Dental Age Estimation of 6-15 Year Old Indian Children Using Demirjian Method

Objective: Assessment of tooth development to estimate the age of living subjects isrequired in various disciplines including pediatric dentistry, orthodontics, and forensicdentistry. The most widely used method is the one given by Demirjian et al. in 1973.This method has been tested only a few times in North Indian children, thus the needfor present study.Methodology: Seven left mandibular teeth were assessed from 215orthopantomograms (OPGs) belonging to healthy children aged 6–15 years randomlyselected and were staged according to Demirjian method. Univariate quantitativeanalysis was performed.Results: A general over-estimation of 0.61 years was observed (0.66 years – males and0.56 years – females) (p 0.05). Also, younger age groups had a higher amount of overestimation.Conclusion: The present results support the need for refinement of the populationspecificstandards in Demirjian method, for its further application

Human Rights and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria: Meeting Report

On March 3-4, 2011, UN staff, donors, and civil society representatives met in New York to discuss how the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria might best operationalize the promotion of human rights and equitable access as one of its five strategic objectives.The meeting covered the following human rights issues related to the Global Fund's 2012-2016 strategy:Scope and content of the Global Fund's human rights commitment and obligation;Promoting human rights in Global Fund-supported programs and advocacy;Oversight and monitoring and evaluation of the Global Fund's portfolio according to human rights criteria;Addressing human rights risks and violations associated with Global Fund grants.Discussion papers on each of these issues, as well as a paper exploring the relationship between human rights and equity, were prepared for the meeting

The Next WHO Director-General’s Highest Priority: a Global Treaty on the Human Right to Health

Amidst the many challenges facing the next WHO Director-General, the new WHO head should find WHO’s foremost priority in its most important constitutional pillar: the right to health. The centerpiece of this endeavor should be leadership on the Framework Convention on Global Health (FCGH), the proposed global treaty based in the right to health and aimed at national and global health equity. The treaty would reform global governance for health to enhance accountability, transparency, and civil society participation and protect the right to health in trade, investment, climate change, and other international regimes, while catalyzing governments to institutionalize the right to health at community through to national levels. It would usher in a new era of global health with justice – vast improvements in health outcomes, equitably distributed. With the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control having served as a proof of concept, the FCGH would be an innovative treaty finding solutions to overcome global health failings in accountability, equality, financing, and inter-sectoral coherence. It would include a global health accountability framework, encompassing, civil society engagement, independent monitoring, and plans for redress, while catalyzing national health accountability strategies, accountability mechanisms, disaggregated data, and community participation. National health equity strategies, pro-poor pathways to universal health coverage, and robust non-discrimination provisions could elevate the voices, priorities, and ultimately power of marginalized populations. The FCGH would include a national and global health financing framework, while reaching beyond the health sector with right to health assessments, public health participation in developing international agreements, and responsibility for all sectors for improving health outcomes. The FCGH would reinvigorate WHO’s global health leadership, breathing new life into its founding principles. It could become the platform for reforming WHO as a rights-based 21st century institution, with badly-needed reforms, such as community participation, new priorities favouring social determinants of health, and a culture of transparency and accountability. The next Director-General should launch a historic effort to align national and global governance for with human rights through the FCGH, bringing the world closer to global health with justice

A feasible route for the design and manufacture of customised respiratory protection through digital facial capture

The World Health Organisation has called for a 40% increase in personal protective equipment manufacturing worldwide, recognising that frontline workers need effective protection during the COVID-19 pandemic. Current devices suffer from high fit-failure rates leaving significant proportions of users exposed to risk of viral infection. Driven by non-contact, portable, and widely available 3D scanning technologies, a workflow is presented whereby a user’s face is rapidly categorised using relevant facial parameters. Device design is then directed down either a semi-customised or fully-customised route. Semi-customised designs use the extracted eye-to-chin distance to categorise users in to pre-determined size brackets established via a cohort of 200 participants encompassing 87.5% of the cohort. The user’s nasal profile is approximated to a Gaussian curve to further refine the selection in to one of three subsets. Flexible silicone provides the facial interface accommodating minor mismatches between true nasal profile and the approximation, maintaining a good seal in this challenging region. Critically, users with outlying facial parameters are flagged for the fully-customised route whereby the silicone interface is mapped to 3D scan data. These two approaches allow for large scale manufacture of a limited number of design variations, currently nine through the semi-customised approach, whilst ensuring effective device fit. Furthermore, labour-intensive fully-customised designs are targeted as those users who will most greatly benefit. By encompassing both approaches, the presented workflow balances manufacturing scale-up feasibility with the diverse range of users to provide well-fitting devices as widely as possible. Novel flow visualisation on a model face is presented alongside qualitative fit-testing of prototype devices to support the workflow methodology

II Congreso Latinoamericano Jurídico sobre derechos reproductivos, 28, 29 y 30 Noviembre de 2011

El II Congreso Latinoamericano Jurídico sobre Derechos Reproductivos se llevó a cabo en Costa Rica en el año 2011, el mismo buscó generar, además de situaciones de reflexión, debate y participación, espacios de capacitación donde los participantes pudieron, a través de la transmisión de experiencias y mediante actividades concretas, conocer herramientas conceptuales y metodológicas que puedan replicar y difundir en sus respectivos países.http://promsex.org/images/docs/Publicaciones/RelatoriaIICJCosta%20Rica.pd

Patients' online access to their electronic health records and linked online services: a systematic interpretative review

Objectives: To investigate the effect of providing patients online access to their electronic health record (EHR) and linked transactional services on the provision, quality and safety of healthcare. The objectives are also to identify and understand: barriers and facilitators for providing online access to their records and services for primary care workers; and their association with organisational/IT system issues. Setting: Primary care. Participants: A total of 143 studies were included. 17 were experimental in design and subject to risk of bias assessment, which is reported in a separate paper. Detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria have also been published elsewhere in the protocol. Primary and secondary outcome measures: Our primary outcome measure was change in quality or safety as a result of implementation or utilisation of online records/transactional services. Results: No studies reported changes in health outcomes; though eight detected medication errors and seven reported improved uptake of preventative care. Professional concerns over privacy were reported in 14 studies. 18 studies reported concern over potential increased workload; with some showing an increase workload in email or online messaging; telephone contact remaining unchanged, and face-to face contact staying the same or falling. Owing to heterogeneity in reporting overall workload change was hard to predict. 10 studies reported how online access offered convenience, primarily for more advantaged patients, who were largely highly satisfied with the process when clinician responses were prompt. Conclusions: Patient online access and services offer increased convenience and satisfaction. However, professionals were concerned about impact on workload and risk to privacy. Studies correcting medication errors may improve patient safety. There may need to be a redesign of the business process to engage health professionals in online access and of the EHR to make it friendlier and provide equity of access to a wider group of patients