Disaster health education framework for short and intermediate training in Saudi Arabia: A scoping review

BackgroundSaudi Arabia has made extensive efforts to manage disasters using unique national approaches; however, challenges and obstacles concerning disaster health handling persist. The nation has a reactive strategy to disaster management with a need for increased involvement of health professionals in disaster management and improvement of healthcare facilities emergency preparedness including competency-based education training.ObjectiveA comprehensive and consistent approach of disaster education programs for short and intermediate training of health professionals involved in disaster responses in Saudi Arabia is still not evident. Therefore, it is vital to explore and map the current state of the disaster education framework in Saudi Arabia.MethodsThe Joanna Briggs Institute approach for scoping reviews was used to assess research articles and preprints between January 2000 and September 2021 from Saudi Digital Library; PubMed, CINAHL, and Google Scholar. Five experts identified key aspects of the disaster education approach and eligibility criteria to facilitate identification of relevant articles.ResultsOnly five articles met the specified criteria and described two short and three intermediate courses on disaster health management in Saudi Arabia. All courses involved competency-specific training aimed at basic or foundational level and involved a range of activities and learning types. None had refresher courses within 12 months.ConclusionThe review highlights the obvious scarcity of short and intermediate term evidence-based disaster health programs in Saudi Arabia. Adoption of the education framework proposed by the authors based on international frameworks could improve the quality and consistency of the disaster education curriculum in Saudi Arabia

Evaluation of early treatment response and predicting the need for colectomy in active ulcerative colitis with 99mTc-HMPAO white blood cell scintigraphy

The rate of treatment failure in acute exacerbation of ulcerative colitis (UC) still reaches 20%-30%. Early identification of nonresponders to therapy is important, since intensified or other medical treatment or, ultimately, colectomy should be considered to reduce morbidity. Because 99mTc-hexamethylpropyleneamine oxime (99mTc-HMPAO) white blood cell (WBC) scintigraphy is accurate in determination of the severity and extent of UC lesions, the aim of this study was to assess whether WBC scintigraphy can predict early treatment failure in patients with an acute attack of UC. METHODS: We included 20 consecutive patients (7 women, 13 men; mean age +/- SEM, 36.8 +/- 10.9 y) with a history of UC who were hospitalized with severe exacerbations. All patients underwent endoscopy and scintigraphy within 24 h of admission and 1 wk after beginning treatment. WBCs were labeled with 200 MBq 99mTc-HMPAO. SPECT of the abdomen was performed 60 min after WBC reinjection. Maximum tracer uptake in the different colon segments was defined and expressed as a ratio of lumbar bone marrow uptake. The scintigraphic activity score (SAS) was expressed as the sum of segmental colon uptake ratios. Scintigraphic evolution was considered favorable when the SAS decreased by > or =50% and SPECT uptake ratios after therapy were 10% in the SAS, 2 patients had an unchanged SAS, and 2 patients had a decreased SAS of >10% but had a residual mean segmental WBC uptake ratio of >1.5. There was a statistically significant difference between the responders and nonresponders (P < 0.01). CONCLUSION: Repeated 99mTc-HMPAO scintigraphy seems to be able to predict therapy resistance in UC within 1 wk after beginning treatmen

The organisation of the bilingual lexicon: a PET study

In the literature on bilingualism, cognate relatedness has been shown to interact with proficiency in the foreign language such that cognate items are a measure of higher mastery than non-cognate ones. Systematic variation of these items in an activation study thus allows inter-subject control of different proficiency levels in the same bilingual subject. A positron emission tomography (PET) experiment was conducted with 11 Belgian subjects who were native speakers of Flemish/Dutch and had good proficiency in French. The experimental task consisted of internally naming pictures of objects in French and Dutch. For each language, there were two conditions. In one condition, the picture names were cognate across both languages, i.e. the translation equivalents shared phonological/orthographic similarity. In a second condition, picture names were non-cognate items without phonological/orthographic similarity in the French-Dutch translation equivalents. The items in both subsets were matched for visual complexity, object familiarity and familiarity of the French word. The results of our PET experiment on bilingual production showed hardly any difference between L2 cognates, L1 cognates and L1 non-cognates. The few significant differences of activation between L1 and L2 were almost exclusively due to increased activation for French non-cognate items in left inferior frontal and temporo-parietal areas. Thus, non-cognate foreign language naming recruited additional brain regions compared to native language non-cognate and native as well as foreign language cognate items. In our study, these areas of additional activation in L2 noncognates were restricted to left hemispheric inferior frontal and temporal structures in or at the periphery of the known language areas. In conclusion, the bilingual production study presented here supports an important role of proficiency in activation differences between L1 and L2. The results suggest a relation between activation in left BA 20, BA 44 and BA 47 and effortful lexical retrieval. Our results are not in line with the hypothesis of entirely distinct neural substrates for the different languages of a bilingual individual. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.status: publishe

Primary Care as Primary Target:A Review of Terrorist Attacks Against Primary Care Providers and Their Offices

BACKGROUND: Violence against primary care providers (PCPs) has increased during the current pandemic. While some of these violent acts are not defined as terrorist events, they are intentional events with an aim to disrupt, kill, or injure. Despite their pivotal role in health care, little is known about the risk for PCPs as targets of terrorism.METHODS: Data collection was performed using a retrospective database search through the Global Terrorism Database (GTD). The GTD was searched using the internal database search functions for all terrorist attacks against PCPs and their offices from January 1, 1970 - December 31, 2019. Years 2020 and 2021 were not yet available at the time of the study. Primary attack and weapon type, location (country, world region), and number of deaths and injuries were collated. Results were exported into an Excel spreadsheet (Microsoft Corp.; Redmond, Washington USA) for analysis.RESULTS: There were 29 terrorist attacks against PCPs and their offices from 1970-2019. The majority of attacks occurred during or after 2010. There were 58 fatalities, 52 injured, and 13 hostages. Most documented attacks took place in Pakistan, the United States, and Sri Lanka. Bombings concerned 55% of cases and 21% were hostage-takings.CONCLUSION: Although less common than attacks on other health care related targets, terrorist attacks against PCPs have occurred. The majority of attacks occurred during the last decade. Future studies are warranted to further assess the risk of terrorist attacks against PCPs: before, during, and beyond the current pandemic.</p