OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the usability of a large compositional interface terminology based on SNOMED CT and the terminology application for registration of the reasons for intensive care admission in a Patient Data Management System. DESIGN: Observational study with user-based usability evaluations before and 3 months after the system was implemented ...

An expanding body of literature explores the role of African church groups in facilitating or hindering the support of people living with AIDS and challenging or contributing to HIV/AIDS-related stigma. Treating church groups as social spaces in which HIV/AIDS-related stigma may potentially be challenged, we systematically review this literature, identifying ...

Stijn Van de Velde and colleagues describe the African First Aid Materials project, which developed evidence-based guidelines on administering first aid in the African context as well as training materials to support the implementation of the guidelines.

As long as there is no cure for AIDS, the only effective means of containing its spread is prevention, primarily through public education. Cuba's AIDS Prevention Group is a community-based organization whose main purpose is to support the National HIV/AIDS Program's prevention and education efforts. The Group's Memorias Project uses ...

Uptake of and adherence to fall prevention interventions is often poor and we know little about how older people's perceptions of and beliefs about fall prevention interventions affect uptake. This study aimed to explore older people's perceptions of the facilitators and barriers to participation in fall prevention interventions. We undertook ...

Researchers explored the barriers to AIDS care for rural women living with AIDS, and they investigated alternative delivery models to increase the women's adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART). Community-based participatory research focus groups were conducted by the researchers with a convenience sample of 39 women living with AIDS from a ...

Community participation by people with lifelong disability is not a new concept. Yet, within the field of disability there is ongoing debate about the barriers to participation and how these can be solved. At a practical level, participation remains an issue that is often misunderstood by many who seek to ...

South Africa's HIV/AIDS epidemic poses a major public health threat with multi-faceted harmful impacts and 'socially complex' outcomes. While some outcomes relate to structural issues, others stem from society's attitudinal milieu. Due to negative attitudes toward People Living with HIV/AIDS, stigmatisation mars their own experience and often extends to those ...

A number of recent studies have examined the effect of installing physical barriers or otherwise restricting access to public sites that are frequently used for suicides by jumping. While these studies demonstrate that barriers lead to a reduction in the number of suicides by jumping at the site where they ...

Purpose. People with communication impairments may face barriers to civic participation, with resulting marginalisation of individuals who wish to be actively involved. The investigation aimed to explore the experience of civically engaged adults with acquired neurological communication difficulties. Method. Six people with acquired neurological communication difficulties were interviewed. Discussion included the definition ...

The objectives of this study were to describe preconceptions and expectations of older adults about getting hearing aids and to explore the influence of hearing loss (HL), hearing aid experience, gender, age, and marital status on these preconceptions and expectations. A total of 174 participants aged above 65 years were ...

The discovery of novel small-molecule antibacterial drugs has been stalled for many years. The purpose of this review is to underscore and illustrate those scientific problems unique to the discovery and optimization of novel antibacterial agents that have adversely affected the output of the effort. The major challenges fall into ...

This qualitative descriptive study explored Muslim religious leaders' perception, knowledge and attitudes towards AIDS, AIDS prevention and their attitudes towards people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA). Twenty Islamic religious leaders (males and females) participated in two audio-taped focus group discussions. A content analysis approach was used to analyse the data as ...

Persons living with HIV/AIDS (PLHA) of color are under-represented in AIDS clinical trials (ACTs), which may limit the generalizability of research findings and denies many individuals access to high levels of care and new treatments available through ACTs. Disproportionately low rates of recruitment in health care settings and by providers ...

The possibility of a fall into rope protection and subsequent suspension exists in some industrial situations. The action to take for the first aid management of rescued victims has not been clear, with some authors advising against standard first aid practices. To clarify the medical evidence relating to harness suspension ...

The "New Variant Famine" hypothesis proposed that AIDS offers a major challenge to food security in this part of Africa by impairing the functioning of traditional support systems, leading to the collapse of "social immunity". This study explores the changing perceptions of HIV and AIDS and peoples' responses to its ...

United States foreign assistance to Pakistan has always been driven by security considerations. By 2010, US counter-terrorism and stabilisation objectives resulted in Pakistan becoming the second largest recipient of US foreign aid globally. Given the policy impact of the assumption that aid promotes US security objectives in Pakistan, there is ...

