Developing National Landmine Clearance Capacity in Ukraine

The mine action sector in Ukraine has seen significant growth and progression since the outbreak of hostilities along the eastern border in 2014. Continued development of government capacity is required to respond to the scale of landmine and explosive remnants of war (ERW) contamination. The HALO Trust (HALO) has supported the Ukrainian authorities to address mine contamination since 2015, through survey and large-scale mine clearance, as well as by assisting state entities such as the State Emergency Services (SES) to strengthen humanitarian mine clearance practices and procedures. HALO’s ongoing capacity-development efforts aim to enhance existing resources in order to establish a multifaceted, sustainable, and independent mine action sector capable of dealing with current and future challenges. This article explores the obstacles and opportunities in national capacity building in Ukraine, lessons from HALO’s ongoing demining training, and key priorities for Ukraine to deal with operational challenges of mine clearance

Saving Lives in Eastern Ukraine: Alternative EORE Approaches

Armed conflict has been ongoing in the east of Ukraine since 2014 and continues to have a fundamentally devastating impact on children, women, and men. With continuing hostilities and the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbating the dire humanitarian situation in the region, 3.4 million people are projected to be in need of humanitarian assistance in 2021. The elderly, persons with disabilities, female-headed households, and children are among the most vulnerable. Additionally, the large-scale population displacement from government and nongovernment controlled areas (GCA and NGCA respectively) of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, separated by the 427-km-long contact line, remains one of the highest concerns

Linking Mine Action and Development: The Case of Komyshuvakha

The protracted crisis in Ukraine raises many developmental, humanitarian, and mine action challenges, and while these are interconnected, the response to them continues to be dichotomous. In part perpetuated by donor preferences and reinforced by technical specialty, humanitarian mine action (HMA) organizations often run parallel to the rest, leaving much of the potential for integration untapped. At the onset of the conflict in 2014, Danish Refugee Council-Danish Demining Group (DRC-DDG) returned to Ukraine and became the first international nongovernmental organization (INGO) to initiate a response to the acute need for HMA in its eastern regions. Throughout, DRC-DDG has been leveraging its diverse expertise in humanitarian, development, and HMA programming. This article presents a case study from a project funded by the European Union on DRC-DDG’s latest iteration of linking HMA and development

Explosive Ordnance Risk Education in Ukraine During the COVID-19 Pandemic

All modern conflicts bring dangers of explosive remnants of war (ERW), including unexploded ordnance (UXO), abandoned explosive ordnance (AXO), improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and/or landmines, and the conflict in eastern Ukraine is no exception. While the conflict is still ongoing, it is currently in a state of relative stalemate, limited to shelling, sniper fire, and small skirmishes along the 280-mile line of contact.¹ However, civilians are still directly at risk as a result of military actions but also indirectly as a result of ERW and landmines, which are scattered across the region due to the frequent shifting of the line of contact that occurred during the early stages of the conflict. Kicked-out munitions from unplanned explosions at ammunition stores also pose a threat to civilians across the country

Spatial Effects of the Social Marketing of Insecticide-Treated Nets on Malaria Morbidity.

Randomized controlled trials have shown that insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) have an impact on both malaria morbidity and mortality. Uniformly high coverage of ITNs characterized these trials and this resulted in some protection of nearby non-users of ITNs. We have now assessed the coverage, distribution pattern and resultant spatial effects in one village in Tanzania where ITNs were distributed in a social marketing programme. The prevalence of parasitaemia, mild anaemia (Hb <11 g/dl) and moderate/severe anaemia (Hb <8 g/dl) in children under five was assessed cross-sectionally. Data on ownership of ITNs were collected and inhabitants' houses were mapped. One year after the start of the social marketing programme, 52% of the children were using a net which had been treated at least once. The ITNs were rather homogeneously distributed throughout the village at an average density of about 118 ITNs per thousand population. There was no evidence of a pattern in the distribution of parasitaemia and anaemia cases, but children living in areas of moderately high ITN coverage were about half as likely to have moderate/severe anaemia (OR 0.5, 95% CI: 0.2, 0.9) and had lower prevalence of splenomegaly, irrespective of their net use. No protective effects of coverage were found for prevalence of mild anaemia nor for parasitaemia. The use of untreated nets had neither coverage nor short distance effects. More efforts should be made to ensure high coverage in ITNs programmes to achieve maximum benefit

