Evaluation of community-based surveillance for Guinea worm, South Sudan, 2006

Background: Guinea worm disease (dracunculiasis) is an ancient parasitic disease and is set to be the next disease eradicated from the world and the first to be overcome without a vaccine or treatment. South Sudan and Ghana account for more than 95% of global dracunculiasis.Methods and Materials: We used the Students field guide for surveillance evaluation to assess surveillance objectives, usefulness of the system, operation procedures, costs, and attributes of the South Sudan community based surveillance system.Results: The guinea worm surveillance system has met its objectives; it is active, simple, flexible, sensitive, stable, and moderately acceptable. The data source is slightly biased; the system costs $2,006,610 U.S. dollars a year to operate.Conclusion: Community-based surveillance for guinea worm is a good example of a surveillance system on which an integrated disease surveillance system can be based in countries with poor surveillance capacity. This makes its potential value to public health practice very high.Keywords: Guinea worm, endemic-villages, community-based-surveillance, village volunteers, Integrated Disease surveillance, South Suda

The Intentional Use of Service Recovery Strategies to Influence Consumer Emotion, Cognition and Behaviour

Service recovery strategies have been identified as a critical factor in the success of. service organizations. This study develops a conceptual frame work to investigate how specific service recovery strategies influence the emotional, cognitive and negative behavioural responses of . consumers., as well as how emotion and cognition influence negative behavior. Understanding the impact of specific service recovery strategies will allow service providers' to more deliberately and intentionally engage in strategies that result in positive organizational outcomes. This study was conducted using a 2 x 2 between-subjects quasi-experimental design. The results suggest that service recovery has a significant impact on emotion, cognition and negative behavior. Similarly, satisfaction, negative emotion and positive emotion all influence negative behavior but distributive justice has no effect

Ullage-Rod

Patent for an ullage rod. Illustrations included

Building Internet Trust: Signaling through Trustmarks

Consumers\u27 concerns about privacy, security, and control of personal information highlight the importance of trust in building marketing relationships in the computer-mediated environment. Internet firms have begun posting third-party certifications, labelled “trustmarks”, as signals of reliability, credibility, and general trustworthiness. This paper integrates the literatures on signalling theory and trust, and makes extensions to the internet. It identifies and categorises sets of internet signals, highlighting the critical role of trustmarks in the computer-mediated environment. It develops a series of propositions related to the effectiveness of trustmarks, including variables such as source and culture. Lastly, it provides direction for future research