Paediatric radiology seen from Africa. Part I: providing diagnostic imaging to a young population

Article approval pendingPaediatric radiology requires dedicated equipment, specific precautions related to ionising radiation, and specialist knowledge. Developing countries face difficulties in providing adequate imaging services for children. In many African countries, children represent an increasing proportion of the population, and additional challenges follow from extreme living conditions, poverty, lack of parental care, and exposure to tuberculosis, HIV, pneumonia, diarrhoea and violent trauma. Imaging plays a critical role in the treatment of these children, but is expensive and difficult to provide. The World Health Organisation initiatives, of which the World Health Imaging System for Radiography (WHIS-RAD) unit is one result, needs to expand into other areas such as the provision of maintenance servicing. New initiatives by groups such as Rotary and the World Health Imaging Alliance to install WHIS-RAD units in developing countries and provide digital solutions, need support. Paediatric radiologists are needed to offer their services for reporting, consultation and quality assurance for free by way of teleradiology. Societies for paediatric radiology are needed to focus on providing a volunteer teleradiology reporting group, information on child safety for basic imaging, guidelines for investigations specific to the disease spectrum, and solutions for optimising imaging in children

Enhancing home based care for HIV patients using an advisory expert system

South Africa has one of the highest Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) prevalence rates in the world. People living with HIV/AIDS experience many unrelieved symptoms. Nutritional care and support are important in preventing development of nutritional deficiencies. Home remedies can extend and improve the quality of their lives. Home remedies treatment involves eating healthy food, avoiding certain types of foods, psychological and emotional support and practicing hygiene to avoid skin infections (Sizani, Bandile; Nikiwe 2012). HIV/AIDS treatment and management strategies require ongoing management and support. In this research, we work with people from a clinic in Gugulethu Township in Western Cape, South Africa. The area has high prevalence of HIV (Ministry of health South Africa 2011). Most of the HIV patients in this area access medical information by walking long distances to the clinic. Most of these patients are poor and sometimes cannot afford to visit the clinic regularly for medical advice. In this township there is scarcity of health care workers (HCWs). The HCWs toil on many fronts to meet the enormous demand for the HIV/AIDS services but they are not able to meet the patients' needs. The aim of this research is to empower HIV-patients to self-manage the HIV-related symptoms which they experience. We investigated the way in which the HCWs deliver information to the patients. We interviewed the patients to understand what measures they take to manage the symptoms which they experienced. Consequently, we developed an advisory expert system to enhance Home-Based Care for HIV patients. An advisory expert system is defined as a computing system which is capable of representing and reasoning about some knowledge–rich domain, with a view to solving problems and giving advice (Gustafson et al. 1994). Since South Africa has high mobile phone penetration and most of the patients own them, we opted to use mobile phone as a tool to access the information provided by the advisory expert system. The system was then deployed at the clinic. We trained both HCWs and patients how to use the system. The findings were captured and reported after a six month deployment of the system. The results show that our system can be used as an effective tool to disseminate nutritional and psychological support information to HIV- patients in Gugulethu. The system is simple, yet practical. It helps the patients to self-manage the HIV-related symptoms which they experienced and at the same time, saves time and cost for both HCWs and the patients

A framework to maximise the communicative power of knowledge visualisations

Knowledge visualisation, in the field of information systems, is both a process and a product, informed by the closely aligned fields of information visualisation and knowledg management. Knowledge visualisation has untapped potential within the purview of knowledge communication. Even so, knowledge visualisations are infrequently deployed due to a lack of evidence-based guidance. To improve this situation, we carried out a systematic literature review to derive a number of “lenses” that can be used to reveal the essential perspectives to feed into the visualisation production process.We propose a conceptual framework which incorporates these lenses to guide producers of knowledge visualisations. This framework uses the different lenses to reveal critical perspectives that need to be considered during the design process. We conclude by demonstrating how this framework could be used to produce an effective knowledge visualisation

Water and Nutrition: Harmonizing actions for the United Nations Decade of Action on Nutrition and the United Nations Water Action Decade