A survey of statistics in three UK general practice journal

Background Many medical specialities have reviewed the statistical content of their journals. To our knowledge this has not been done in general practice. Given the main role of a general practitioner as a diagnostician we thought it would be of interest to see whether the statistical methods reported reflect the diagnostic process. Methods Hand search of three UK journals of general practice namely the British Medical Journal (general practice section), British Journal of General Practice and Family Practice over a one-year period (1 January to 31 December 2000). Results A wide variety of statistical techniques were used. The most common methods included t-tests and Chi-squared tests. There were few articles reporting likelihood ratios and other useful diagnostic methods. There was evidence that the journals with the more thorough statistical review process reported a more complex and wider variety of statistical techniques. Conclusions The BMJ had a wider range and greater diversity of statistical methods than the other two journals. However, in all three journals there was a dearth of papers reflecting the diagnostic process. Across all three journals there were relatively few papers describing randomised controlled trials thus recognising the difficulty of implementing this design in general practice

Moral insanity and psychological disorder: the hybrid roots of psychiatry

This paper traces the significance of the diagnosis of ‘moral insanity’ (and the related diagnoses of ‘monomania’ and ‘manie sans délire’) to the development of psychiatry as a profession in the nineteenth century. The pioneers of psychiatric thought were motivated to explore such diagnoses because they promised public recognition in the high status surroundings of the criminal court. Some success was achieved in presenting a form of expertise that centred on the ability of the experts to detect quite subtle, ‘psychological’ forms of dangerous madness within the minds of offenders in France and more extensively in England. Significant backlash in the press against these new ideas pushed the profession away from such psychological exploration and back towards its medical roots that located criminal insanity simply within the organic constitution of its sufferers

Women write the rights of woman: The sexual politics of the personal pronoun in the 1790s

This article investigates patterns of personal pronoun usage in four texts written by women about women's rights during the 1790s: Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Mary Hays' An Appeal to the Men of Great Britain (1798), Mary Robinson's Letter to the Women of England (1799) and Mary Anne Radcliffe's The Female Advocate (1799). I begin by showing that at the time these texts were written there was a widespread assumption that both writers and readers of political pamphlets were, by default, male. As such, I argue, writing to women as a woman was distinctly problematic, not least because these default assumptions meant that even apparently gender-neutral pronouns such as I, we and you were in fact covertly gendered. I use the textual analysis programme WordSmith to identify the personal pronouns in my four texts, and discuss my results both quantitatively and qualitatively. I find that while one of my texts does little to disturb gender expectations through its deployment of personal pronouns, the other three all use personal pronouns that disrupt eighteenth century expectations about default male authorship and readership. Copyright © 2007 SAGE Publications

Diagnostic and prognostic utility of an inexpensive rapid on site malaria diagnostic test (ParaHIT f) among ethnic tribal population in areas of high, low and no transmission in central India

BACKGROUND: Malaria presents a diagnostic challenge in most tropical countries. Rapid detection of the malaria parasite and early treatment of infection still remain the most important goals of disease management. Therefore, performance characteristics of the new indigenous ParaHIT f test (Span diagnostic Ltd, Surat, India) was determined among ethnic tribal population in four districts of different transmission potential in central India to assess whether this rapid diagnostic test (RDT) could be widely applied as a diagnostic tool to control malaria. Beyond diagnosis, the logical utilization of RDTs is to monitor treatment outcome. METHODS: A finger prick blood sample was collected from each clinically suspected case of malaria to prepare blood smear and for testing with the RDT after taking informed consent. The blood smears were read by an experienced technician blinded to the RDT results and clinical status of the subjects. The figures for specificity, sensitivity, accuracy and predictive values were calculated using microscopy as gold standard. RESULTS: The prevalence of malaria infection estimated by RDT in parallel with microscopy provide evidence of the type of high, low or no transmission in the study area. Analysis revealed (pooled data of all four epidemiological settings) that overall sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of the RDT were >90% in areas of different endemicity. While, RDT is useful to confirm the diagnosis of new symptomatic cases of suspected P. falciparum infection, the persistence of parasite antigen leading to false positives even after clearance of asexual parasitaemia has limited its utility as a prognostic tool. CONCLUSION: The study showed that the ParaHIT f test was easy to use, reliable and cheap. Thus this RDT is an appropriate test for the use in the field by paramedical staff when laboratory facilities are not available and thus likely to contribute greatly to an effective control of malaria in resource poor countries