Chagas disease is currently endemic and also predicted to be at increased transmission risk under future climate change scenarios. Similarly, an expansion of areas in the United States at increased risk for Chagas disease transmission is also expected over the next several decades under climate chan...ge scenarios. Of particular interest is the predicted northern shift of triatomine species to central regions of the United States with historically unsuitable climates for T. cruzi vectors. The weight of evidence regarding the influences climate change may pose on T. cruzi vector species distributions demonstrates the sensitivity of Chagas disease transmission to future climate variability. In order to advance forecasts for the impact climate change may have on Chagas disease transmission in the Americas, it is imperative to
further develop, utilize, and perhaps combine predictive species distribution modeling approaches that integrate accurate, long term data on climate variables, vector species distributions, Chagas disease incidence, as well as other socio-ecological variables.
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Doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers and first-aiders are coming under attack while trying to save lives. They are threatened, arrested or beaten, their hospitals looted or bombed. Some are unable to work because medical supplies can’t get through; some are forced to flee for their lives. Some are e...ven killed.
Attacks on health-care personnel, facilities and vehicles during armed conflict are wrong. They are prohibited under international humanitarian law (also known as the law of war), because they deprive sick and wounded people of much-needed care.
Preventing violence against health care is a matter of life and death.
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Taenia saginata is a zoonotic tapeworm that is of economic importance in countries where cattle are kept. The parasite is transmitted from human tapeworm carriers (taeniosis) to bovines (cysticercosis) by excretion of eggs or proglottids containing eggs into the environment via the stool. Bovines ca...n then ingest the eggs through contaminated feed or water. After ingestion, the eggs hatch and release oncospheres in the small intestines, where the oncospheres penetrate the intestinal wall to reach the blood circulation. This distributes them throughout the body, but primarily to muscle tissue, where they develop into cysticerci. For humans to become infected with T. saginata, raw or undercooked bovine meat or offal containing infective cysts must be consumed. Bovine cysticercosis has been associated with various environmental factors related to water sources, such as animals having access to surface water, flooding of pastures and proximity to wastewater sources.
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With sustained economic growth in many parts of the developing world, an increasing number of countries are transitioning away from the most subsidized development finance as they exceed income and other qualification requirements. Cross-country evidence suggests that Development Assistance Committe...e (DAC) donors view the crossing over of the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) eligibility threshold to signal that a country needs less aid, with subsequent reductions in both IDA and other donors’ concessional funding. Within the health sector, it is particularly important to understand the implications of these status changes for children under five years of age since improving early childhood health is critical to fostering health and social and economic development. Therefore, we examine the implications of the IDA transition by measuring the extent t which World Bank commitments—including both IDA and IBRD—are directed to infant and child health needs in Nigeria. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) models were used in a difference-indifferences (DID) strategy to compare World Bank IBRD/IDA lending before and after the crossover to regions with varying initial levels of under-five and infant need.
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Effective Ebola risk communication requires respect and transparency and remains as vital
as ever. An assessment of changing communication needs and preferences in Beni, North Kivu.
In the second year of the current Ebola outbreak response in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), people at ris...k still don’t have clear answers to their questions about the disease in a language they understand. Many local health communicators are themselves confused about the disease prevention and treatment measures they promote. The language, content, and form of communication about Ebola affect how far people understand, trust and act upon it.
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Results from the baseline study indicated that schoolgirls in the southwestern refugee settlement context lacked access to the menstrual hygiene knowledge and products required for them to manage their menstruation in a healthy and dignified manner. Although UNHCR mandates that all women and girls o...f reproductive age are to receive distributions of disposable sanitary pads, soap and underwear, 71% of the girls reported not having enough menstrual products, 65% reported not having enough soap and 59% reported not having enough underwear. 44% percent also reported that they didn’t have enough information about menstrual hygiene.
