A set of 3D-printed lenses that are smaller than a grain of sand but can mimic eagle-eye vision came about thanks to a chance discussion with a colleague and the freedom to pursue scientific creativity, according to its inventor.
Optics was always one of Professor Harald Giessen’s favourite scientific fields, a fact he attributes to the ability to create visual wonders. ‘It is always nice when you can see what you are doing with lasers and light, it’s just beautiful. Seeing the light beams and working with mirrors and lenses is something very hands-on and practical. The visual aspect is very pleasing.’
Prof. Giessen, a specialist in nano optics at the University of Stuttgart, Germany, hit the scientific headlines in February when, together with colleagues, he revealed a set of incredibly tiny 3D-printed camera lenses that mimic how an eagle sees the world. Companies eager to exploit the ability to capture detailed images from a distance are lining up at his door, from firms working on robots and automation to medical tech businesses.
But, as Prof. Giessen well knows, scientists can’t always control how their work is used. ‘Of course it gives the spies incredible abilities to spy even more on us,’ he said. ‘In the end it will probably end up in the hands of the bad guys. This is what I fear, but I think it will make a real difference in medical technology.’
What they’re all interested in is a 2 millimetre by 3 millimetre chip that contains four lenses, each of which is 100 micrometres wide, or about the size of a speck of dust. Combining the data from these lenses produces a picture that is high-resolution in the centre and less focused towards the edges, known as a foveated image…..more
Mouth ulcers — also known as canker sores — are normally small, painful lesions that develop in your mouth or at the base of your gums. They can make eating, drinking, and talking uncomfortable. Women, adolescents, and people with a family history of mouth ulcers are at higher risk for developing mouth ulcers.
Mouth ulcers aren’t contagious and usually go away within one to two weeks. However, if you get a canker sore that is large or extremely painful or if it lasts for a long time without healing, you should seek the advice of a doctor.
There is no definite cause behind mouth ulcers. However, certain factors and triggers have been identified. These include:… Read more
CITATION: Community Health Worker Programmes in the WHO African Region: evidence and options – policy brief
by Nana Twum Danso, Uta Lehmann, Jennifer Nyoni et al.
World Health Organization, Regional Office for Africa, 2017
23 pp. 1.0 MB
http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/254739/1/9789290233558-eng.pdf
‘The purpose of this policy brief is to inform discussions and decisions in the World Health Organization (WHO) African Region on policies, strategies and programmes to increase access to primary health care (PHC) services and make progress towards universal health coverage (UHC) by expanding the implementation of scaled-up Community Health Worker (CHW) programmes. This brief summarizes the existing evidence on CHW programmes with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa and offers a number of context-linked policy options for countries seeking to scale up and improve the effectiveness of their CHW programmes, particularly with regard to needs such as those of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the three countries that were the most affected by the 2014–2015 Ebola Virus Disease outbreak.’
KEY MESSAGES
There is unanimity in the literature that CHW cadres and programmes have enormous potential in strengthening health and community systems at the interface that is now increasingly identified as community health systems. The key foundational elements of successful CHW large scale programmes are:
(a) Embeddedness, connectivity and integration with the larger system of health care service delivery, the health workforce and community governance, as opposed to functioning as stand-alone or short-term interventions;
(b) Cadre differentiation and role clarity in order for the scope of work and accountability responsibilities to be clear, to minimize confusion, and to manage the expectations of the formal health system and community members;
(c) Sound design, based on local contextual factors and effective people management. Specifically, evidence confirms that CHW programmes will fail unless CHWs are provided:
– initial and continuing training commensurate with their roles;
– regular, skilled and supportive supervision;
– adequate and appropriate incentives and compensation, whether monetary or other types;
– prospects for career development and progression.
(d) Ongoing monitoring, learning and adapting, based on accurate and timely local data to ensure heir optimal fit to the local context, since one size does not fit all.
