MODELLING THE HEALTH SECTOR POLICY REFORMS FOR NIGERIA:A PHASED PROJECT STUDY

Good health is a crucial part of well-being but spending on health can be justified on economic grounds. The goal of reducing poverty provides a different but equally powerful case for health investments. However, if policymakers are to accelerate the substantial health gains of recent decades, especially for the poor in African countries such as Nigeria, the agenda for reform is clear. Therefore, the thrust of this project is to formulate a model-based viable health policy reforms framework that will guarantee the attainment of the United Nations millennium development goals(as well as the capacity to live longer, healthier and more productive lives).Health, Aids, Malaria, SARS, MORTALITY, MATERNAL HEALTH, PUBLICHEALTH, DNA, CLINICAL SERVICES, POVERTY, MODELLING, DEVELOPMENT, NIGERIA, MDG, POLICY

An American Conversation on the Post-2015 Development Agenda

In the closing months of 2013, over 1,000 Americans gathered in communities large and small to discuss the world they want in 2030. They came together to answer a call to action from Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for every UN member state to seek public input for a new and ambitious development agenda to replace the Millennium Development Goals when they expire in 2015.From October to December 2013, the United Nations Association of the United States of America (UNA-USA), a program of the United Nations Foundation, held day-long consultations in 12 cities across America. The 16 proposed development themes listed on the MY World 2015 website of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) served as the starting point for each conversation with participants ranking each theme while adding new ideas of their own.This report provides a window into the conversations that unfolded as Americans stepped back from their daily routines to think about how a new development agenda might impact their own lives as well as the lives of citizens of other UN member states around the world. The conversations included a diverse audience from age 15 to 95 and revealed both cross cutting themes and a few surprising findings

Integrating Antenatal and Postnatal Pregnancy Services to Hospital Management System

Antenatal and postnatal processes and services is a component of Hospital Management Systems that has been given very little attention. Most healthcare institution carries out the antenatal and postnatal processes manually and keeps records of the whole processes on paper. In most cases in most hospital, records kept on paper and files get missing or misplaced leading to the loss of important records of clients which would have been very helpful for future pregnancies and clinical diagnosis. Report generation and statistical figures are difficult to generate with the manual based system. Data errors, security, and privacy are another problems associated with the manual system. In this paper, the antenatal and postnatal services were incorporated into the Hospital Management System of Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto with a view to reducing the issues and inconsistencies encountered with the manual procedure. Dreamweaver, PHP, CSS, JavaScript, Ajax, HTML and MySQL are the technological tools used to automate the incorporated antenatal and postnatal services in the system. The usefulness of the proposed system was evaluated using the System Usability Scale (SUS) questionnaire and some clinical users. The experimental evaluation shows that the developed system is beneficial to the clinic and the general public based on the result obtained in this study. The results also demonstrated that the developed system can fit into the antenatal and postnatal routine of many hospitals with little or no modification

Lactation and neonatal nutrition: defining and refining the critical questions.

This paper resulted from a conference entitled "Lactation and Milk: Defining and refining the critical questions" held at the University of Colorado School of Medicine from January 18-20, 2012. The mission of the conference was to identify unresolved questions and set future goals for research into human milk composition, mammary development and lactation. We first outline the unanswered questions regarding the composition of human milk (Section I) and the mechanisms by which milk components affect neonatal development, growth and health and recommend models for future research. Emerging questions about how milk components affect cognitive development and behavioral phenotype of the offspring are presented in Section II. In Section III we outline the important unanswered questions about regulation of mammary gland development, the heritability of defects, the effects of maternal nutrition, disease, metabolic status, and therapeutic drugs upon the subsequent lactation. Questions surrounding breastfeeding practice are also highlighted. In Section IV we describe the specific nutritional challenges faced by three different populations, namely preterm infants, infants born to obese mothers who may or may not have gestational diabetes, and infants born to undernourished mothers. The recognition that multidisciplinary training is critical to advancing the field led us to formulate specific training recommendations in Section V. Our recommendations for research emphasis are summarized in Section VI. In sum, we present a roadmap for multidisciplinary research into all aspects of human lactation, milk and its role in infant nutrition for the next decade and beyond

Mimo pillow : an intelligent cushion designed with maternal heart beat vibrations for comforting newborn infants

Premature infants are subject to numerous interventions ranging from a simple diaper change to surgery while residing in Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs). These neonates often suffer from pain, distress and discomfort during the first weeks of their lives. Although pharmacological pain treatment often is available, it cannot always be applied to relieve a neonate from pain or discomfort. This paper describes a non-pharmacological solution, called Mimo, which provides comfort through mediation of a parent's physiological features to the distressed neonate via an intelligent pillow system embedded with sensing and actuating functions. We present the design, the implementation and the evaluation of the prototype. Clinical tests at Máxima Medical Centre in the Netherlands show that among the 9 of 10 infants who showed discomfort following diaper change, a shorter recovery time to baseline Skin Conductance Analgesimeter (SCA) values could be measured when the maternal heartbeat vibration in the Mimo was switched on and in 7 of these 10 a shorter crying time was measure