Situational Review Of Child Sexual Abuse In A Low Income Country

Child sexual abuse (CSA) is an issue of global concern. CSA has been estimated to, affect 2-62% of women and 3-16% of men as victims. The variation in percentage is dependent on the definition of CSA being used. WHO has estimated that globally nearly 40 million children upto14 years of age, suffer from various types of abuses and require medical attention and social care. This review covers the available literature on child sexual abuse (CSA) in Pakistan since 1999, using search engines Google,Pubmed, Medline and PsychINFO. Data shows thatIncidence of CSA has been increasing, with mostly acquaintances beingthe perpetrators. Based on the results recommendations are given to improve the health and well being of survivors of CSA in Pakistan. The issue requires attention by society, law enforcement, public health community, health practitioners and leadership. Poverty and illiteracy are the primary determinants of CS

The Politicized Indian Woman: India’s Agendas on Women’s Education

As development and humanitarian agencies frame the education and empowerment of women and girls as the cornerstone of sustainable development; the rise of a new generation of transnational feminist scholarship and advocacy, is consolidating attention and policy commitments toward critical perspectives on education and democracy. In India this movement is crystalizing through youth activism, social medias, rapid urbanization, and multinational economic partnerships: prompting raucous debates about gender roles, communal positions, and the function of political leadership and global identity. Multinational collaboration and global market shifts continually influence national policy structures as they are practiced today; while public intellectuals and academics dissect how the frameworks of key strategic policy documents respond to the dialogue and resource interface of international aid, and center to state transfer mechanisms. This economic context – an eddy of inter- and intra-relationships formed under the long shadow of colonialism – requires the exploration of educational governance through a critical examination of policy leadership, language, ideas, and knowledge formation, to ensure that unequal gender relations do not alienate and propagate violence, silence, and discrimination. This study concentrates on national policy articulations of women’s educational opportunity and the historical development of women as political objects and subjects. Tracing the meta-narratives of masculinity and femininity that fed into educational initiatives, this historical narrative charts the exercise of post-colonial nationhood and the institution of education aiding this cause. The questions guiding this endeavor do not take for granted terms or analytic categories, but seek the orchestrations of political commitments and their consequent creation of the Indian Woman as a political agent. I study primary policy articulations like the Report on the Commission on Women’s Education (1959), Report on the Differentiation of Curricula for Boys and Girls (1964), the Education Commission Report (1966), Towards Equality: Report of the Committee on the Status of Women in India (1974), the National Policy on Education (1968; 1986), and Right to Education (2005); as well as other key primary accounts by policy actors. Since my study takes a gendered perspective on the performance of political leadership, the historical narrative is organized based on the Government of India’s incumbent Prime Minister and Union Council of Ministers. Through rich narrative, the catachrestic tensions that distance policy constructions from sociopolitical realities are critically analyzed through feminist theory’s gendered analysis and public policy frameworks. Since the goal was to identify the socio-political construction of women’s positions in educational policy, the historical narrative of Indian policymaking is followed by a deconstructive analysis of the structures, symbols, and mechanisms for systemic gendered heteronormativity. The test of legitimacy for any given practice should be embedded in the capacity to respond to the needs for whom the practice exists. Unless policy design mimics the diversity within its target populations and is punctured by the inclusion of more data points, policy making for education will remain an exercise in abstraction, a solipsism bound by socio-political singularities

The Economic Advantage of Preventative Health Care in Prisons

The Economic Advantage of Preventative Health Care in Prison

A Robust Intuitionistic Fuzzy Constraint Score based Potential Feature Subset Selection for Chronic Diseases Detection

This work proposes a novel feature selection algorithm for high-dimensional features in real-time datasets for prediction or classification. Conventional methods assume dataset values as crisp formats, but in real datasets, instances are represented in linguistic formats, requiring the use of uncertainty theories. The Intuitionistic Fuzzy Similarity based constraint score is proposed, where each feature is denoted as an independent variable and the class variable as a dependent variable. The features are represented in triplet form, with grade of belongingness, non-belongingness, and hesitancy index to maximize relevancy and reduce redundancy. Pairwise similarity matching is computed using Intuitionistic fuzzy similarity distance measure for supervised learning and intuitionistic fuzzy K-NN for semi-supervised learning. Potential feature subsets are selected and validated using deep learning algorithms. The results show that the proposed Intuitionistic fuzzy Constraint score feature selection algorithm produces optimal results compared to other state-of-the-art methods in chronic disease prediction

