Pediatric cancer care in Africa: SIOP Global Mapping Program report on economic and population indicators

Introduction Inalignment with the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Initiative for Childhood Cancer (GICC), the International Society of Pediatric Oncology initiated a program to map global pediatric oncology services. As survival rates in Africa are low and data are scant, this continent was mapped first to identify areas with greatest need. Methods Beginning November 2018, an electronic survey was sent to all known stakeholders, followed by email communications and internet searches to verify data. Availability of pediatric oncologists, chemotherapy, surgical expertise, and radiotherapy was correlated with geographic region, World Bank income status, Universal Health Coverage, population < 15 and < 24 years, percentage of gross domestic product spent on healthcare, and Human Development Index (HDI). Results Responses were received from 48/54 African countries. All three treatment modalities were reportedly available in 9/48 countries, whereas seven countries reported no pediatric oncology services. Negative correlations were detected between provision of all three services and geographic region (P = 0.01), younger median population age (P = 0.002), low-income country status (P = 0.045), and lower HDI (P < 0.001). Conclusion This study provides a comprehensive overview of pediatric oncology care in Africa, emphasizing marked disparities between countries: some have highly specialized services, whereas others have no services. A long-term strategy to eliminate disparities in African pediatric cancer care should be aligned with the WHO GICC aims and facilitated by SIOP Africa. Meeting abstracts SIOP maps pediatric oncology services in Africa to address inequalities in childhood cancer services. Geel J, Ranasinghe N, Davidson A, Challinor J, Howard S, Wollaert S, Myezo K, Renner L, Hessissen L, Bouffet E. 51st Annual Congress of the International Society of Paediatric Oncology (SIOP), Lyon, France, October 2019. Pediatric Blood and Cancer Vol 66 S219-S219. Pediatric cancer care in Africa: SIOP Global Mapping Program report on economic and population indicators

Coastal flooding by tropical cyclones and sea-level rise

The future impacts of climate change on landfalling tropical cyclones are unclear. Regardless of this uncertainty, flooding by tropical cyclones will increase as a result of accelerated sea-level rise. Under similar rates of rapid sea-level rise during the early Holocene epoch most low-lying sedimentary coastlines were generally much less resilient to storm impacts. Society must learn to live with a rapidly evolving shoreline that is increasingly prone to flooding from tropical cyclones. These impacts can be mitigated partly with adaptive strategies, which include careful stewardship of sediments and reductions in human-induced land subsidence

Hardware interface for haptic feedback in laparoscopic surgery simulators

Minimally Invasive Surgeries (MIS) such as laparoscopic procedures are increasingly preferred over conventional surgeries due to many different advantages. Laparoscopic surgical procedures are very complex compared to open surgeries and require high level of experience and expertise. Hybrid surgery simulators available for training using physical phantoms are expensive and not readily available in majority of health care facilities around the world. Therefore, computer simulation or Virtual Reality (VR) is a better way to obtain skills for MIS. A VR simulator incorporated with haptic feedback provides a comprehensive training closer to real world experience. In this paper, we present a novel approach to incorporate force feedback to VR laparoscopic surgery training. The proposed interface incorporates force feedback in all three axes to provide three levels of force feedback. Computational models of abdomen organs were generated using the cryosection data of Visible Human Project of the National Library of Medicine, USA. The organ models were developed with three basic force categories: soft, mild and hard. A hardware interface is developed to provide the force feedback for the interaction of virtual tools with the said organ models while generating the tool navigation information for the VR simulator

Evaluation of hazardous airborne carbonyls in five urban roadside dwellings : a comprehensive indoor air assessment in Sri Lanka

202308 bcchAccepted ManuscriptOthersClean Air Initiative Asia Center; Caja de Ahorros de la Inmaculada de AragónPublishe

IL-4: an important cytokine in determining the fate of T cells

The pleiotropic effect of cytokines has been well documented, but the effects triggered by unique cytokines in different T cell types are still under investigation. The most relevant findings on the influence of interleukin-4 (IL-4) on T cell activation, differentiation, proliferation, and survival of different T cell types are discussed in this review. The main aim of our study was to correlate the observed effect with the corresponding molecular mechanism induced on IL-4/IL-4R interaction, in an effort to understand how the same extracellular stimuli can trigger a wide spectrum of signaling pathways leading to different responses in each T cell type