Household catastrophic healthcare expenditure and impoverishment due to rotavirus gastroenteritis requiring hospitalization in Malaysia.

BACKGROUND: While healthcare costs for rotavirus gastroenteritis requiring hospitalization may be burdensome on households in Malaysia, exploration on the distribution and catastrophic impact of these expenses on households are lacking. OBJECTIVES: We assessed the economic burden, levels and distribution of catastrophic healthcare expenditure, the poverty impact on households and inequities related to healthcare payments for acute gastroenteritis requiring hospitalization in Malaysia. METHODS: A two-year prospective, hospital-based study was conducted from 2008 to 2010 in an urban (Kuala Lumpur) and rural (Kuala Terengganu) setting in Malaysia. All children under the age of 5 years admitted for acute gastroenteritis were included. Patients were screened for rotavirus and information on healthcare expenditure was obtained. RESULTS: Of the 658 stool samples collected at both centers, 248 (38%) were positive for rotavirus. Direct and indirect costs incurred were significantly higher in Kuala Lumpur compared with Kuala Terengganu (US$222 Vs. US$45; p<0.001). The mean direct and indirect costs for rotavirus gastroenteritis consisted 20% of monthly household income in Kuala Lumpur, as compared with only 5% in Kuala Terengganu. Direct medical costs paid out-of-pocket caused 141 (33%) households in Kuala Lumpur to experience catastrophic expenditure and 11 (3%) households to incur poverty. However in Kuala Terengganu, only one household (0.5%) experienced catastrophic healthcare expenditure and none were impoverished. The lowest income quintile in Kuala Lumpur was more likely to experience catastrophic payments compared to the highest quintile (87% vs 8%). The concentration index for out-of-pocket healthcare payments was closer to zero at Kuala Lumpur (0.03) than at Kuala Terengganu (0.24). CONCLUSIONS: While urban households were wealthier, healthcare expenditure due to gastroenteritis had more catastrophic and poverty impact on the urban poor. Universal rotavirus vaccination would reduce both disease burden and health inequities in Malaysia

Making subaltern shikaris: histories of the hunted in colonial central India

Academic histories of hunting or shikar in India have almost entirely focused on the sports hunting of British colonists and Indian royalty. This article attempts to balance this elite bias by focusing on the meaning of shikar in the construction of the Gond ‘tribal’ identity in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century colonial central India. Coining the term ‘subaltern shikaris’ to refer to the class of poor, rural hunters, typically ignored in this historiography, the article explores how the British managed to use hunting as a means of state penetration into central India’s forest interior, where they came to regard their Gond forest-dwelling subjects as essentially and eternally primitive hunting tribes. Subaltern shikaris were employed by elite sportsmen and were also paid to hunt in the colonial regime’s vermin eradication programme, which targeted tigers, wolves, bears and other species identified by the state as ‘dangerous beasts’. When offered economic incentives, forest dwellers usually willingly participated in new modes of hunting, even as impact on wildlife rapidly accelerated and became unsustainable. Yet as non-indigenous approaches to nature became normative, there was sometimes also resistance from Gond communities. As overkill accelerated, this led to exclusion of local peoples from natural resources, to their increasing incorporation into dominant political and economic systems, and to the eventual collapse of hunting as a livelihood. All of this raises the question: To what extent were subaltern subjects, like wildlife, ‘the hunted’ in colonial India

Study of electrical conduction mechanism of succinic acid doped glycine pellet

The electrical conductivity of succinic acid doped glycine pellet has been measured by studying the I-V characteristics at various temperatures in the range 313K-353K. The results are presented in the form of I-V characteristics and analysis has been made by interpretation of Poole- Frenkel, Fowler- Nordheim, Schottky, log(J) versus T plots, Richardson and Arrehenius plots. It is observed that the conduction mechanism in the present case is a cooperative process, with Poole-Frankel type in low field range and Fowler-Nordheim mechanism in high field range.Author Affiliation: D K Burghate, S H Deshmukh, V P Akhare, Laxmi Joshi and V S Deogaonkar 1.P. G. Department of Physics, Shri Shivaji Science College, Amravati-444603, Maharashtra, India E-mail [email protected] P T Deshmukh Dr. Panjabrao Deshmukh Polytechnic, Amravati-444 603, Maharashtra, IndiaP. G. Department of Physics, Shri Shivaji Science College, Amravati-444603, Maharashtra, India P T Deshmukh Dr. Panjabrao Deshmukh Polytechnic, Amravati-444 603, Maharashtra, Indi