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Tuesday, January 31, 2017

REPORTING OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN IN BRAZIL- Brazilian Journal in Health Promotion, Vol. 28, No. 3, 2015, pp. 327-336

Sexual violence against women is an issue that females face all around the world. This issue takes place all around the world, however, the females in developing countries have less access to legal resources, and the women usually don’t speak up because there is a cultural stigma around “rape”. Developing countries have patriarchal system placed in state institutions and the governments role is limited in supporting victims.

A huge issue of gang rape has been taking place in India. On 16th December, 2012 a women were gang raped and killed in the buss (Roychowdhury, 2013). This news got a lot of media attention. What is interesting is the perception of the men and people on this gang rape. Some people said that it was the girls fault for being gang raped as a decent girl shouldn’t roam around at 9 at night or a girl should be at house doing house work not roaming around at night doing the “wrong” things, wearing the “wrong clothes”.

In the mist of the issues around sexual violence and reporting of these violence’s the study by Moreira et,al. elaborated on the issues of sexual violence in Brazil. It aimed to view cases that were reported through Notifiable Diseases Information System. The study analyzed the information on reporting of sexual violence from 2009 to 2013.  The results suggest that 21,871 cases were reported in this period. The northern regions had higher sexual violence being reported in 2013. The study looked at multifaceted factors such as education, race, and involvement of alcohol. Interestingly most often (60.6%) sexual assault was taken place at a female’s house by a person the know.

The domestic space should be a place of refugee and comfort however it may be a place of fear. It is ironic that some people say that females should stay home so they are not raped but what if you are raped at home ? Then whose at fault is ?

Roychowdhury, P. (2013). "The Delhi Gang Rape": The Making of International Causes. Feminist Studies, 39(1), 282-292. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23719317


Friday, January 27, 2017

INFANT FORMULA CRISIS IN CHINA: A COHORT STUDY IN SICHUAN PROVINCE - The Journal of Health, Population and Nutrition, Vol. 33, No. 1, 2015, pp. 117-122

China has the largest consumption of infant formula in the word. This study aimed to investigate the opinion of the Chinese mothers on the use of infant formula. After the melamine scandal, this study that took place in Sichuan province in 2011. 

The melamine scandal took place in China in 2008. Due to the lack of food safety, there were milk, infant formulas and other foods that were found to have melamine in it. Melamine is a chemical used out produce plastic. Six infants had died from kidney stones and damages. This problem was also in countered in international products such as Nestle, Cadbury, and Unilever. As an international development studies student, this is study is important as the use of melamine was a wake-up call at an international level, the issue with overpopulation and globalization is evident here where people resort to infant formulas. With a high global demand, it gets harder to maintain standards in developing countries. Thus, it is important to see the perception of mothers using baby formula and to observe if they are aware of the risk that these formulas have on their children. 

This study documented 695 mothers who participated in the study.  647 of the participants tried to breastfeed initially, but only 21 of these participates exclusively fed their babies with infant formulas from the starts. 13 of these mothers did not breastfeed due to Hepatitis B as they believed the virus would transfer to the children. The results state that 70% of the newborns had refaced formula as their first feed, and it increased to 88 % within the first month. Many of the feels had mixed feels as to if the infant formula reduced their breast milk production #8% of these women thought that their infants slept longer at night if they were fed baby formula milk as compared to being breastfed. This study concluded that mother’s options influence the use of infant formula in china and that there needs to be education provided on breastfeeding to improve and maintain breastfeeding outcomes in China.

An interesting find was that these women were misinformed in regarding breastfeeding and having hepatitis B. Mothers need to be informed and educated during the antenatal session that breastfeeding is the ideal method for feeding unless their nipples are damaged, and that breastfeeding will not increase the risk of hepatitis B infection to their infant. 

Breastfeeding is really important in the initial stage for both the mother and children. A study was done by Stuebe state that for infants in can increase the incidence of infectious morbidity and child obesity, diabetes, leukemia and sudden infant deaths. For mothers, if can increase the risk of breast cancer, ovarian cancer, type two diabetes and metabolic syndrome.  A mother’s milk is always a better option as compared to processed infant milk. 





Stuebe A. The Risks of Not Breastfeeding for Mothers and Infants. Reviews in Obstetrics and Gynecology. 2009;2(4):222-231.

