MERCOSUR: Integración y profundización de los mercados financieros.

El logro de un mayor grado de integración financiera y de coordinación en el área monetaria es una materia pendiente del MERCOSUR. En los últimos años, se ha producido una sucesión de hechos positivos en el área macroeconómica y financiera en las dos economías mayores de la región que abrió nuevas posibilidades para la integración de los mercados financieros; posibilidades que no estaban presentes en los años noventa. Este trabajo investiga esas posibilidades. Así, se estudian los sistemas financieros;los mercados de capital; la asignación del ahorro y la acumulación de reservas;y la complejidad de manejar shocks externos con mercados financieros deficientes. Asimismo, se consideran las experiencias internacionales en materia de manejo conjunto de fondos de reserva, las opciones a nivel regional para establecer bancos de desarrollo, las condiciones para profundizar los mercados regionales de valores privados y bonos para las firmas, el tratamiento del riesgo, y las implicancias para las políticas macroeconómicas. Finalmente, frente al escaso desarrollo de la integración financiera en el MERCOSUR, se proponen lineamientos para una agenda futura. Sin ignorar los importantes obstáculos de economía política que existen, se plantean iniciativas realistas que podrían contribuir a la integración financiera: creación de un instituto para la cooperación financiera, iniciativas para la armonización normativa orientadas a mejorar prácticas, estándares y códigos en el MERCOSUR y marcos institucionales orientados a mejorar el manejo de reservas y de fondos para el desarrollo.ReD MERCOSUR, competencias, crecimiento, integración, política comercial

Presentation and outcomes of Kawasaki Disease in Latin American infants younger than 6 months of age: A multinational multicenter study of the REKAMLATINA network

Objective:To characterize the clinical presentation and outcomes of Kawasaki disease (KD) in infants Methods:We evaluated 36 infants = 6 months old diagnosed with KD in Latin America. We compared differences in laboratory data, clinical presentation, treatment response, and coronary artery outcomes between the two cohorts. Results:The majority (78.1%) of infants and children >= 6 months of age were initially diagnosed with KD, as compared to only 38.2% of infants = 6 months treated at the same point in the course of illness [ 10 days (50 vs. 7.4%,P= 0.043)]. Conclusion:Our data show that despite treatment in the first 10 days of illness, infants <6 months of age in Latin America have a higher risk of developing a coronary artery aneurysm. Delay in the diagnosis leads to larger coronary artery aneurysms disproportionately in these infants. Thus, suspicion for KD should be high in this vulnerable population

International Nosocomial Infection Control Consortiu (INICC) report, data summary of 43 countries for 2007-2012. Device-associated module

We report the results of an International Nosocomial Infection Control Consortium (INICC) surveillance study from January 2007-December 2012 in 503 intensive care units (ICUs) in Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Europe. During the 6-year study using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) U.S. National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) definitions for device-associated health care–associated infection (DA-HAI), we collected prospective data from 605,310 patients hospitalized in the INICC's ICUs for an aggregate of 3,338,396 days. Although device utilization in the INICC's ICUs was similar to that reported from ICUs in the U.S. in the CDC's NHSN, rates of device-associated nosocomial infection were higher in the ICUs of the INICC hospitals: the pooled rate of central line–associated bloodstream infection in the INICC's ICUs, 4.9 per 1,000 central line days, is nearly 5-fold higher than the 0.9 per 1,000 central line days reported from comparable U.S. ICUs. The overall rate of ventilator-associated pneumonia was also higher (16.8 vs 1.1 per 1,000 ventilator days) as was the rate of catheter-associated urinary tract infection (5.5 vs 1.3 per 1,000 catheter days). Frequencies of resistance of Pseudomonas isolates to amikacin (42.8% vs 10%) and imipenem (42.4% vs 26.1%) and Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates to ceftazidime (71.2% vs 28.8%) and imipenem (19.6% vs 12.8%) were also higher in the INICC's ICUs compared with the ICUs of the CDC's NHSN