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It is often observed that educated women have lower birth rates than do the less educated, inviting a causal interpretation. However, educated women also differ from those who have never attended school in a
variety of other ways: the two factors are multiply related. This article analyzes the rela...tionship between schooling and fertility in contemporary Cameroon as both a statistical and a social phenomenon, using data from the 1998 Cameroon DHS alongside ethnographic field data collected by
the author. T
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The Community Action Research on Disability (CARD) programme in Uganda embraced and modified the EDR approach, recognising the need for including people with disability in the research process from concept to outcome, and nurturing participation and collaboration between all the stakeholders in achi...eving action-based research. T
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From policy to practice: how the TB-HIV response is working
“The HIV community must place much more focus on TB co-infection than
it has done to date. TB takes the lives of over 1000 people living with HIV
every day, a number which is absolutely unacceptable. This report highlights that
TB d...oesn’t have to be a death sentence for people living with HIV, but we need
more action. By joining forces, the HIV and TB community can finally give this
deadly issue the attention it deserves.”
– Mike Podmore, Director STOPAIDS
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Joint data assessment by the Central Statistical Organization and UNDP
The report shows that the National Statistical System of Myanmar has some work ahead of it in terms of preparing for the monitoring of the SDG indicators. Only 44 of the SDG indicators are currently produced and readily avai...lable at the national level. However, the good news is that many (97) of the missing indicators can be computed from existing data sources – often with little effort - and don’t require any additional data collection. The report concludes that Myanmar is in a decent position to start monitoring the SDGs, and should start as soon as possible in putting its existing data to full use for the SDGs
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When anxiety holds you back from doing the things you want or need to do, it can
also affect your health. Some people become overwhelmed by fear and want to avoid situations that might make them frightened or anxious. It can be hard to
break this cycle, but there are lots of ways to do it. You can... learn to feel less fearful
and to cope with anxiety so that it doesn’t stop you from living.
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Joint data assessment by the Central Statistical Organization and UNDP
The report shows that the National Statistical System of Myanmar has some work ahead of it in terms of preparing for the monitoring of the SDG indicators. Only 44 of the SDG indicators are currently produced and readily avai...lable at the national level. However, the good news is that many (97) of the missing indicators can be computed from existing data sources – often with little effort - and don’t require any additional data collection. The report concludes that Myanmar is in a decent position to start monitoring the SDGs, and should start as soon as possible in putting its existing data to full use for the SDGs.
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Asthma is a chronic (long-term) lung condition that affects your airways or bronchial tubes. It can cause your airways to narrow and their lining to swell and to produce extra mucus, which makes it more difficult to breathe. The narrowing of the airways causes you to feel short of breath, wheeze, or... cough. Asthma is there even when you don’t have any symptoms.
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Human strongyloidiasis is a chronic parasitic disease caused by infection with Strongyloides stercoralis, a soil-transmitted helminth that is estimated to infect 300–600 million people worldwide. This neglected tropical disease (NTD) is endemic globally, predominately in the South-East Asia, Afric...an and Western Pacific regions, and in South and Central America. Strongyloidiasis has a wide range of clinical presentations, including subclinical disease, symptomatic disease (often with diarrhoea, abdominal pain and urticaria) and a rare but deadly complication of hyperinfection with disseminated disease. The feared complication of disseminated strongyloidiasis can occur in the setting of immunocompromising conditions (e.g. human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 1 infection and malignancies) or immunosuppressive medications (e.g. steroids) and has an estimated case-fatality rate exceeding 60%. The standard treatment for chronic S. stercoralis infection is oral medication with ivermectin.
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Chagas disease is caused by Trypanosoma cruzi. Infection is transmitted to humans when bitten by Triatominae (reduviid, kissing, or assassin) bugs in South and Central America, Mexico, and very rarely in the US. Less commonly, T. cruzi is transmitted via ingestion of sugar cane juice or food contami...nated with infected Triatominae bugs or their feces, transplacentally from an infected mother to her fetus, or via blood transfusion or an organ transplant from an infected donor.
