To improve operational efficiency as well as to improve patient compliance in leprosy programmes, DANIDA introduced blister-calendar packs (BCP) to deliver MDT in 4 MDT districts in India in 1987. An objective study (Phase II) involving 343 patients in a trial group (BCP group) and 253 patients in a control group (loose drug group) showed no significant difference in compliance rates for self-a...

Combining the delivery of multiple health interventions has the potential to minimize costs and expand intervention coverage. Integration of mass drug administration is therefore being encouraged for delivery of preventive chemotherapy (PCT) to control onchocerciasis, lymphatic filariasis, schistosomiasis, soil-transmitted helminthiasis, and trachoma in sub-Saharan Africa, as there is considera...

1874 www.thelancet.com Vol 379 May 19, 2012 goals of individuals and communities to achieve optimum quality and quantity of life. There is increasing evidence that such a health system should be based on strong primary health care, that uses an eff ective community-oriented primary care model, addressing ways to reduce the causes of NCDs and tackling social and political issues at the local, na...

As eGovernment is gaining popularity in administrations, business and with citizen, issues about the course of its evolution take center stage. This evolution is generally seen as a four-step process: presence phase, interaction phase, transaction phase and transformation phase. To date few countries have made a significant progress in the last transformation phase whose goal is to integrate se...

Benchmark data for lower limb amputees is often limited to young subjects who have had their amputations as the result of trauma. The majority of trans-tibial amputees rehabilitated are, however, elderly vascular amputees who may have different gait characteristics than their younger counterparts. Without biomechanical analyses to provide such benchmark data for this group it is not possible to...

In this study, we attempt to bring to light various organisational and implementational clashes relevant to the conceptualisation of language policies at national level, and the planning of local practices with regard to degree programmes, language journals and conferences in Iranian higher education. We also prove that in its current status, the ELT syllabus in Iran, both at national and local...

It was hoped that following polio eradication, immunisation could be stopped. However the synthesis of polio virus in 2002, made eradication impossible. It is argued that getting poor countries to expend their scarce resources on an impossible dream over the last 10 years was unethical. Furthermore, while India has been polio-free for a year, there has been a huge increase in non-polio acute fl...

Mental health care programmes during and after acute emergencies in resource-poor countries have been considered controversial. There is no agreement on the public health value of the post-traumatic stress disorder concept and no agreement on the appropriateness of vertical (separate) trauma-focused services. A range of social and mental health intervention strategies and principles seem, howev...

Since the second half of the XX century, the measures implemented in endemic countries to control Chagas disease (CD) have succeeded in reducing its incidence. Nevertheless, there are still regions where vector-borne transmission endures (Bolivia, Paraguay, Mexico, etc.) and therefore new cases of infection occur in the younger population. The WHO estimates that there are about 10 million indiv...

The symmetry of floating drops is considered. Under conditions that the free boundary is flat it is shown that all three component interfaces are symmetric about a vertical line.