Risk factors for stunting and wasting at age six, twelve and twenty-four months for squatter children of Karachi, Pakistan

Objective: A high proportion of stunting and wasting in children under-five has been reported from developing countries. This paper presents the nutritional status of a two year cohort of urban squatter children in Karachi, Pakistan and assesses risk factors for wasting and stunting at the reference ages of six, twelve and twenty-four months.Methods: A birth cohort of 738 children were visited at specific intervals by trained nurses to collect information on anthropometric measurements, feeding practices and intercurrent illnesses. Socioeconomic and demographic information included water and sanitation facilities, availability of electricity, type of house construction material and average monthly income. Information about the mother\u27s reproductive history was also obtained.Results: At two years the proportion of stunting and wasting was 41.8% and 10.6% respectively. Intrauterine growth retarded children had a higher risk of stunting and wasting at all reference ages as compared to children who were appropriate for gestational age. In the logistic regression models, intrauterine growth retardation was the only significant risk factor that remained in all models at each reference age.CONCLUSION: The consistent association of IUGR for stunting and wasting adds to the growing body of evidence that by improving maternal health we will ultimately break the vicious cycle of malnourishment and improve the health and well-being of future generations. We suggest interventions to improve the nutritional status of Pakistani urban children living in squatter settlements focused on mothers and children

Privacy-friendly User Location Tracking with Smart Devices: The BeaT Prototype

Customers use smart devices to share their location data with service providers to co-create personalized, location-based services. However, mobile apps that record movement profiles not only yield value-added service but also bear potential for abuse. Especially apps utilizing GPS-based tracking pose a privacy risk because they could–once enabled–unnoticeably record data in private situations. In response, we developed a privacy-friendly solution, called BeaT, that tracks user locations without GPS and gives users full control over the time and scope of data collection. We leverage Bluetooth Beacon technology to confine the perimeter in which tracking takes place. This paper presents the requirements, algorithmic design, prototypical implementation, real-world use case, and evaluation setting for BeaT

A rapid community based health evaluation of pregnant women in low socioeconomic settlements of Karachi

A rapid nutritional and health evaluation of a random sample of 163 pregnant women was conducted in low socioeconomic settlements of Karachi, with the objective of determining the morbidity and nutritional status of pregnant women. These data are expected to be used in an ongoing community-based antenatal care programme. Twenty-nine percent of women reported fever, 14 percent diarrhoea and 33 percent respiratory infections in the previous week. Mean weight was 54.8 (+/- 10.6) kg, mean height was 151.6 (+/- 6.0) cm and mean midarm circumference was 25.6 (+/- 3.2) cm. The mean uterine height at gestational ages 8 months and over was 32.1 (+/- 10.2) cm which is below the 10th percentile. These results suggest a chronic, mildly malnourished population with a high rate of infections. Specifically, we suggest that maternal height and uterine height be used to assess women at high risk for low birthweight

Causes of reproductive age mortality in low socioeconomic settlements of Karachi

The Maternal and Infant Mortality Survey (MIMS) was conducted in eight squatter settlements of Karachi. The female mortality rate was 151.0 per 100,000 women aged 10-49 years and the maternal mortality ratio was 281 per 100,000 livebirths. The leading causes of deaths among women were complications of pregnancy (28.1%), infectious diseases (24.8%), cardiovascular diseases (20.7%), neoplasia (10.7%) and trauma (10.7%). Hemorrhage (47.1% of all maternal deaths), tuberculosis (40.0% of all infectious disease deaths), oropharyngeal cancer (23.1% of all neoplastic deaths), and burns (61.5% of all trauma deaths) were among the major causes identified. Maternal deaths were associated with young age and nulliparity (p-value \u3c 0.01), and a higher proportion occurred in the hospital or on the way to the hospital as compared to non-maternal deaths

Risk factors for intrauterine growth retardation: results of a community-based study from Karachi

There is a serious lack of community-based information on low birthweight or intrauterine growth retardation from Pakistan. A community based prospective study was conducted in four squatter settlements of Karachi, to examine the prevalence and risk factors for adverse pregnancy outcome. This paper reports on the prevalence and risk factors for intrauterine growth retardation (age) among 755 singleton births. The incidence of intrauterine growth retardation was 25.4% (192 intrauterine growth retarded and 563 appropriate for gestational age). Major socioeconomic risk factors identified were low maternal education (RR = 1.4, 95% CI = 1.0,2.1) and poor housing material (RR = 1.7, 95% CI = 1.0,3.0). Among the significant biologic factors, primiparity (RR = 1.9, 95% CI = 1.4,2.7), consanguinity (RR = 1.4, 95% CI = 1.4,2.7), consanguinity (RR = 1.4, 95% CI = 1.1,1.8), short birth to CI = 1.1,2.1), short stature (RR = 2.2, 95% CI = 1.6,3.0), low maternal weight (RR = 2.0, 95% CI = 1.6,2.5) and non-vegetarian diet (RR = 2.3, 95% CI = 1.3,4.2) were especially important. Investigations to assess the adverse mortality and morbidity effects of intrauterine growth retardation are ongoing

Quality of private and public ambulatory health care in low and middle income countries: systematic review of comparative studies

Paul Garner and colleagues conducted a systematic review of 80 studies to compare the quality of private versus public ambulatory health care in low- and middle-income countries

Challenges in QCD matter physics --The scientific programme of the Compressed Baryonic Matter experiment at FAIR

Substantial experimental and theoretical efforts worldwide are devoted to explore the phase diagram of strongly interacting matter. At LHC and top RHIC energies, QCD matter is studied at very high temperatures and nearly vanishing net-baryon densities. There is evidence that a Quark-Gluon-Plasma (QGP) was created at experiments at RHIC and LHC. The transition from the QGP back to the hadron gas is found to be a smooth cross over. For larger net-baryon densities and lower temperatures, it is expected that the QCD phase diagram exhibits a rich structure, such as a first-order phase transition between hadronic and partonic matter which terminates in a critical point, or exotic phases like quarkyonic matter. The discovery of these landmarks would be a breakthrough in our understanding of the strong interaction and is therefore in the focus of various high-energy heavy-ion research programs. The Compressed Baryonic Matter (CBM) experiment at FAIR will play a unique role in the exploration of the QCD phase diagram in the region of high net-baryon densities, because it is designed to run at unprecedented interaction rates. High-rate operation is the key prerequisite for high-precision measurements of multi-differential observables and of rare diagnostic probes which are sensitive to the dense phase of the nuclear fireball. The goal of the CBM experiment at SIS100 (sNN= 2.7--4.9 GeV) is to discover fundamental properties of QCD matter: the phase structure at large baryon-chemical potentials (μB> 500 MeV), effects of chiral symmetry, and the equation of state at high density as it is expected to occur in the core of neutron stars. In this article, we review the motivation for and the physics programme of CBM, including activities before the start of data taking in 2024, in the context of the worldwide efforts to explore high-density QCD matter