Blood culture collection technique and pneumococcal surveillance in Malawi during the four year period 2003–2006: an observational study

BACKGROUND: Blood culture surveillance will be used for assessing the public health effectiveness of pneumococcal conjugate vaccines in Africa. Between 2003 and 2006 we assessed blood culture outcome and performance in adult patients in the central public hospital in Blantyre, Malawi, before and after the introduction of a dedicated nurse led blood culture team. METHODS: A prospective observational study. RESULTS: Following the introduction of a specialised blood culture team in 2005, the proportion of contaminated cultures decreased (19.6% in 2003 to 5.0% in 2006), blood volume cultured increased and pneumococcal recovery increased significantly from 2.8% of all blood cultures to 6.1%. With each extra 1 ml of blood cultured the odds of recovering a pneumococcus increased by 18%. CONCLUSION: Standardisation and assessment of blood culture performance (blood volume and contamination rate) should be incorporated into pneumococcal disease surveillance activities where routine blood culture practice is constrained by limited resources

The charcoal trap: Miombo forests and the energy needs of people

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>This study evaluates the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas fluxes to the atmosphere resulting from charcoal production in Zambia. It combines new biomass and flux data from a study, that was conducted in a <it>miombo </it>woodland within the Kataba Forest Reserve in the Western Province of Zambia, with data from other studies.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The measurements at Kataba compared protected area (3 plots) with a highly disturbed plot outside the forest reserve and showed considerably reduced biomass after logging for charcoal production. The average aboveground biomass content of the reserve (Plots 2-4) was around 150 t ha^-1, while the disturbed plot only contained 24 t ha^-1. Soil carbon was not reduced significantly in the disturbed plot. Two years of eddy covariance measurements resulted in net ecosystem exchange values of -17 ± 31 g C m^-2y^-1, in the first and 90 ± 16 g C m^-2in the second year. Thus, on the basis of these two years of measurement, there is no evidence that the <it>miombo </it>woodland at Kataba represents a present-day carbon sink. At the country level, it is likely that deforestation for charcoal production currently leads to a per capita emission rate of 2 - 3 t CO₂y^-1. This is due to poor forest regeneration, although the resilience of <it>miombo </it>woodlands is high. Better post-harvest management could change this situation.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We argue that protection of <it>miombo </it>woodlands has to account for the energy demands of the population. The production at national scale that we estimated converts into 10,000 - 15,000 GWh y^-1of energy in the charcoal. The term "Charcoal Trap" we introduce, describes the fact that this energy supply has to be substituted when woodlands are protected. One possible solution, a shift in energy supply from charcoal to electricity, would reduce the pressure of forests but requires high investments into grid and power generation. Since Zambia currently cannot generate this money by itself, the country will remain locked in the charcoal trap such as many other of its African neighbours. The question arises whether and how money and technology transfer to increase regenerative electrical power generation should become part of a post-Kyoto process. Furthermore, better inventory data are urgently required to improve knowledge about the current state of the woodland usage and recovery. Net greenhouse gas emissions could be reduced substantially by improving the post-harvest management, charcoal production technology and/or providing alternative energy supply.</p

Situation actuelle et recherche de scénarios d'un développement d'aide aux communautés francophones hors Québec : actes du colloque national sur l'enseignement postsecondaire en langue française à l'extérieur du Québec /

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Sorsby's fundus dystrophy in the British Isles: Demonstration of a striking founder effect by microsatellite-generated haplotypes

Sorsby's fundus dystrophy (SFD) has been mapped to a genetic interval of 8 cM between loci D22S275 and D22S278. A total of 15 families, unrelated on the basis of genealogy and expressing the SFD phenotype were identified from a large data base of genetic eye disease families originating From diverse parts of the British Isles. The identification of the same Ser181Cys mutation cosegregating with disease in each family led us to consider the hypothesis of a founder effect being present. In all families studied, the same relatively infrequent allele [occurring in just 11% of the control group) was associated with disease at marker locus D22S280. A highly significant disease-associated haplotype, spanning across 3 cM of the SFD locus, was conserved in 11 of the 15 families (68% of all affected chromosomes]; a further extended haplotype spanning up to 7 cM, was identified in 5 families (27% of SFD-associated chromosomes) and possibly represents the ancestral haplotype. This haplotype analysis has refined the TIMP3 gene localization to a 1- to 3-cM interval between marker loci D22S273 and D22S281 and provides strong evidence for a single mutational event being responsible for the majority of SFD identified in the British Isles