Assessment of wash program in public secondary schools in south-western Nigeria

The provision of safe water, sanitation and hygiene in schools has been established to improve health, boost educational achievement, and promote gender equity which has a positive impact on the society. The aim of this pilot study is to ascertain the state of WASH program in public secondary schools in South-Western Nigeria. A total of twelve schools which span across three Local Government areas in two States (Lagos and Ogun), in South-Western Nigeria were selected. The standard for WASH in schools by UNICEF was used as the guiding principles to evaluate the adequacy of the various WASH components. Out of the 12 public secondary schools visited, only 3 (25%) had drinking water points (boreholes) and 40% of the schools do not have separate latrines for boys and girls, and for promoting privacy of older girls. Only 1 (10%) of the schools had hand washing points but without soap and there is no plan in the schools for advancing WASH program. This study reveals that the present WASH practice in many of the schools is not adequate

Fumonisin B1 contamination of cereals and risk of esophageal cancer in a high risk area in Northeastern Iran

Introduction: Fumonisin B1 (FB1) is a toxic and carcinogenic mycotoxin produced in cereals due to fungal infection. This study was conducted to determine FB1 contamination of rice and corn samples and its relationship with the rate of esophageal cancer (EC) in a high risk area in northeastern Iran. Methods: In total, 66 rice and 66 corn samples were collected from 22 geographical subdivisions of Golestan province of Iran. The levels of FB1 were measured for each subdivision by thin layer and high pressure liquid chromatographies. The mean level of FB1 and the proportions of FB1 contaminated samples were compared between low and high EC-risk areas of the province. Results: The mean of FB1 levels in corn and rice samples were 223.64 and 21.59 μ/g, respectively. FB1 contamination was found in 50% and 40.9% of corn and rice samples, respectively. FB1 level was significantly higher in rice samples obtained from high EC-risk area (43.8 μ/g) than those obtained from low risk area (8.93 μ/g) (p-value=0.01). The proportion of FBI contaminated rice samples was also significantly greater in high (75%) than low (21.4%) EC-risk areas (p-value=0.02). Conclusion: We found high levels of FBI contamination in corn and rice samples from Golestan province of Iran, with a significant positive relationship between FB1 contamination in rice and the risk of EC. Therefore, fumonisin contamination in commonly used staple foods, especially rice, may be considered as a potential risk factor for EC in this high risk region

Stepping in New Directions: The Canadian Army’s Observer Program in the Asia-Pacific Region, 1944-45

In early 1944, and in anticipation of a government decision to commit ground forces to the war against Japan, the Canadian army launched a program that sent officers to the Asia-Pacific region to observe Allied operations. The observer program was well underway when, in November 1944, the Canadian government ordered the army to prepare a division to serve under American command in the Pacific theatre. The observer program helped the army deal with two significant challenges: learning how to fight a largely unfamiliar enemy in a tropical environment, and learning how to operate as part of an American force

An Index of Child Well-being in the European Union

While the living conditions of children and young people in the European Union have gained increasing recognition across the EU, the well-being of children is not monitored on the European level. Based on a rights-based, multi-dimensional understanding of child well-being we analyse data already available for the EU 25, using series data as well as comparative surveys of children and young people. We compare the performance of EU Member States on eight clusters with 23 domains and 51 indicators and give a picture of children’s overall well-being in the European Union. The clusters are children’s material situation, housing, health, subjective well-being, education, children’s relationships, civic participation and risk and safety

Mass Torts—Maturation of Law and Practice

Mass tort litigation has been with us for about fifty years. This is dating the start from the MER/29 litigation in 1964. This field of law and practice has grown year after year, and it shows no sign of abating. At the same time, it can be said that this area of law and procedure has reached a mature stage; the practice is fairly standardized and earlier experiments have either become the model or have been abandoned. The term “mass tort litigation” (MTL), as used in this article, confines itself to product liability personal injury cases involving similar injuries from exposure to the same product and resulting in multiple claimants. “Multiple” may be as small as a hundred, but may also amount to 50,000, 100,000, or more. Thus, excluded from direct examination in this paper are consumer economic suits, often commenced in a class action format, and toxic tort lawsuits dealing with localized pollution. Mass tort litigation is as much a procedural topic as a substantive one. While there are some law issues specific to mass tort litigation, the greater area of development has been in the adaptation or invention of procedural mechanisms to the management of the cases in their organization, their development, and their disposition. The three phases just listed—organization, development, and disposition–form the three main sections of this article

The Problem with Particularized Injury: The Disjuncture Between Broad-Based Environmental Harm and Standing Jurisprudence

Several recent events harmonically converged into the topic for this article. The first was a posting on Georgetown Law’s environmental law professors’ listserv by Professor John Bonine, which raised a number of questions about whether and how standing doctrine might be rethought in light of the Supreme Court’s opinion in Massachusetts v. EPA. That opinion relaxed the states’ standing burden because of the unique sovereign interests, finding that federalism bargaining earned states “special solicitude” when it came to meeting the Court’s standing requirements. The second was a complaint filed by a consortium of regional environmental organizations, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Inc., and individuals against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for failing to achieve the goals of the Chesapeake Bay Agreements. EPA is one of five signatories to the Agreements, which contains a variety of goals, deadlines, and recommended actions, and which has failed miserably to halt the Chesapeake Bay’s decline. This complaint led to a reflection on work done in the clinic several years ago, where bringing a lawsuit on behalf of a commercial fisherman challenging the practice of chumming on the Bay was thought about long and hard. Chumming involves depositing a slurry of decomposed fish parts, usually menhaden, over the side of a fishing boat to attract game fish like striped bass. While chumming contributes to the Bay’s nutrification, by itself it has little discernible impact on the Bay’s overall health given the much larger sources of nutrients like sewage treatment plants, runoff from farm fields, and confined animal feeding operations. Ultimately it was determined, in part on standing grounds, that such a lawsuit could not succeed. The last event was a recent conversation with a retired Washington attorney about his decision to start a new organization that would supply pro bono assistance to property owners concerned about relatively discrete, highly localized harms to the Bay such as leaking septic systems or permit violations by industrial dischargers. Collectively, these separate events congealed into a somewhat amorphous concern about the extent to which the Supreme Court’s standing jurisprudence and its insistence on a showing of a particularized injury-in-fact are ill-suited to the types of broad-based, generalized harms from which complex, constantly changing ecosystems suffer