Recommendations for respiratory syncytial virus surveillance at national level.

Background Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a common cause of acute lower respiratory tract infections (ALRI) and hospitalizations among young children and is globally responsible for many deaths in young children, especially in infants below 6 months of age. Furthermore, RSV is a common cause of severe respiratory disease and hospitalization among the elderly. The development of new candidate vaccines and monoclonal antibodies highlights the need for reliable surveillance of RSV. In the European Union (EU), no up-to-date general recommendations on RSV surveillance are currently available. Based on outcomes of a workshop with 29 European experts in the field of RSV virology, epidemiology and public health, we provide recommendations to develop a feasible and sustainable national surveillance strategy for RSV that will enable harmonization and data comparison at the European level. Surveillance components We discuss three surveillance components: active sentinel community surveillance, active sentinel hospital surveillance, and passive laboratory surveillance, using the EU acute respiratory infection (ARI) and WHO extended severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) case definitions. Recommendation Furthermore, we recommend the use of quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) based assays as the standard detection method for RSV and virus genetic characterisation, if possible, to monitor genetic evolution. These guidelines provide a basis for a good quality, feasible and affordable surveillance of RSV. Future results Harmonization of surveillance standards at European and global level will contribute to the wider availability of national level RSV surveillance data for regional and global analysis, and estimation of the RSV burden and impact of the future immunization programmes

Unravelling Church Land : Transformations in the Relations between Church, State and Community in Uganda

Christian churches control substantial areas of land in Africa. While intensifying struggles over their holdings are partly due to the increased pressure on land in general, they also reflect transformations in the relations through which churches’ claims to land are legitimized, the increased association of churches with business, and churches’ unique positioning as both institutions and communities. This article presents the trajectory of relations between church, state and community in Uganda from the missionary acquisition of land in the colonial era to the unravelling of church landholding under Museveni. Drawing on long‐term ethnographic fieldwork, the authors argue that claims to church land in contemporary Uganda draw on: 1) notions of belonging to the land; 2) views about the nature of churches as communities; 3) discontent regarding whether customary land owners gave churches user rights or ownership; and 4) assessment of the churches’ success in ensuring that the land works for the common good. The article develops a novel approach to analysing the changing meaning of the landholdings of religious institutions, thus extending ongoing discussions about land, politics, development and religion in Africa.peerReviewe

Global social policy and international organizations linking social exclusion to durable inequality

This article analyses the inequality of access of people to the international policy process. It is argued that this presents an important challenge for global social policy considerations. The work explores the question of how these inequalities are produced, maintained and reproduced by looking at the relationship between international organizations and non-governmental organizations. As an entry point discussions of social exclusion are introduced and then linked to the concept of durable inequality. This move provides a way of looking at how conditions of exclusion are maintained and reproduced over time. Two instances of IO/NGO relationship are looked at as illustrative examples. The first case looks at the processes whereby international gay and lesbian organizations are trying to obtain formal NGO consultative status with the United Nations by applying to the UN's Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). The second case looks at the role of NGOs within the formal structure of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), which has created a new perspective for international organizations