Advancing the Right to Health: The Vital Role of Law

Effective laws and an enabling legal environment are essential to a healthy society. Most public health challenges – from infectious and non-communicable diseases to injuries, from mental illness to universal health coverage – have a legal component. At global, national and local levels, law is a powerful tool for advancing the right to health. This tool is, however, often underutilized. This report aims to raise awareness about the role that public health laws can play in advancing the right to health and in creating the conditions for all people to live healthy lives. The report provides guidance about issues and requirements to be addressed during the process of developing or reforming public health laws, with case studies drawn from countries around the world to illustrate effective practices and critical features of effective public health legislation. Advancing the right to health: the vital role of law is the result of a collaboration between the World Health Organisation, the International Development Law Organisation (IDLO), the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, Washington D.C., USA, and Sydney Law School, University of Sydney. The Project Directors were: Professor Lawrence O. Gostin, Linda D. and Timothy J. O’Neill Professor of Global Health Law and University Professor, Georgetown University; Faculty Director, O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, Georgetown University; Mr David Patterson, Senior Legal Expert – Health; Department of Research & Learning, International Development Law Organization; Professor Roger Magnusson, Professor of Health Law & Governance, Sydney Law School, University of Sydney; Mr Oscar Cabrera, Executive Director, O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, Georgetown University Law Center; Ms Helena Nygren-Krug (2011–2013), Senior Advisor, Human Rights & Law, UNAIDS. The content and structure of the report reflect the consensus reached at the second of two international consultations in public health law that preceded the preparation of the report, hosted by WHO and IDLO in Cairo, Egypt, 26-28 April 2010. Part 1 introduces the human right to health and its role in guiding and evaluating law reform efforts, including efforts to achieve the goal of universal health coverage. Part 2 discusses the process of public health law reform. The law reform process refers to the practical steps involved in advancing the political goal of law reform, and the kinds of issues and obstacles that may be encountered along the way. Part 2 identifies some of the actors who may initiate or lead the public health law reform process, discusses principles of good governance during that process, and ways of building a consensus around the need for public health law reform. Part 3 turns from the process of reforming public health laws to the substance or content of those laws. It identifies a number of core areas of public health practice where regulation is essential in order to ensure that governments (at different levels) discharge their basic public health functions. Traditionally, these core areas of public health practice have included: the provision of clean water and sanitation, monitoring and surveillance of public health threats, the management of communicable diseases, and emergency powers. Building on these core public health functions, Part 3 goes on to consider a range of other public health priorities where law has a critical role to play. These priorities include tobacco control, access to essential medicines, the migration of health care workers, nutrition, maternal, reproductive and child health, and the role of law in advancing universal access to quality health services for all members of the population. The report includes many examples that illustrate the ways in which different countries have used law to protect the health of their populations in ways that are consistent with their human rights obligations. Countries vary widely in terms of their constitutional structure, size, history and political culture. For these reasons, the examples given are not intended to be prescriptive, but to provide useful comparisons for countries involved in the process of legislative review

Assessing Arrhythmia Risk in Diabetic and Ischemic-preconditioned Rat Hearts

The purpose of this study is to understand the extent of protection against arrhythmia that Streptozotocin (STZ) induced diabetes and ischemic-preconditioning (IPC) on Sprague-Dawley rat hearts subjected to ischemia-reperfusion injury. Hearts were extracted and perfused using the langendorff method with aerated Krebs Henseleit solution. ECG recordings were recoded as the hearts were subjected to 35 minute baseline, 30 minute of no flow (ischemia) followed by 1 hour of reperfusion. The four groups investigated were vehicle control, Streptozotocin (STZ) induced diabetic rats (65mg/kg STZ), ischemic preconditioned hearts (IPC) that were subjected to two 3 minute ischemic intervals followed by 5 and 10 minute reperfusion intervals respectively), and finally diabetic hearts that underwent ischemic preconditioning (STZ+IPC). The time elapsed during ischemia until all ventricular activation stops for control hearts is 7.1±0.8 minutes, while STZ, IPC, and IPC + STZ are 15.5± 3.7, 8.6± 0.9 and 9.9± 1.6 minutes respectively. The STZ group was significantly different from the control group. When the time spent by each heart in the normal sinus rhythm state was analyzed during the 60-minute reperfusion period, control animals maintained normal rhythm for 20.9±9 minutes while STZ, IPC, and IPC + STZ maintained 29.6± 12.4, 31.7± 10.2, and 40.94+ 9.6 minutes respectively. Furthermore, the time spent in ventricular fibrillation (VF) was analyzed, and the IPC+STZ group spent 0.24± 0.2 minutes while control hearts spent 11.28± 9.2 minutes in VF. The data suggests a trend of improved arrhythmia protection when treated with STZ, IPC, or both. The IPC+STZ group is potentially displaying an additive cardioprotective effect

Automated Grain Yield Behavior Classification

A method for classifying grain stress evolution behaviors using unsupervised learning techniques is presented. The method is applied to analyze grain stress histories measured in-situ using high-energy X-ray diffraction microscopy (HEDM) from the aluminum-lithium alloy Al-Li 2099 at the elastic-plastic transition (yield). The unsupervised learning process automatically classified the grain stress histories into four groups: major softening, no work-hardening or softening, moderate work-hardening, and major work-hardening. The orientation and spatial dependence of these four groups are discussed. In addition, the generality of the classification process to other samples is explored

Lessons Learned from Mir - A Payload Perspective

Among the principal objectives of the Phase 1 NASA/Mir program were for the United States to gain experience working with an international partner, to gain working experience in long-duration space flight, and to gain working experience in planning for and executing research on a long-duration space platform. The Phase 1 program was to provide to the US early experience prior to the construction and operation of the International Space Station (Phase 2 and 3). While it can be argued that Mir and ISS are different platforms and that programmatically Phase 1 and ISS are organized differently, it is also clear that many aspects of operating a long-duration research program are platform independent. This can be demonstrated by a review of lessons learned from Skylab, a US space station program of the mid-1970's, many of which were again "learned" on Mir and are being "learned" on ISS. Among these are optimum crew training strategies, on-orbit crew operations, ground support, medical operations and crew psychological support, and safety certification processe