Ashotgun marriage community health workers and government health services

In 1988 the Western Cape Regional Services Council (RSC) initiated a community health worker (CHW) project in Khayelitsha in order to extend its preventive services to people in the community and promote 'community upliftment'. An evaluation of this project was undertaken in 1991 and 1992 in order to examine the potential of this local health authority-run CHW project to be an appropriate primary health care model. Qualitative research methods were used to explore the nature of the work done by the CHWs, whether they were accepted in their communities, and whether the project functioned as part of an integrated health service infrastructure in Khayelitsha. The CHWs were found to provide the basis for a potentially effective, community-responsive service. However, several structural problems mitigated against this service. Relations between the CHWs and nurses in all the formal public health services in the area were superficial and fraught with problems. There were significant differences and conflicting policies between the RSC's CHW project and other neighbouring nongovernment CHW projects, and these posed various threats to both the RSC and the non-government projects. One of the most serious of these differences was that the RSC project had no structures or plans for community involvement in the running of the project. Before a CHW project is initiated, several critical issues need to be carefully considered and discussed with all the relevant stakeholders. Furthermore, CHWs need to be flexible, and accountable to the communities in which they work. Before employing CHWs, formal public health authorities need to consider carefully whether they are able to meet these criteria

Modelling and analysis of a radio frequency dielectric heating for defatted soy flour

Abstract: In this paper a Radio Frequency (RF) method for drying defeated soy flower is developed using a class E amplifier. The raw and uncooked soy flour contains a few undesirable inherent soybean enzymes. Minimizing the content and effect of these enzymes usually is done through “drying/heating” methods. The method used in this study is “RF dielectric heating”. Modelling, simulation and implementation results complete the paper

Progressive familial heart block type I : clinical and pathological observations

CITATION: 1991: .Van der Merwe, P.-L. et al. 1991. Progressive familial heart block type I : clinical and pathological observations. South African Medical Journal, 80:34-38.The original publication is available at http://www.samj.org.zaProgressive familial heart block type I (PFHB-I) is an autosomal inherited disease. It was previously postulated that the disease is limited to the cardiac conduction tissue. The presentation of a patient with dilated cardiomyopathy focused on the possibility that this might be part of PFHB-I. This observation led to routine echocardiographic examination of patients with complete heart block, who belonged to PFHB-I families, and another 5 cases with signs of dilated cardiomyopathy were identified. This is the first time, to our knowledge, that the histological picture of PFHB-I has been described. From these case reports it is clear that in the presence of a dilated cardiomyopathy the prognosis in PFHB-I tends to be poor.Publisher’s versio

Code Generation for Higher Inductive Types

Higher inductive types are inductive types that include nontrivial higher-dimensional structure, represented as identifications that are not reflexivity. While work proceeds on type theories with a computational interpretation of univalence and higher inductive types, it is convenient to encode these structures in more traditional type theories with mature implementations. However, these encodings involve a great deal of error-prone additional syntax. We present a library that uses Agda's metaprogramming facilities to automate this process, allowing higher inductive types to be specified with minimal additional syntax.Comment: 16 pages, Accepted for presentation in WFLP 201

Endovascular treatment of intractable epistaxis - results of a 4-year local audit

Objective. Transcatheter embolisation is an accepted and effective treatment for intractable epistaxis. We analysed our success and complication rates and compared these with results from other published series.Design. Retrospective review.Setting. Unitas Interventional Unit, Centurion.Methods. Case record review (57 procedures) and telephonic interviews (36 traceable respondents).Outcome measures. A numerical audit of the success and complication rates for embolisation procedures performed during the 4-year period between July 1999 and June 2003.Results. A total of 57 endovascular embolisation procedures were performed for intractable epistaxis in 51 patients during this period. Eight patients (15.7%) developed a re-bleed between 1 and 33 days after embolisation of whom 5 were re- embolised, giving a primary short-term success rate of 86.3% and secondary assisted success rate of 94.1%. Thirty-five of 36 respondents {97.2%) reported no further epistaxis during the long-term follow-up period of 1-47months. The mortality rate was 0%, the major morbidity rate was 2% (l stroke) and the minor morbidity rate was 25%.Conclusion. Our Success and complication rates are acceptable and compare favourably with those reported in other large series

Mapping trends and framing issues in higher music education: Changing minds/Changing practices

This article presents five case studies from within Music in Higher Education programmes which collectively explore key questions concerning how we look at the challenges, trends and the need for change to react to the recent Higher Education climate. The case studies explore: (i) an inclusive curriculum and undergraduate student partner project; (ii) employability skills and postgraduate courses; (ii) digital creativities; (iv) music career creativities and gender; (v) an integrated student experience

Discovery of 6.035GHz Hydroxyl Maser Flares in IRAS18566+0408

We report the discovery of 6.035GHz hydroxyl (OH) maser flares toward the massive star forming region IRAS18566+0408 (G37.55+0.20), which is the only region known to show periodic formaldehyde (4.8 GHz H2CO) and methanol (6.7 GHz CH3OH) maser flares. The observations were conducted between October 2008 and January 2010 with the 305m Arecibo Telescope in Puerto Rico. We detected two flare events, one in March 2009, and one in September to November 2009. The OH maser flares are not simultaneous with the H2CO flares, but may be correlated with CH3OH flares from a component at corresponding velocities. A possible correlated variability of OH and CH3OH masers in IRAS18566+0408 is consistent with a common excitation mechanism (IR pumping) as predicted by theory.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

On the Identification of High Mass Star Forming Regions using IRAS: Contamination by Low-Mass Protostars

We present the results of a survey of a small sample (14) of low-mass protostars (L_IR < 10^3 Lsun) for 6.7 GHz methanol maser emission performed using the ATNF Parkes radio telescope. No new masers were discovered. We find that the lower luminosity limit for maser emission is near 10^3 Lsun, by comparison of the sources in our sample with previously detected methanol maser sources. We examine the IRAS properties of our sample and compare them with sources previously observed for methanol maser emission, almost all of which satisfy the Wood & Churchwell criterion for selecting candidate UCHII regions. We find that about half of our sample satisfy this criterion, and in addition almost all of this subgroup have integrated fluxes between 25 and 60 microns that are similar to sources with detectable methanol maser emission. By identifying a number of low-mass protostars in this work and from the literature that satisfy the Wood & Churchwell criterion for candidate UCHII regions, we show conclusively for the first time that the fainter flux end of their sample is contaminated by lower-mass non-ionizing sources, confirming the suggestion by van der Walt and Ramesh & Sridharan.Comment: 8 pages with 2 figures. Accepted by Ap