Designing the first ever health insurance for the poor in Pakistan - A pilot project

Several developing countries lack a medical insurance system with universal coverage, so access to medical services is not easy, principally for people living in poverty. One of the biggest issues for designing healthcare systems in developing countries is how to include those not formally employed. Therefore, it is important to implement targeted interventions so that the most in need are not left out. The World Health Report 2000 distinguishes four functions for the health system to fulfill: (i) the provision of health services; (ii) the creation of the necessary investment and training resources for health; (iii) health financing; and (iv) government stewardship. The need for Health insurance in the developing world is again relevant because there is no compulsory health insurance in Pakistan. This special communication is a discussion of how we in Pakistan have proposed a design for the first ever indigenous health insurance system for the poor. What various other developing countries have done and the policies adopted to provide health coverage to their people have also been reviewed

A randomised double blind trial to compare the efficacy and tolerability of itopride hydrochloride versus domperidone in patients with non-ulcer dyspepsia: bloating predominant type

Background: Non-ulcer dyspepsia is a treatment challenge due to multiple pathophysiological mechanisms and different symptoms. Several prokinetic drugs are tried without any unanimity regarding safety and efficacy. The objective of the study was to compare the efficacy and safety of Itopride and Domperidone in bloating predominant non ulcer dyspepsia patients.Methods: Patients were randomly assigned to two groups (20 each) to receive either 50mg of Itopride three times daily or 10mg of Domperidone three times daily. Only patients with predominant bloating were considered and their baseline symptoms recorded. The symptoms were graded on a 4-point scale - the Global Symptom Score scale and the patients were reassessed at the end of 2 and 4 weeks. The relief of symptoms was also assessed at the end of 2 and 4 weeks on a 5-point scale - The Patients’ Subjective Global Assessment of Relief scale.Results: Both the drugs significantly produced symptomatic relief. Though Domperidone is marginally beneficial compared to Itopride after 4 weeks treatment in terms of improvement in symptom scores, the Subjective Global Assessment of relief did not show any significant improvement between the two drugs.Conclusions: Treatment with Itopride was safe, well tolerated, resulted in good symptomatic relief, and was comparable in efficacy to Domperidone in relieving the symptoms of NUD. Hence it can be considered a good alternative for the treatment of non-ulcer dyspepsia

In vitro study on antioxidant activity of methanolic leaf extract of Cassia fistula Linn.

Background: The use of medicinal plants for maintaining good health is getting attention worldwide. Antioxidants play an important role to protect damage caused by oxidative stress. In the present study methanolic extracts of Cassia fistula  was determined using DPPH for its antioxidant activity. Phytochemical investigation confirmed the presence of bioactive ingredients in the extract.Methods: The antioxidant activity of methanolic extract of Cassia fistula was evaluated using DPPH free radical assay. DPPH (1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyine) free radical analysis is one of the accurate and frequently employed method for evaluating antioxidant activity.Results: The methanolic extracts showed increase in radical scavenging activity as concentration increases. The IC50 values were calculated for the methanolic extract. Ascorbic acid was used as control. Cassia fistula exhibited IC 50 of 79.42µg/ml.Conclusions: Scientific evidence suggests that antioxidants reduce the risk for chronic diseases including cancer and heart disease and infectious diseases. Further evaluation of pharmacological activities of Cassia fistula may prove useful in treatment of cancer and heart diseases

Invitro antibacterial activity of Cassia fistula Linn methanolic leaf extracts

Background: Cassia fistula Linn is a plant which is widely grown in India and is used for medicinal purposes. The study was carried out with an objective to demonstrate the antimicrobial activity of leaves of Cassia fistula Linn. The aim of the study is to assess antibacterial and antifungal activity of methanolic leaf extract of Cassia fistula Linn against selected clinical isolates.Methods: The antimicrobial activity of methanolic extract of Cassia fistula was evaluated using agar well diffusion method and to zone of inhibition of extract was determined. Clinical isolates of Staphyloccocus aureus, MRSA, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, E. coli and Proteus were screened.Results: The methanolic extracts exhibited antibacterial activity against Staphylococcus aureus. The extract was not active against E. coli, Proteus, MRSA, Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The extract also failed to demonstrate antifungal activity against Candida albicans and Aspergillus niger.Conclusions: The global emergence of multidrug resistant bacterial strains is increasing, limiting the effectiveness of current drugs and treatment failure of infections. A novel approach to the prevention of antibiotic resistance of pathogenic species is the use of new compounds that are not based on existing synthetic antimicrobial agents