The Mortality and Morbidity Transitions in Sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from Adult Heights

In most developing countries, rising levels of nutrition and improvements in public health have led to declines in infant mortality and rising adult heights. In Sub-Saharan Africa we see a different pattern. Sub-Saharan Africa has seen large reductions in infant mortality over the last fifty years, but without any increase in protein and energy intake and against a background of stagnant, or declining, adult height. Adult height is a sensitive indicator of the nutrition and morbidity prevailing during the childhood of the cohort and can be taken as a measure of health human capital. Declining infant mortality rates in Sub-Saharan Africa appear to be driven by medical interventions that reduce infant mortality, rather than by broad based improvements in nutrition and public health measures, and may not be reflective of broad based health improvements.mortality, Sub-Saharan, morbidity, heights

The Height of Women in Sub-Saharan Africa: the Role of Health, Nutrition, and Income in Childhood

Most of the variation in height across countries in Sub-Saharan Africa is due to fixed effects, however, we find that variations in cohort height over time are sensitive to changes in infant mortality rate, GDP per capita, and protein intake, both at birth and in adolescence.Infant Mortality, Nutrition, Women’s Height, Stature, Sub-Saharan Africa

Baby Factories : Exploitation of Women in Southern Nigeria

Despite the writings of feminist thinkers and efforts of other advocates of feminism to change the dominant narratives on women, exploitation of women is a fact that has remained endemic in various parts of the world, and particularly in Africa. Nigeria is one of those countries in Africa where women are largely exposed to varying degrees of exploitation. This paper examines the development and proliferation of baby-selling centers in southern Nigeria and its impacts on and implication for women in Nigeria. It demonstrates how an attempt to give protection to unwed pregnant girls has metamorphosed into “baby harvesting” and selling through the notorious “baby factories,” where young women are held captive and used like industrial machines for baby production. The babies produced through this process were often sold illegally to adoptive parent(s) in dire need of them. In some other instances, they were used for child labour or trafficked for prostitution, ritual purposes, or organ harvesting. The paper argues that the hideous phenomenon of baby factories—which has high patronage in southern parts of Nigeria—does not only exploit and debase the status of women, but that the nature of its operation foreshadows a future danger for women in southern Nigeria regions

Nurses’ International Migration and the Crystallizing ‘Culture of Exile’ in Nigeria: Historical Trends, Dynamics and Consequences

This paper examines an oft-neglected feature of international migration: social changes (disruptions and/or dislocations of their normal ways of living) in source societies in response to the exigencies of these migrations, and their eventual consequences. It demonstrates how policies in developed economies inadvertently impact on developing societies by creating new social conditions. An exploratory case of Nigerian nurses’ international migration, the paper takes the hypothetical perspective that the socioeconomic effects of migration have engendered a crystallizing ‘culture of exile’ among significant youth populations. It examines the lures/motivation of nurse training and establishes a new dominant drive – the urge to migrate to developed, high-income economies. This development is a direct result of the long-term ‘progressive impact’ of migrated nurses’ remittances in local societies. The paper shows how locals’ belief in the high probability of nurses to attract ‘overseas’ suitors/spouses also feeds into the narrative. The development dire consequences were also highlighted

The Causes that Influence the Delay of Payment at Due Date Among ENDAI-A in Tunisia

This research studies the relevance of explanatory factors of the lack of reimbursement in microfinance conceived in the side of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of micro-borrowers. In other words, the aim of this work is to identify the characteristics that are specific to micro-borrowers on the probability, so that an individual carries out a lack of reimbursement. To study the determinants of reimbursement rate of micro-borrowers, this paper is divided into three main parts. First of all, on the basis of the theoretical framework, we will particularly focus ourselves, on the explanatory factors of the lack of reimbursement in microfinance which are related to the particular characteristics of micro-borrowers, and we will try to formulate the fundamental assumptions of our research. Then, we will discuss our sample and our results of estimations in order to treat our fundamental question of research. At this level, we will try to empirically analyze the validity of the assumptions by the presentation and the analysis of the principal results, in order to identify the explanatory factors of the lack of reimbursement on the side of micro-borrowers

Suppression of Tc in the (Y0.9Ca0.1)Ba2Cu4-xFexO8 system

In this paper, the effects produced by the iron substitutions in the (Y0.9Ca0.1)Ba2Cu4-xFexO8 system on the superconducting and structural properties are studied. The Rietveld fit of the crystal structure and Mossbauer spectroscopy results of (Y0.9Ca0.1)Ba2Cu4-xFexO8 samples indicate that, the iron atoms occupy the Cu(1) sites of the (Cu-O)2 double chain in fivefold coordination at low iron concentrations. Besides at high iron concentrations the iron atoms occupy the Cu(1) sites of single Cu-O chainss and Cu(2) sites in the CuO2 planes of the (Y0.9Ca0.1)Ba2Cu4-xFexO8 phase with structural defects. Simultaneouly, as iron concentration increases, a faster decrease of Tc is observed in this material comapred with the YBa2Cu3-xFexO7-y system. According to the charge transfer model proposed for YBa2Cu4O8 under pressure, the decrease in the Cu(1)-O(4) bond length in parallel to the increase in the Cu(2)-O(4) bond length may affect the charge transfer mechanism leading to the suppression of Tc.Comment: submitted to Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter on 12 October 2001, 8 figures, 2 tables, 9 page