Costs and effects of two public sector delivery channels for long-lasting insecticidal nets in Uganda

BACKGROUND: In Uganda, long-lasting insecticidal nets (LLIN) have been predominantly delivered through two public sector channels: targeted campaigns or routine antenatal care (ANC) services. Their combination in a mixed-model strategy is being advocated to quickly increase LLIN coverage and maintain it over time, but there is little evidence on the efficiency of each system. This study evaluated the two delivery channels regarding LLIN retention and use, and estimated the associated costs, to contribute towards the evidence-base on LLIN delivery channels in Uganda. METHODS: Household surveys were conducted 5-7 months after LLIN distribution, combining questionnaires with visual verification of LLIN presence. Focus groups and interviews were conducted to further investigate determinants of LLIN retention and use. Campaign distribution was evaluated in Jinja and Adjumani while ANC distribution was evaluated only in the latter district. Costs were calculated from the provider perspective through retrospective analysis of expenditure data, and effects were estimated as cost per LLIN delivered and cost per treated-net-year (TNY). These effects were calculated for the total number of LLINs delivered and for those retained and used. RESULTS: After 5-7 months, over 90% of LLINs were still owned by recipients, and between 74% (Jinja) and 99% (ANC Adjumani) were being used. Costing results showed that delivery was cheapest for the campaign in Jinja and highest for the ANC channel, with economic delivery cost per net retained and used of USD 1.10 and USD 2.31, respectively. Financial delivery costs for the two channels were similar in the same location, USD 1.04 for campaign or USD 1.07 for ANC delivery in Adjumani, but differed between locations (USD 0.67 for campaign delivery in Jinja). Economic cost for ANC distribution were considerably higher (USD 2.27) compared to campaign costs (USD 1.23) in Adjumani. CONCLUSIONS: Targeted campaigns and routine ANC services can both achieve high LLIN retention and use among the target population. The comparatively higher economic cost of delivery through ANC facilities was at least partially due to the relatively short time this system had been in existence. Further studies comparing the cost of well-established ANC delivery with LLIN campaigns and other delivery channels are thus encouraged

Annotating the semantic web

The web of today has evolved into a huge repository of rich Multimedia content for human consumption. The exponential growth of the web made it possible for information size to reach astronomical proportions; far more than a mere human can manage, causing the problem of information overload. Because of this, the creators of the web(lO) spoke of using computer agents in order to process the large amounts of data. To do this, they planned to extend the current web to make it understandable by computer programs. This new web is being referred to as the Semantic Web. Given the huge size of the web, a collective effort is necessary to extend the web. For this to happen, tools easy enough for non-experts to use must be available. This thesis first proposes a methodology which semi-automatically labels semantic entities in web pages. The methodology first requires a user to provide some initial examples. The tool then learns how to reproduce the user's examples and generalises over them by making use of Adaptive Information Extraction (AlE) techniques. When its level of performance is good enough when compared to the user, it then takes over the process and processes the remaining documents autonomously. The second methodology goes a step further and attempts to gather semantically typed information from web pages automatically. It starts from the assumption that semantics are already available all over the web, and by making use of a number of freely available resources (like databases) combined with AlE techniques, it is possible to extract most information automatically. These techniques will certainly not provide all the solutions for the problems brought about with the advent of the Semantic Web. They are intended to provide a step forward towards making the Semantic Web a reality

Modeling Economic, Social and Environmental Implications of a Free Trade Agreement Between the European Union and The Russian Federation

The EU-Russia Partnership and Cooperation Agreement, which entered into force in 1997 foresees the possible establishment of a free trade area (FTA) between the parties. The aim of our study is to evaluate the possible economic, social and environmental impact of such a free trade agreement between the European Union and Russia. The results of the analysis indicate that an EU-Russia FTA will be beneficial to the Russian Federation and the EU27. Some sectors are expected to contract in the medium term, but their importance in total output is small. Over the long run, the majority of sectors in Russia are expected to expand, while only a few sectors in the EU27 are expected to register negligible decreases in output. We estimate that welfare losses from the environmental damages would be very small for Russia (possibly even smaller due to the implementation of greener technologies), and negligible for the EU. Despite some significant negative medium-term social implications in selected sectors in Russia, the overall increase in economic activity and wages, coupled with likely domestic policies aiming at easing the impact of transitional unemployment, are expected to allow for the overall reduction in poverty rates. Overall, the results show that significant welfare gains (2.24% of GDP for Russia) would accrue from the deep FTA scenario involving a significant reduction of NTBs along with additional flanking measures, particularly on competition, IPR protection and corruption, which would help re-branding of Russia as a safe and attractive investment location. Also a number of countries such as Finland, Ireland, Netherlands, Denmark, Estonia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden are expected to see their welfare increase by around 0.5% of GDP.free trade agreement, WTO accession, European Union, Russian Federation, labor market, environment, NTBs, CGE

Implementing a collaborative return-to-work program: lessons from a qualitative study in a large Canadian healthcare organization

BACKGROUND: Comprehensive workplace return-to-work policies, applied with consistency, can reduce length of time out of work and the risk of long-term disability. This paper reports on the findings from a qualitative study exploring managers’ and return-to-work-coordinators’ views on the implementation of their organization’s new return-to-work program. OBJECTIVES: To provide practical guidance to organizations in designing and implementing return-to-work programs for their employees. METHODS: Semi-structured qualitative interviews were undertaken with 20 managers and 10 return-to-work co-ordinators to describe participants’ perspectives on the progress of program implementation in the first 18 months of adoption. The study was based in a large healthcare organization in Ontario, Canada. Thematic analysis of the data was conducted. RESULTS: We identified tensions evident in the early implementation phase of the organization’s return-to-work program. These tensions were attributed to uncertainties concerning roles and responsibilities and to circumstances where objectives or principles appeared to be in conflict. CONCLUSIONS: The implementation of a comprehensive and collaborative return-to-work program is a complex challenge. The findings described in this paper may provide helpful guidance for organizations embarking on the development and implementation of a return-to-work program

Ontology-based Approximate Query Processing for Searching the Semantic Web with Corese

The semantic web relies on ontologies representing domains through their main concepts and the relations between them. Such a domain knowledge is the keystone to represent the semantic contents of web resources and services in metadata associated to them. These metadata then enable us to search for information based on the semantics of web resources rather than their syntactic forms. However, in the context of the semantic web there are many possibilities of executing queries that would not retrieve any resource. The viewpoints of the designers of ontologies, of the designers of annotations and of the users performing a Web search may not completely match. The user may not completely share or understand the viewpoints of the designers and this mismatch may lead to missed answers. Approximate query processing is then of prime importance for efficiently searching the Semantic Web. In this paper we present the Corese ontology-based search engine we have developped to handle RDF(S) and OWL Lite metadata. We present its theoretical foundation, its query language, and we stress its ability to process approximate queries