Legal and illegal drug use among female sex workers in bar and club prostitution in Belgium: a quantitative and qualitative study

Aims: This study describes the amounts and effects of drug use in bar and club sex work, and the use of healthcare for the drug-related needs of sex workers (SW). Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out in Belgium. In a quantitative component, 120 bar and club SW were interviewed face-to-face by means of a semi-structured questionnaire. In a qualitative component, 25 SW were interviewed face-to-face and 5 focus group discussions with key actors professionally involved with the study's subject were conducted. Findings: Many bar and club SW drink frequently alcohol and engage in heavy drinking. Illegal drugs such as cannabis, cocaine and benzodiazepines are also frequently used. The drug use often involves poly or combined drug use. More than one-third experienced a certain degree of dependence on a product and many experienced effects from drug use on their sex work. The study shows that SW have difficulties accessing drug-related healthcare. Conclusions: SW use often legal and illegal drugs. The prevalence and influence of drug use among bar and club SW illustrates the need for drug and sex work related healthcare. Distribution of more information about the risks of drug use, the possible negative effects, and the available drug-related healthcare is needed

The kinked demand curve and price rigidity : evidence from scanner data

This paper uses scanner data from a large euro area retailer. We extend Deaton and Muellbauer's Almost Ideal Demand System to estimate the price elasticity and curvature of demand for a wide range of products. Our results support the introduction of a kinked (concave) demand curve in general equilibrium macro models. We find that the price elasticity of demand is on average higher for price increases than for price decreases. However, the degree of curvature in demand is much lower than is currently imposed. Moreover, for a significant fraction of products we observe a convex demand curve. We find no correlation between the estimated price elasticity/curvature and the observed size or frequency of price adjustment in our dataprice setting, real rigidity, kinked demand curve, behavioral AIDS

Factors associated with the continuum of care of HIV infected patients in Belgium

BREACHinfo:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublishe

U.S./European Summit on Missing & Exploited Children

In October 2005, representatives from 20 countries, the United Nations, European-Union institutions, and the Council of Europe participated in the first-ever U.S./European Summit on Missing and Exploited Children. They discussed, compared, and assessed the effectiveness of: national and international legal instruments enacted to combat child abduction and the sexual exploitation of children;national and supranational initiatives that address the increasingly complex moral, societal, and legal challenges; andcurrent private and non-governmental initiatives and practices that support the protection of children. Specifically, participants sought to provide a common, universally agreed upon definition of the problem of child sexual exploitation

'The captain of all these men of death' : aspects of the medical history of tuberculosis : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Public Health at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand

Current evidence suggests that some time in pre-history the ancestor of the modern tubercle bacillus evolved from a soil organism into a human pathogen. Since that time it has caused death and misery to millions of human beings by causing the infectious disease we now call tuberculosis. This dissertation examines some of the aspects of the history of tuberculosis and specifically how it has affected humans from early times not only medically but socially. It looks at mankind’s struggle to overcome the disease, those who introduced scientific methods in attempts to halt and defeat the organism and its associated infectious disease. There are descriptions of the effects of the disease on prominent people and how the disease often cut short their productive lives. Stress is placed also on the organism’s ability to adapt and survive in a latent form and to develop virulence factors as and when necessary for its own survival. The advent of the co-infection with HIV/AIDS has caused a major setback in control methods and our attempts to halt the progress of the disease and these are factors in the resultant worldwide epidemic of tuberculosis. Particular importance is placed on the public health measures used in the past and the importance of continued and improved control measures at the community level now and in the future. The implementation of the knowledge gained about the disease and the organism to date, the avoidance of the errors made in the past, is emphasised if we are to make progress in the future. To totally defeat the organism remains the major goal of public health agencies, medical researchers and social scientists so we can say that, at last, tuberculosis is no longer the ‘Captain of all these Men of Death’

Zika Virus: Can Artificial Contraception Be Condoned?

As the Zika virus pandemic continues to bring worry and fear to health officials and medical scientists, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO) have recommended that residents of the Zika-infected countries, e.g., Brazil, and those who have traveled to the area should delay having babies which may involve artificial contraceptive, particularly condom. This preventive policy, however, is seemingly at odds with the Roman Catholic Church’s position on the contraceptive. As least since the promulgation of Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae, the Church has explicitly condemned artificial birth control as intrinsic evil. However, the current pontiff, Pope Francis, during his recent visit to Latin America, remarked that the use of artificial contraception may not be in contradiction to the teaching of Humanae Vitae while drawing a parallel between the current Zika Crisis and the 1960’s Belgian Congo Nun Controversy. The pope mentioned that the traditional ethical principle of the lesser of two evils may be the doctrine that justified the exceptions. The authors of this paper attempt to expand the theological rationale of the pope’s suggestion. In so doing, the authors rely on casuistical reasoning as an analytic tool that compares the Belgian Congo Nun case and the given Zika case, and suggest that the former is highly similar to, if not the same as, the latter in terms of normative moral feature. That is, in both cases the use of artificial contraception is theologically justified in reference to the criteria that the doctrine of the lesser of two evils requires. The authors wish that the paper would provide a solid theological-ethical ground based on which condom-use as the most immediate and effective preventive measure can be recommended in numerous Catholic hospitals as well as among Catholic communities in the world, particularly the most Zika-affected and largest Catholic community in the world, Brazil – 123 million present Brazilian citizens are reported to be Roman Catholic

Evaluation of the empirical performance of two-stage budgeting AIDS, QUAIDS and Rotterdam models based on weak separability

Microsimulation models for indirect taxation require detailed underlying demand systems, in order to be policy relevant. A possible solution for the econometric problem (lack of necessary degrees of freedom) is the separability concept and the closely related notion of two-stage budgeting. In this paper, weak separability is applied on the Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS), its quadratic extension QUAIDS and the Rotterdam model. These two-stage budgeting demand systems were estimated on Belgian time series data and were evaluated by means of a comparison of their elasticities (both partial and total), goodness-of-fit measures and their forecasting accuracy. Though the rank three QUAIDS model does not dominate the others in every respect (at least for time series data), it has nice theoretical properties which can on their own be a justification for the use of the system.