4 research outputs found
Culture in sustainable infrastructure
The high failure rate of infrastructures around the world is alarming, most especially when such failures constrain economic growth and development. In most cases, existing institutions or strategies designed to maintain and reproduce effective infrastructures in areas that lack them have been mostly unsuccessful, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. A carefully conducted survey covering the six geopolitical zones in Nigeria confirms the low-level stability, supply, quality and maintenance of infrastructure and its services. Using the severity index in matrix order model developed in this study, major factors responsible for unsustainable infrastructure delivery and failures are identified. The paper further argues that these major factors are interrelated rather than being peculiar to Nigeria or sub-Saharan Africa. Suffice it to say that the effects of these problems are widespread and of global impact. However, what cuts across all the major factors responsible for unsustainable infrastructure delivery and high failure rates are gross institutional lapses. In view of the fact that sustainable infrastructure is essential for sustainable development, this paper emphasises the uniqueness of the recipients' cultures and values alongside the integration of indigenous communities and infrastructure users: from conceptualisation to delivery within the framework for institutional building and sustainable infrastructure provision
The prothrombin time/international normalized ratio (PT/INR) Line: derivation of local INR with commercial thromboplastins and coagulometers--two independent studies.
BACKGROUND: The WHO scheme for prothrombin time (PT) standardization has been
limited in application, because of its difficulties in implementation,
particularly the need for mandatory manual PT testing and for local provision of
thromboplastin international reference preparations (IRP).
METHODS: The value of a new simpler procedure to derive international normalized
ratio (INR), the PT/INR Line, based on only five European Concerted Action on
Anticoagulation (ECAA) calibrant plasmas certified by experienced centres has
been assessed in two independent exercises using a range of commercial
thromboplastins and coagulometers. INRs were compared with manual certified
values with thromboplastin IRP from expert centres and in the second study also
with INRs from local ISI calibrations.
RESULTS: In the first study with the PT/INR Line, 8.7% deviation from certified
INRs was reduced to 1.1% with human reagents, and from 7.0% to 2.6% with rabbit
reagents. In the second study, deviation was reduced from 11.2% to 0.4% with
human reagents by both local ISI calibration and the PT/INR Line. With rabbit
reagents, 10.4% deviation was reduced to 1.1% with both procedures; 4.9%
deviation was reduced to 0.5% with bovine/combined reagents with local ISI
calibrations and to 2.9% with the PT/INR Line. Mean INR dispersion was reduced
with all thromboplastins and automated systems using the PT/INR Line.
CONCLUSIONS: The procedure using the PT/INR Line provides reliable INR derivation
without the need for WHO ISI calibration across the range of locally used
commercial thromboplastins and automated PT systems included in two independent
international studies