Interim progress in an integrated family planning and community health program instituted in 2 villages in Tanzania, compared to a control village, is presented. The target villages, in Masama and Arusha China, consisting of 10,000 and 8000 people, and the control village of Kisiki with 10,500 were all near Moshi town. The control village was provided with contraceptives, but given no integra...

In clinical practice and epidemiological surveys, anthropometric measurements represent an important component of nutritional assessment in the elderly. The anthropometric standards derived from adult populations may not be appropriate for the elderly because of body composition changes occurring during ageing. Specific anthropometric reference data for the elderly are necessary. In the present...

It is commonly assumed in public health practice that households in developing country settings are relatively homogeneous with respect to nutritional status. To the extent that this assumption is valid, nutritional assessments of mothers or individual children would provide an effective screening mechanism for household-level maternal-child nutritional risk. However, there has been no confirma...

We critically review the various methods for assessing protein--calorie malnutrition. These tests are lacking in sensitivity and specificity, and currently no single one can be used as a reliable indicator of malnutrition. However, a combination of several of them can be used as prognostic indicators and are of help in selecting patients who may benefit from nutritional support. Body-compositio...

Data from a previous study were analysed to develop a new model for neonatal nutritional evaluation which is independent of precise maturity determination. Birth weights and arm/head ratios were recorded for each infant recruited for the study. Both indices were correlated by simple regression analysis with gestational age as the independent variable. Birth weight showed highly significant corr...

Nutrition therapy is essential for the management of critically ill patients. Some guidelines have been published to standardize and optimize the nutrition therapy. However, there are still many controversies in nutrition practice and there is a gap between guidelines and clinical nutrition therapy for patients in intensive care units (ICUs). This study aimed to assess attitudes and beliefs tow...

BACKGROUND Six to 12 months of ingestion of moderate amounts of oats does not have a harmful effect in adult patients with coeliac disease. As the safety of long term intake of oats in coeliac patients is not known, we continued our previous 6-12 month study for five years. AIM To assess the safety of long term ingestion of oats in the diet of coeliac patients. PATIENTS In our previous stud...

Computer assisted instruction (CAI) is an effective tool for evaluating and training students and professionals. In this article we will present a learning-oriented CAI, which has been developed for students and health professionals to acquire and retain new knowledge through the practice. A two-phase pilot evaluation was conducted, involving 8 nutrition experts and 30 postgraduate students, re...

OBJECTIVES to develop an integrated computer software application for specialized nutritional support, integrated in the electronic clinical record, which detects automatically and early those undernourished patients or at risk of developing undernourishment, determining points of opportunity for improvement and evaluation of the results. METHODS the quality standards published by the Nutriti...

BACKGROUND A nutritional assessment method that is quick and easy to conduct would be extremely useful in a complex emergency, where currently there is no agreed practical and acceptable method. Hair pluckability has been suggested to be a useful method of assessing protein nutritional status. The aim was to investigate the reliability of the trichotillometer and to explore the effects of patie...