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Best wishes, Neil
Let’s build a future where people are no longer dying for lack of healthcare knowledge – Join HIFA: www.hifa.org
Perhaps you bent the wrong way while lifting something heavy. Or you’re dealing with a degenerative condition like arthritis. Whatever the cause, once you have low back pain, it can be hard to shake. About one in four Americans say they’ve had a recent bout of low back pain. And almost everyone can expect to experience back pain at some point in their lives.
Sometimes, it’s clearly serious: You were injured, or you feel numbness, weakness, or tingling in the legs. Call the doctor, of course. But for routine and mild low back pain, here are a few simple tips to try at home…..more
Portia Lekgoto faced a dilemma: how to take her three-year-old daughter to a doctor without missing a day of work while waiting in line at one of only two public health clinics in the South African shantytown of Diepsloot.
She decided to take her daughter to Quali Health, a new private clinic that a friend had told her about. While she had to pay R250 for the visit, she finished the consultation by mid-morning.
“I am going to now drop my daughter off at her granny with the medication we have been given and then I will go into work,” Lekgoto, 34, said at the clinic. “This place, the staffs are friendly and it’s nice and clean. I’ll definitely come back.”…more
A condition that affects how your body uses energy in the form of glucose from food, diabetes can be successfully managed through proper self-monitoring, medication and lifestyle changes. People with diabetes have a high level of glucose in their blood, which can be caused by either too little insulin being produced by the pancreas or the body not accepting or using the insulin it produces, or a combination of both.
People with diabetes need to keep their blood sugar levels within a healthy range. Blood sugar levels are controlled through diet, physical activity and, for some people, a combination of medication and insulin injections.
Insulin is a hormone your cells need to store and use energy from food, and it is responsible for getting glucose into your cells. If you have diabetes, insulin is not able to do its job. Meaning, glucose is unable to get into your cells, which causes it to build up in your blood. High levels of glucose then circulate through your body, damaging cells along the way.
Johannesburg – The deviant conduct threatening the African National Congress’ survival has become deeply entrenched and is no longer the exception, according to documents prepared for its June policy conference. Arrogance, factionalism, and corruption were no longer aberrations requiring “tactical interventions”, but had become dominant tendencies in the movement. This is contained in a draft document, which is part of policy papers to be released on Sunday. The ANC acknowledged there was a “social distance” between its leaders and their constituencies….more
Clinics are overwhelmed by diabetes and hypertension epidemics, yet government recently weakened proposals to tax sugary drinks driving this epidemic. In a pattern similar to HIV two decades ago, government clinics are being swamped by 40,000 new patients a month suffering from hypertension and diabetes. By late last year, over 25,000 new hypertensive patients and over 15,000 new diabetic patients were being seen every month at public clinics, according to the health department’s District Health Information System. Last week, Statistics SA (StatsSA) reported that diabetes became the biggest killer of South African women in 2015, and the second biggest killer overall. Two years previously, diabetes was only the fifth biggest killer. Non-communicable diseases (NCDs), many related to us being too fat, are now responsible for well over half of all deaths (55,5%)…..more
Drugmaker Otsuka Pharmaceutical won’t charge South Africa for using its new tuberculosis (TB) drug in a pilot programme, but South Africa’s free deal is unlikely to last.
The drug, delamanid, is one of the first new TB medicines to be developed in 50 years. In unpublished research by international humanitarian organisation Doctors Without Borders (MSF) delamanid has been shown to cut drug-resistant TB treatment times by two-thirds when used in combination with existing remedies, says MSF advocacy and communications officers in Swaziland Zanele Zwane.
Current treatments for drug-resistant TB can take up to two years and patients have to take handfuls of pills daily that put them at risk of deafness or psychosis. More than half of patients with the most extreme form of drug-resistant TB, also known as extensively drug-resistant TB, will die, according to University of Cape Town studies….more
What Is High Blood Pressure?: High blood pressure, also known as hypertension, is the most common cardiovascular disease. Blood pressure refers to the force of blood pushing against artery walls as it courses through the body. Like air in a tire or water in a hose, blood fills arteries to a certain capacity. Just as too much air pressure can damage a tire or too much water pushing through a garden hose can damage the hose, high blood pressure can threaten healthy arteries and lead to life-threatening conditions such as heart disease and stroke….more
Studies find worrying over- and underuse of medicine worldwide
By Kate Kelland
LONDON – Up to 70 percent of hysterectomies in the United States, a quarter of knee replacements in Spain and more than half the antibiotics prescribed in China are inappropriate, overused healthcare, researchers said on Monday.