This article is an initial exploration about the impact of ideological beliefs on helping services in the African American community. Newly infected HIV/AIDS cases place African Americans at 45% of such new cases, with African American women becoming infected at a rate 18 times that of Whites. Yet, helping services ...

While significant progress has been made since 2003 when a comprehensive treatment, prevention and control program was implemented to combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic in China, new challenges are emerging. There have been limited direct case reports on profiles of HIV/AIDS patients under care at unique clinical settings in China despite ...

Contrary to what many may expect, this article argues that Brazil did a better job than the USA when it came to responding to HIV/AIDS. Because of the Brazilian government's concern about its international reputation and the partnerships it has forged with international donors and civil society, the government has ...

The Obama administration has unveiled a new 6-year, $63 billion Global Health Initiative. In addition to the reauthorization of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) to fund HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria, the plan also supports maternal and child health (MCH) initiatives that are rooted in a proposal known ...

The number of people on antiretroviral treatment in Mozambique has increased by over 1,500 percent since it first became free and publicly available in 2004. The rising count of "lives saved" seems to portray a success story of high-tech treatment being provided in one of the poorest contexts in the ...

A job aid is a tool, such as a flowchart or checklist, that makes it easier for staff to carry out tasks by providing quick access to needed information. Many public health organizations are engaged in the production of job aids intended to improve adherence to important medical guidelines and ...

This paper draws on published reports, data from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria and the Asian Development Bank, and analysis by the Commission on AIDS in Asia to estimate financial resources required to achieve universal access for HIV in low-income and middle-income countries of Asia. It ...

Current literature on aid effectiveness describes increasing use of a more contractual approach to the relationship between donor and recipient government in which a system of rewards and penalties for good and bad performance operates. The purpose of this case study of the Ugandan health sector was to understand the ...

The 25th anniversary of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) in the United States occurred in 2006. Despite advances in detection, treatment, and care, AIDS, along with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) remain formidable opponents. Tremendous strides have been made in educating the public about associated ...

In Malawi, the distress and unease caused by rising numbers of deaths and chronic illness due to HIV infection have led people to search for explanations. Here, we describe two particular "turns to culture." Zomba villagers over two decades have come to link AIDS with kanyera, an indigenous illness syndrome. ...

Community home-based HIV/AIDS programs with care facilitators (CFs) are key interventions for dealing with both the shortage of health professionals (e.g., physicians, nurses, midwives, etc.) and the current HIV/AIDS epidemic in many parts of Africa. Zimbabwe, one of the sub-Saharan countries is not an exception. The Zimbabwe Red Cross Society ...

SUMMARY: The aim of the study was to identify the main determinants of grassroots project success among HIV/AIDS NGOs operating in Rakai, Uganda. It was a cross-sectional study using face-to-face interviews in a mixed-methods approach among community members and NGOs involved in providing HIV/AIDS and related health services. The study ...

There is an estimated 100 000 children orphaned by AIDS in China, but data on the care arrangement of these orphans are limited. In this study, we examine the relationship between AIDS orphans' care arrangement and their psychosocial well-being among a sample of AIDS orphans in rural China. A total ...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVE: Bancroftian filariasis is a major public health and socioeconomic problems in the humid tropical and subtropical regions of the world. A study was undertaken to investigate the status of the disease in some rural communities of Cross River State, Nigeria, with a view to enriching the epidemiological ...

Despite substantial federal, state, and local efforts to reduce the transmission of HIV/AIDS, African Americans experience higher rates of infection than any other ethnic or racial group in the United States. It is imperative to develop culturally and ecologically sensitive interventions to meet the sexual health needs of this population. ...

Volunteers are increasingly being relied upon to provide home-based care for people living with AIDS in South Africa and this presents several unique challenges specific to the HIV/AIDS context in Africa. Yet it is not clear what motivates people to volunteer as home-based caregivers. Drawing on the functional theory on ...

Brazil's national response to AIDS has been tied to the ability to mobilize resources from the World Bank, the World Health Organization, and a variety of donor agencies. The combination of favorable political economic opportunities and the bottom-up demands from civil society make Brazil a particularly interesting case. Despite the ...