Progress for both SDG 2 and SDG 6 has been unsatisfactory, with several indicators worsening over time, including an increase in the number of undernourished, overweight and obese people, as well as rapid increases in the number of people at risk of severe water shortages. This lack of progress is exacerbated by climate change and growing regional and global inequities in food and water security, including access to good quality diets, leading to increased violation of the human rights to water and food. Reversing these trends will require a much greater effort on the part of water, food security, and nutrition communities, including stronger performances by the United Nations Decade of Action on Nutrition and the United Nations International Decade for Action on Water for Sustainable Development. To date, increased collaboration by these two landmark initiatives is lacking, as neither work program has systematically explored linkages or possibilities for joint interventions. Collaboration is especially imperative given the fundamental challenges that characterize the promotion of one priority over another. Without coordination across the water, food security, and nutrition communities, actions toward achieving SDG2 on zero hunger may contribute to further degradation of the world’s water resources and as such, further derail achievement of the UN Decade of Action on Water and SDG 6 on water and sanitation. Conversely, actions to enhance SDG 6 may well reduce progress on the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition and SDG 2. This paper reviews these challenges as part of a broader analysis of the complex web of pathways that link water, food security and nutrition outcomes. Climate change and the growing demand for water resources are also considered, given their central role in shaping future water and nutrition security. The main conclusions are presented as three recommendations focused on potential avenues to deal with the complexity of the water-nutrition nexus, and to optimize outcomes

Appropriate technology for sustainable food security:

CONTENTS: Brief 1. Overview / Per Pinstrup-Andersen Brief 2. Farmer-Based Agro-Ecological Technology / Jules Pretty Brief 3. Conventional Research-Based Technology / Prabhu Pingali Brief 4. Modern Biotechnology / Calestous Juma Brief 5. Modern Technology for African Agriculture / Jennifer Thomson Brief 6. Information and Communcations Technologies / Nuimuddin Chowdhury Brief 7. GIS, GPS, and Remote Sensing / Uwe Deichmann and Stanley Wood Brief 8. Alternative Energy Sources / R. K. Pachauri and Pooja Mehrotra Brief 9. Food Irradiation / Morton SatinTechnology., Technological innovations., Food security., Sustainability.,

Assessing the impact of mHealth interventions in low- and middle-income countries – what has been shown to work?

PKBackground: Low-cost mobile devices, such as mobile phones, tablets, and personal digital assistants, which can access voice and data services, have revolutionised access to information and communication technology worldwide. These devices have a major impact on many aspects of people’s lives, from business and education to health. This paper reviews the current evidence on the specific impacts of mobile technologies on tangible health outcomes (mHealth) in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), from the perspectives of various stakeholders. Design: Comprehensive literature searches were undertaken using key medical subject heading search terms on PubMed, Google Scholar, and grey literature sources. Analysis of 676 publications retrieved from the search was undertaken based on key inclusion criteria, resulting in a set of 76 papers for detailed review. The impacts of mHealth interventions reported in these papers were categorised into common mHealth applications. Results: There is a growing evidence base for the efficacy of mHealth interventions in LMICs, particularly in improving treatment adherence, appointment compliance, data gathering, and developing support networks for health workers. However, the quantity and quality of the evidence is still limited in many respects. Conclusions: Over all application areas, there remains a need to take small pilot studies to full scale, enabling more rigorous experimental and quasi-experimental studies to be undertaken in order to strengthen the evidence base

ICT Update 79: Data revolution for agriculture

ICT Update is a bimonthly printed and on line magazine (http://ictupdate.cta.int) and an accompanying email newsletter published by CTA. This issue focuses on data revolution for agriculture

Framework for the Development of a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) based System for Supporting Vaccine Distribution and Uptake in Resource Poor Environments.

Child Mortality in Africa has been attributed to the lack of access to major vaccinations as and at when due. Leveraging oncheap existing platform, RFID Technology, the overall availability of these vaccines to rural areas in sub-Saharan Africa canbe improved. The goal is to create a practical system for improving vaccine uptake in pregnant women in sub-SaharanAfrica, with Nigeria as a case study, and in all reducing child mortality.Keywords- RFID, Africa, Resource poor environment, Vaccine, Vaccination, Uptake and Distribution

Creating Shared Value: A How-to Guide for the New Corporate (R)evolution

Creating Shared Value (CSV) requires comprehensive and sustained efforts across a corporation. Drawing heavily on real-life examples, this report identifies ten key building blocks that together form a blueprint for translating CSV into action, and explores how companies can get started on that process