Experts who carried out a series of studies across the world found that medicine and healthcare are routinely both over- and underused, causing avoidable harm and suffering and wasting precious resources.
The studies, commissioned by The Lancet journal and conducted by 27 international specialists, also found rates of Caesarian section deliveries are soaring – often in women who do not need them – while the simple use of steroids to prevent premature births has lagged for 40 years.
“A common tragedy in both wealthy and poor countries is the use of expensive and sometimes ineffective technology while low-cost effective interventions are neglected,” the experts wrote in a statement about their findings.
The World Health Organization estimates that 6.2 million excess C-sections are performed each year – 50 percent of them in Brazil and China alone.
Vikas Saini, one of the lead authors of the study series and president of the U.S. Lown Institute in Boston, said factors driving the global failure to the right level of care include “greed, competing interests and poor information”, which he said combine to create “an ecosystem of poor healthcare delivery.”
Co-lead researcher Shannon Brownlee added: “Patients and citizens need to understand what’s at stake here if their health systems fail to address these twin problems. In the U.S., we are wasting billions of dollars that should be devoted to improving the nation’s health.”
The study series analyzed the scope, causes and consequences of underuse and overuse of healthcare around the world. It found that both can occur in the same country, the same organization or health facility, and even afflict the same patient.
The researchers noted that a study in China found 57 percent of patients received inappropriate antibiotics; that inappropriate hysterectomies in the United States range from 16 to 70 percent; and inappropriate total knee replacement rates were 26 percent in Spain and 34 percent in the United States.
Underuse leaves patients “vulnerable to avoidable disease and suffering” the researchers said, while overuse causes avoidable harms from tests or treatments at the same time as wasting resources better spent on much-needed services.
(Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)
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One of the fiercest fights happening within the Republican Party right now is what to do about Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion.
The Affordable Care Act broadened Medicaid eligibility to cover millions more low-income Americans, and offered states federal money to recoup the costs.
But only 16 states with Republican governors expanded Medicaid, including Ohio’s John Kasich, who recently met with Trump and has advocated continuing expansion. Seventeen governors rejected the option, though, often with the justification that Medicaid doesn’t actually improve people’s health.
So does it? With 10 million people in the program right now, and the future of the ACA at stake, the question seems worth parsing.
We actually have some pretty good data out of Oregon about Medicaid’s effects on health. There, researchers from Harvard tracked what happened to the winners and losers of a state lottery that offered Medicaid to 10,000 randomly selected Oregonians in 2008. This is the closest we have to a randomized trial on health insurance — the gold-standard study methodology — so it’s been a treasure trove of information for researchers. The study also gives us a pretty good picture of how exactly Medicaid impacts people’s health — and where it falls short……more
Hundreds of youth who formed part of a multimillion-rand skills project that President Jacob Zuma personally launched, have been languishing at home with nothing to do for seven months.
The 800 unplaced War on Leaks project’s trainees have been getting their R1500 stipends each month from the Department of Water and Sanitation, despite doing nothing.
This means the department, currently in the news for allegedly being broke, would have paid roughly R8.4-million to the unplaced trainees by the end of this month.
The trainees were supposed to be placed in municipalities or private companies.
Sowetan gathered that Rand Water, the project’s implementing agency, failed to place the youth for practical training after they completed their theoretical studies in July last year.
Zuma’s spokesman Bongani Ngqulunga referred Sowetan to the water and sanitation department. Department spokesman Sputnik Ratau said there were 800 youths who still had nowhere to train…..more
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