picture.
Over the last 30 years, South Africa has experienced four ’colliding epidemics’ of HIV and tuberculosis, chronic illness and mental health, injury and violence, and maternal, neonatal, and child mortality, which have had substantial effects on health and well-being. However, it is a little surprising that in a review focused on rehabilitation there are missing reference about other clinical conditions, such as neurodegerative or genetic diseases.
Finally, I suggest to include in the conclusion a reference on the need to find new strategies to make prevention and information more effective, issues closely related to strengthening services of primary health care that also have effects on rehabilitation programs.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors,
Thank you very much for the opportunity to review your manuscript. I appreciated reading it. However, there are some minor points for your consideration.
The review aimed to systematically identify and map the most common functioning problems associated with the most disabling health conditions in adults in South Africa. Mapping limitations in functioning to the domains and categories of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) contributes to scaling-up rehabilitation services in low-resource settings to meet the specific population needs.
1. The significant requirement to implement the approach presented is availability of relevant peer-reviewed publications related to health conditions, disability and rehabilitation outcomes. I see it as one of the limitations of sharing the findings to repeat in any country and recommend disclosing it in the section 4. Discussion.
2. While strengthening of rehabilitation is a health strategy and rehabilitation services are planned particularly in primary health care in South Africa, I can note that the medical disability model is described rather than the biopsychosocial one that is the key concept of the ICF. The findings obtained (Figure 6) reflect this clearly enough. It would be better for understanding to add this fact close to the text in lines 354-358.
3. In my opinion, Figure 2 is not clear. I recommend transforming it, for example, into a round diagram with percentage prevalence of functioning problems or into several figures in respect of blue, yellow, and grey parts.
I would like to suggest shortening the section 4. Discussion a little bit to stay close to the topic.
I hope you find these comments useful as you move forward with your manuscript.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