Monday, January 09, 2017

AWARENESS AND COVERAGE OF THE NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE SCHEME AMONG FORMAL SECTOR WORKERS IN ILORIN, NIGERIA - African Journal of Biomedical Research, Vol. 19, No. 1, 2016, pp. 7-16

A prepayment method for health care financing has been adopted by many developing countries to ensure universal coverage for healthcare. In Nigeria, National health insurance scheme (NHIS) was established in 2005. The aim for this was scheme was to “secure universal coverage and access to adequate and affordable healthcare in order to improve the health status of Nigerians, especially for those participating in the various programs/products of the Scheme”. These policies however only target the formal sector workers mainly and that makes only about 4% of the population.  Furthermore, the enrolment to this coverage in Nigeria is only voluntary, it is not mandatory for people to sign up like in Ghana. The majority of the stakeholders in health insurance is government based.

Nigeria follows the federal system of government where the governance is shared by three levels (the national, state and local government). The states thus have a high degree of autonomy in many sectors that affect the well-being of its residences such as education and health. Earlier studies have shown that age, sex, education and socio-economic status along with other demographic factors are associated with the awareness of the program and the likelihood of people participating in heath promoting services and schemes. It is crucial to assess the different level of coverage of the NHIS among the formal sector  in order to attain lessons that could be used in the expansion of the program.

A cross-sectional, survey was carried out in Ilorin, Kwara state in Nigeria between February and March 2012. Ilorin is the capital of Kwara and has the population of 2371,089 people. Public/ civil servants over the age of 18 years, who were employed by all levels of government were allegeable to the participle. The sampling was taken in two-stage stratified sampling was used to select 370 respondents and using the systematic sampling the respondents were recruited into the study.

The data was analyzed with SPSS, this ethical approval of the study was obtained from Bowen University teaching hospital research ethics committee. The result concludes that majority of the respondents were are of the NHIS. Unfortunately, only 13.5 % of the respondents paid for health care services through NHIS. Furthermore, respondents with post-secondary education and in federal civil services were more likely to be aware of the NHIS program. This means that the program is available and promoted in the higher ranks or socioeconomic status have more access to this information.


Sunday, January 08, 2017

REMOVABLE ORTHODONTIC APPLIANCES: FREQUENCY AND CLEANING AGENTS USED BY STUDENTS AND RECOMMENDED BY DENTISTS - BRAZILIAN JOURNAL OF ORAL SCIENCES, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2016, pp. 21-26

In the last years, the need for orthodontic treatments has increased. Very few studies have investigated the attitudes of dentist towards oral prevention measures. Children who are in the treatment of removable orthodontic appliances (ROA) have a higher risk for proximal caries, gingivitis, and halitosis as compared to children without ROA. The children’s characteristics treated with orthodontic appliances are important and therefore, the dentist recommendation should present alternates to reduce microbiota and prevent other oral diseases.

The study aims to 1) evaluate the prevalence of the ROA use by adolescents from the age of 13 to 19 years in the city of Pelotas. Looking for possible links with socio-demographic factors and hygiene habits 2) to confirm hygiene method prescribed by dentist. The study was conducted in two different stages, the first stage consisted of having telephone interviews. Any dentist on the registered dentist list from the regional council of dentistry of Rio and Brazil dental association, who lived in Pelotas, and worked in treatment involving ROA were included in the study.  The dentist was asked questions regarding the hygiene methods for cleaning acrylic appliances. The second part of the study was student interviews, where children from different socio-economic status were asked questions. Both, public and private school students were included in the sample. The questions consisted of demographic information’s, behavioral habits and characteristics. These data’s collected were then analyzed by the Chi-square test and logistic regression.

Two hundred and thirty-five dentists participated in the study and 9.6 % indicated to brush ROA with soap, 8.0 % advised immersion in hypochlorite, chlorhexidine or peroxide solutions, 6.0 % suggested other cleaning material and 1.6 % suggested Corega tabs. Most dentist, 64%, recommended cleaning the appliances 3 times a day. Thus, dentists (47.2%) reported preferring mechanical methods to clean their ROA. The prevalence of children using ROA was 3.4 % and they also preferred mechanical methods to clean their ROA (89.7 %). Thus, one can conclude that there is a higher frequency of hygiene on the ROA.

This case study concluded that not a lot of people in schools were using removable appliances. The cleaning methods they used was mechanical which was prescribed by doctors. An interesting factor to this study was that they hygiene frequency was considered to have an association with the routine of the use of the appliances with the type of hygiene method.


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