Local Food Systems in Cambodia, Myanmar, and the Philippines: Perspective from the Local Communities

Food systems must provide adequate, healthy, and sustainable diets to the growing and changing population whilst responding to shocks and stressors related to climate variability, urbanization, globalization, conflicts, and economic change. This study examined the national food systems of Cambodia, Myanmar, and the Philippines and the local food systems of complementary Climate-Smart Villages: Chhouk, Htee Pu, and Himbubulo Weste. Among several food system drivers, climate change is the external stressor perceived strongly in agricultural communities and as shown by the data on national climate variability. Income and gender inequality, political instability, and socioeconomic circumstances undermine multi-level interventions to deliver necessary food system outcomes. While national policies to achieve an equitable and resilient food system are critical, local-level initiatives such as implementing climate-smart agriculture strategies, recognizing landlessness issues, and addressing fragmented market infrastructure are vital for the local food systems to thrive and deliver on health, economic and environmental goals. This could also guide in establishing standards, collective goals, and policy formulation directions for robust national food systems

COVID-19 impact on local agri-food system in Cambodia, Myanmar, and the Philippines: Findings from a rapid assessment

The COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent enforcement of mobility restrictions have created bottlenecks in the agri-food system. When the food supply chain is disrupted, economic loss occurs, putting rural households, already in poverty, into severe food insecurity. A survey was conducted to assess the impacts of restrictions brought by COVID-19 on local food systems operations of Climate-Smart Villages (CSVs) in Cambodia, Myanmar, and the Philippines. The rural and traditional food systems of agriculture-based villages continued to operate with minimal adjustments during the course of COVID-19 restrictions. Our findings showed high mean household dietary diversity scores in Chhouk CSV (6.4), Htee Pu CSV (8.2), and Himbubulo Weste CSV (7.2) despite significant perceived changes in the availability and prices of certain food groups. Complementary and diverse food production and access to informal food outlets were essential parts of the local food systems and played critical roles in supplying food commodities to the population during the pandemic

Cost-Benefit Analysis of Native Pigs as a Climate-Smart Agriculture Option in the Philippines

The Climate-Smart Village (CSV) approach is one of the initiatives that was developed to address the impact of climate change on marginalized rural households, and one of the climate-smart agriculture (CSA) options implemented in the Philippines was raising native pigs. A cost-benefit analysis (CBA) was conducted to assess the financial benefits of raising native pigs by determining the net income generated by the village households. A total of 52 households from Guinyangan, Quezon and Ivisan, Capiz were interviewed as survey participants while, village and municipal officials acted as key informants. Our findings showed that majority of the households surveyed generated positive net income in raising native pigs. However, 2020 profits decreased possibly due to the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study also revealed the reliance of producers in commercial feeds instead of maximizing the available forage; keeping of livestock as inventories resulting to additional costs; and the lack of record keeping practices and absence of a price monitoring system causing the producers to be dependent on the prices offered by the buyers. Thus, providing education and training support on monitoring and assessing costs of raising pigs, and marketing assistance would be valuable to the households

The school doctor and suspected child abuse : towards good practice recommendations in the child’s interest

peer reviewedLa maltraitance infantile représente, dans les pays à haut niveau de revenus, un «problème de santé publique majeur», 5 à 10 % des enfants étant concernés, toutes formes de maltraitances confondues. Les professionnels de santé contribuent à une petite proportion seulement des signalements. En Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, les bilans de santé scolaire périodiques couvrant près de 100 % des enfants scolarisés, le médecin scolaire est bien placé pour le repérage d’enfants exposés à une négligence de soins et/ou à de mauvais traitements. Se basant sur des recommandations de bonne pratique publiées, cet article propose des pistes d’action permettant de contribuer à un meilleur repérage et à une prise en charge adaptée de la maltraitance infantile dans le cadre de la médecine scolaire.Child maltreatment, including all forms of maltreatment, remains a major public health problem in highincome countries. Healthcare professionals only contribute to a small proportion of reports. In French-speaking Belgium, almost 100 % of school-aged children are regularly submitted to periodical school health visits. The school health doctor is well placed to recognize neglected or abused children. Based on international good practice recommendations, this paper proposes means for the detection and management of child abuse in the context of school medicine

The Future of Regenerative Medicine: Cell Therapy Using Pluripotent Stem Cells and Acellular Therapies Based on Extracellular Vesicles

The rapid progress in the field of stem cell research has laid strong foundations for their use in regenerative medicine applications of injured or diseased tissues. Growing evidences indicate that some observed therapeutic outcomes of stem cell-based therapy are due to paracrine effects rather than long-term engraftment and survival of transplanted cells. Given their ability to cross biological barriers and mediate intercellular information transfer of bioactive molecules, extracellular vesicles are being explored as potential cell-free therapeutic agents. In this review, we first discuss the state of the art of regenerative medicine and its current limitations and challenges, with particular attention on pluripotent stem cell-derived products to repair organs like the eye, heart, skeletal muscle and skin. We then focus on emerging beneficial roles of extracellular vesicles to alleviate these pathological conditions and address hurdles and operational issues of this acellular strategy. Finally, we discuss future directions and examine how careful integration of different approaches presented in this review could help to potentiate therapeutic results in preclinical models and their good manufacturing practice (GMP) implementation for future clinical trials