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Zika virus can pass from a pregnant woman to her fetus. Zika is linked
to microcephaly, a severe birth defect that signals a problem with brain
development. If you are pregnant and living in an area with Zika, you should talk to
your doctor or other healthcare provider about Zika, even if you ...don’t feel sick.
Use this checklist to make sure you and your doctor or other healthcare provider
talk about these important questions.
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Brochure on PTSD: If you are like many South Africans and have been the victim of violent crime, abuse, accidents, loss, or illness, you may be suffering from a very real illness – Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD. Many victims of trauma in South Africa don’t get help because they feel emb...arrassed, they think that acting brave and tough is the ‘manly’ thing to do, they have seen so much violence that they feel ‘numb’, or they refuse to believe what happened.
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AVADAR is a mobile sms-based software application designed to improve the quality and sensitivity of Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP) surveillance by health workers and key informants within hospital facilities and local communities.
The idea is simple: Health workers visit remote villages to check if... local inhabitants have any symptoms of a range of life-threatening infectious diseases, including polio and measles. Then, with the mobile app, they quickly and easily alert WHO.
The AFP video component was developed by World Health Organization (WHO) and eHA, and the software design component was handled by Novel-T. To date, eHA has translated the app into 17 languages.
Informant Selection & Capacity Building
The selection of informants (including health workers) was led by the WHO and each country’s Ministry of Health team. Once selected, screening and training was jointly conducted by WHO, the Ministries of Health, and eHealth Africa team.
In several countries, “special informants” with limited literacy participate in the project via a simplified version of the app that only requires a “yes” or “no” response to having seen a child with AFP symptoms
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Carlos Chagas discovered American trypanosomiasis, also named Chagas disease (CD) in his honor, just over a century ago. He described the clinical aspects of the disease, characterized by its etiological agent (Trypanosoma cruzi) and identified its insect vector. Initially, CD occurred only in Latin... America and was considered a silent and poorly visible disease. More recently, CD became a neglected worldwide disease with a high morbimortality rate and substantial social impact, emerging as a significant public health threat. In this context, it is crucial to better understand better the epidemiological scenarios of CD and its transmission dynamics, involving people infected and at risk of infection, diversity of the parasite, vector species, and T. cruzi reservoirs. Although efforts have been made by endemic and non-endemic countries to control, treat, and interrupt disease transmission, the cure or complete eradication of CD are still topics of great concern and require global attention. Considering the current scenario of CD, also affecting non-endemic places such as Canada, USA, Europe, Australia, and Japan, in this review we aim to describe the spread of CD cases worldwide since its discovery until it has become a global public health concern.
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For the molecular diagnosis of Chagas disease by real-time PCR (polymerase chain reaction), optimization of diagnostic accuracy is desirable. The detection limit of real-time PCR assays for the diagnosis of Trypanosoma cruzi in human serum is affected by various influences including the choice of th...e nucleic acid extraction assay. In this study, three nucleic acid extraction assays were compared regarding their influence on the sensitivity of a T. cruzi-specific real-time PCR with 62 reference sera containing T. cruzi target DNA (deoxyribonucleotide acid). More than 95% of the positive sera were correctly identified after all three nucleic acid extraction strategies with a detection rate ranging from 96.8% (60/62) for the worst assay to 100% (62/62) for the best one. A matched pairs analysis for the comparison of the cycle threshold (Ct) values obtained with the 59 reference samples with positive real-time PCR results after all three nucleic acid extraction schemes indicated differences in a range of about 3 Ct steps. Summarized, all three compared nucleic acid extraction schemes were basically suitable for T. cruzi-specific PCR from serum with some minor differences. However, in the case of low quantities of circulating parasite DNA in the serum of a patient with Chagas disease, even minor effects can make a difference in the individual diagnosis.
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