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Economics, and specifically economic evaluations, are increasingly being utilized to provide treatment policy guidance to decision makers. This article reviews work that has contributed to understanding of the relationship. RECENT FINDINGS: There is a paucity of research explicitly investigating the association between economic evaluations and HIV and ...

The purpose of this article was to report identified barriers and challenges experienced in the recruiting process of Chinese American adolescents to a cross-sectional HIV/AIDS-related study. Snowball sampling method was used to recruit Chinese American adolescents from Chinese American communities in a U.S. Midwestern state. Barriers and challenges to recruitment ...

Religious communities have been a challenge to HIV prevention globally. Focusing on the acceptability component of the right to health, this intervention study examined how local Catholic, Evangelical and Afro-Brazilian religious communities can collaborate to foster young people's sexual health and ensure their access to comprehensive HIV prevention in their ...

Contrary to expectation when compared with other migrant mining zones of sub-Saharan Africa, the nation of Guinea has a comparatively low and stable HIV rate. In addition, the regions with the largest gold, diamond, and bauxite mining operations report the lowest HIV rates within the country. This research set out ...

The relation between aided ad recall and level of television ad placement in a public health setting is not well established. We examine this association by looking back at 8 years of the California's Tobacco Control Program's (CTCP) media campaign. Starting in July 2001, California's campaign was continuously monitored using ...

Although a growing body of research has linked religious involvement with HIV/AIDS protective behaviour in Africa, the focus has mainly been on women. Given the patriarchal nature of African culture, this paper argues for the inclusion of men, a critical group whose sexual behaviours have increasingly been linked to the ...

As countries in Asia strive to meet their universal access targets, harm-reduction programmes are yet to be scaled up to reach effective levels of coverage. Resource tracking and estimation of resource needs and gaps is critical to inform the financing decisions of major donors of harm-reduction programmes in the region. ...

This manuscript is communicated by the German AIDS Society (DAIG) (www.daignet.de). It summarizes a series of presentations and discussions during a workshop on immune activation due to HIV infection. The workshop was held on November 22nd 2008 in Hamburg, Germany. It was organized by the ICH Hamburg under the auspices ...

If travel has been one of the leitmotifs of Western imagination, Robinson Crusoe has certainly been one of its foremost incarnations. This British Ulysses foretold the global village, but also its problems. He predicted the end of distance, but also the triumph of isolation and anaesthetized loneliness. This paper provides ...

Colonel John S. Murray Ask the Expert provides research-based answers to practice questions submitted by JSPN readers.

Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing is a problem for marine resource managers, leading to depletion of fish stocks and negative impacts on marine ecosystems. These problems are particularly evident in regions with weak governance. Countries responsible for sustainable natural resource management in the Southern Ocean have actively worked to ...

One of the challenges faced by AIDS service organisations seeking to engage with traditional leaders and community elders in Kavango, north-east Namibia, has been the popular view that the messages of the fight against HIV/AIDS contradict local cultural values. However, there are indications that this has been changing. Staff and ...

The HIV/AIDS pandemic is one of the most serious threats to global health. HIV/AIDS is a chronic illness, requiring patient empowerment to enhance adherence to treatment regimes if it is to be managed effectively. While healthcare costs are rising, people still have expectations of high-quality care. This literature review-based study ...

This paper analyses the commodification of post-tsunami aid in Sri Lanka, a process that 'contaminated' the 'purity' of good intentions with the politics of patronage and international aid. It argues that gifts are not just material transfers of 'aid', but also embodiments of cultural symbolism, social power, and political affiliations. ...

The HIV/AIDS epidemic has continued to pose significant challenges to countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Millions of African children and youth have lost parents to HIV/AIDS leaving a generation of orphans to be cared for within extended family systems and communities. The experiences of youth who have lost parents to the ...

BACKGROUND: A coordinated response to HIV/AIDS remains one of the 'grand challenges' facing policymakers today. Global health initiatives (GHIs) have the potential both to facilitate and exacerbate coordination at the national and subnational level. Evidence of the effects of GHIs on coordination is beginning to emerge but has hitherto been ...