BACKGROUND In 2007, the Government of Pakistan introduced a new cadre of community midwives (CMWs) to address low skilled birth attendance rates in rural areas; this workforce is located in the private-sector. There are concerns about the effectiveness of the programme for increasing skilled birth attendance as previous experience from private-sector programmes has been sub-optimal. Indonesia f...

Demand for business intelligence solutions continues to grow in the industry at record rates to combat competitive pressures and to attain business agility. Still organizations continue to struggle on how to implement successful business intelligence solutions. Despite its growing popularity and maturity as a field, it appears that organizations follow key guidelines that ensure the failure of ...

In this paper, we propose models and solution approaches for determining the facility locations of medical supplies in response to large-scale emergencies. We address the demand uncertainty and medical supply insufficiency at each facility by requiring each demand point be serviced by a multiple quantity of facilities located at different distance (quality) levels. The problem is formulated as ...

This paper examines the effects of limitations on the excludability of employerprovided health insurance from taxable income on the pricing policies of insurance companies. Concentrating on the demand side, standard analysis (e.g., Congressional Budget Office, 1994) would suggest that individuals previously purchasing above the limitation would reduce their level of coverage, while those below ...

In this work a problem motivated by a real-world case from a beverage distribution firm in Mexico is addressed. Different planning criteria are taken into account in order to create acceptable territory designs. Namely, each territory needs to be compact, connected and balanced according to two attributes (number of costumers and product demand). Two GRASP based heuristics (BGRASP and TGRASP) a...

In this paper, the strategic planning of a supply chain under a static chain-to-chain competition on the plane is addressed. It is assumed that each retailer has a coverage area called the radius of influence. The demand of each demand zone is divided equally between the retailers which can cover that market. However, the demand of distant customers who are not in the retailers’ radius of influ...

BACKGROUND Attempts to maintain or increase vaccination coverage almost all focus on supply side interventions: improving availability and delivery of vaccines. The effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of efforts to increase demand is uncertain. METHODS We performed a systematic review of studies that provided quantitative estimates of the impact of demand side interventions on uptake of rout...

A pilot scale wastewater treatment plant was designed, constructed and operated on site to treat wastewater from a combined effluent drain. The activated sludge process (ASP) was used at three different hydraulic retention times (HRT) of 12, 10 and 8 hrs at an average MLSS concentration of 3500 mg/L. Under each HRT, the pilot plant was operated for a period of 10-12 weeks. Chemical oxygen deman...

The efforts of modern civilization to create an environment to meet human aspirations have successfully resulted in constant improvements of our lifestyle, but it has increased risks to human and ecological health. This situation has motivated many scientists throughout the world to analyze the environmental factors that can affect our health or ecology and to calculate the levels of risk. In B...