Oral health in the African region: progress and perspectives of the regional strategy

Objectives: According to The World Oral Health Report 2003, oral diseases remain a major public health problem worldwide. However, oral health is seen as a very low priority in the African Region, where extreme poverty means that the limited resources available to the health sector are directed towards life-threatening conditions such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. The mission of the Oral Health Programme at the Regional Office of WHO for Africa is to assist Member States to achieve those goals by means of a Regional Strategy. In fact in September 1998, the WHO Regional Committee for Africa adopted a ten year (1999-2008) Oral Health Plan for the African Region (AFR/RC48/9) with the aim of fundamentally improving community oral health. Its cornerstone is provision of the technical and managerial resources to efficiently and effectively deliver affordable intervention that matches the oral health needs of the community. Data Sources: This review presents major achievements made since the WHO Regional Strategy was launched in 1998 and priority actions which should be taken to further implement the Regional Strategy. Conclusions: WHO/AFRO recommends more commitment at country level to improve oral health and to reinforce partnerships in order to mobilize and coordinate the human, financial, material and institutional resources needed to implement, monitor and evaluate the Regional Strategy.Key words: Oral health, Africa, World health, Strategy, Epidemiolog

Why is child malnutrition lower in urban than rural areas?

"While ample evidence documents that urban children generally have better nutritional status than their rural counterparts, recent research suggests that urban malnutrition is on the rise. The environment, choices, and opportunities of urbanites differ greatly from those of rural dwellers' from employment conditions to social and family networks to access to health care and other services. Given these differences, understanding the relative importance of the various determinants of child malnutrition in urban and rural areas and especially whether they differ is key to designing context-relevant, effective program and policy responses for stemming malnutrition. This study uses Demographic and Health Survey data from 36 developing countries to address the question of whether the socioeconomic determinants of child nutritional status differ across urban and rural areas. The purpose is to answer the broader question of why child malnutrition rates are lower in urban areas. The socioeconomic determinants examined are women's education, women's status, access to safe water and sanitation, and household economic status. The analysis finds little evidence of differences in the nature of the socioeconomic determinants or in the strength of their associations with child nutritional status across urban and rural areas. As expected, however, it documents marked differences in the levels of these determinants in favor of urban areas. Large gaps in favor of urban areas are also found in the levels of key proximate determinants of child nutritional status, especially maternal prenatal and birthing care, quality of complementary feeding, and immunization of children. The conclusion is that better nutritional status of urban children is probably due to the cumulative effect of a series of more favorable socioeconomic conditions, which, in turn, seems to lead to better caring practices for children and their mothers. Given that the nature of the determinants of child nutritional status is largely the same across urban and rural areas, the same program and policy framework can be used to stem malnutrition in both. Efforts to alleviate the most critical socioeconomic constraints specific to the different environments should continue to be prioritized." Authors' Abstractmalnutrition ,Demographic and Health Survey ,

Why is child malnutrition lower in urban than rural areas?

"While ample evidence documents that urban children generally have better nutritional status than their rural counterparts, recent research suggests that urban malnutrition is on the rise. The environment, choices, and opportunities of urbanites differ greatly from those of rural dwellers' from employment conditions to social and family networks to access to health care and other services. Given these differences, understanding the relative importance of the various determinants of child malnutrition in urban and rural areas and especially whether they differ is key to designing context-relevant, effective program and policy responses for stemming malnutrition. This study uses Demographic and Health Survey data from 36 developing countries to address the question of whether the socioeconomic determinants of child nutritional status differ across urban and rural areas. The purpose is to answer the broader question of why child malnutrition rates are lower in urban areas. The socioeconomic determinants examined are women's education, women's status, access to safe water and sanitation, and household economic status. The analysis finds little evidence of differences in the nature of the socioeconomic determinants or in the strength of their associations with child nutritional status across urban and rural areas. As expected, however, it documents marked differences in the levels of these determinants in favor of urban areas. Large gaps in favor of urban areas are also found in the levels of key proximate determinants of child nutritional status, especially maternal prenatal and birthing care, quality of complementary feeding, and immunization of children. The conclusion is that better nutritional status of urban children is probably due to the cumulative effect of a series of more favorable socioeconomic conditions, which, in turn, seems to lead to better caring practices for children and their mothers. Given that the nature of the determinants of child nutritional status is largely the same across urban and rural areas, the same program and policy framework can be used to stem malnutrition in both. Efforts to alleviate the most critical socioeconomic constraints specific to the different environments should continue to be prioritized." Authors' Abstractmalnutrition ,Demographic and Health Survey ,

The importance of women's status for child nutrition in developing countries:

"Malnutrition affects one out of every three preschool-age children living in developing countries.This disturbing, yet preventable, state of affairs causes untold suffering and, given its wide scale, presents a major obstacle to the development process.Volumes have been written about the causes of child malnutrition and the means of reducing it. But the role of women's social status in determining their children's nutritional health has gone largely unnoticed until recently. This study explores the relationship between women's status and children's nutrition in three developing regions: South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)." from textChild welfare, Children Developing countries Nutrition, Women Social conditions, Gender, Health and nutrition,

External morphology of the hepatic Spiegel lobe

The objective of this study is to determine morphological variations of the Spiegel lobe in the indigenous Senegalese subject. This study  was carried out in the necropsy room of the pathological anatomy department of the Aristide Le Dantec University Hospital Centre in Dakar. It involved 39 livers of indigenous adult Senegalese subjects whose cause of death was neither liver disease nor liver trauma. On each liver collected, rinsed with water, we observed and photographed the external characteristics of Spiegel's lobe including its seat, its shape, the prominence of the caudate process, the presence or not of the papillary process, the presence of antero-posterior or transverse furrow. Spiegel's lobe was present on all livers studied. It sat exclusively at the visceral face in its retro-hilaire portion. The rectangular and ovoid shapes predateed 33.33% and 30.77% of cases, respectively. The papillary process was noticed on 15 lobes of Spiegel out of the 39 studied, or 38.46% of the cases. The caudate process was present in 32 cases or 82% of the cases. We noted the presence of furrows in the Spiegel lobe in 18 subjects or 46% of the cases. On one liver, we noted the simultaneous presence of two furrows on Spiegel's lobe. Of the 39 livers studied, we noticed two cases of Spiegel accessory lobe, representing 5% of the cases. These morphological variations are very useful in the diagnosis and surgery of Spiegel lobe tumors. &nbsp

Non-local corrections to dynamical mean-field theory from the two-particle self-consistent method

Theoretical methods that are accurate for both short-distance observables and long-wavelength collective modes are still being developed for the Hubbard model. Here, we benchmark against published diagrammatic quantum Monte Carlo results an approach that combines local observables from dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) with the two-particle self-consistent theory (TPSC). This method (TPSC+DMFT) is relevant for weak to intermediate interaction, satisfies the local Pauli principle and allows us to compute a spin susceptibility that satisfies the Mermin-Wagner theorem. The DMFT double occupancy determines the spin and charge vertices through local spin and charge sum rules. The TPSC self-energy is also improved by replacing its local part with the local DMFT self-energy. With this method, we find improvements for both spin and charge fluctuations and for the self-energy. We also find that the accuracy check developed for TPSC is a good predictor of deviations from benchmarks. TPSC+DMFT can be used in regimes where quantum Monte Carlo is inaccessible. In addition, this method paves the way to multi-band generalizations of TPSC that could be used in advanced electronic structure codes that include DMFT.Comment: 15 pages, 19 figures. Changes from v1: added reference