BACKGROUND In 2009, the Dutch Health Care Inspectorate (IGZ) observed several serious risks to safety involving medication within elderly care facilities. However, by 2011, high risks had been reduced in almost all the organisations we visited. And yet the IGZ analysed too the alarming increase in the number of incidents arising in the self-reported national indicator of medication safety betwe...

Chemical weapons have given the human experience of warfare a uniquely terrifying quality that has inspired a general repugnance and led to periodic attempts to ban their use. Nevertheless, since ancient times, toxic agents have been consistently employed to kill and terrorize target populations. The evolution of these weapons is examined here in ways that may allow military, law enforcement, a...

4 he above citation, taken from Presidential Decision Directive 62 signed in May 1998, foresaw the potential that unconventional methods of warfare could be used against our Homeland. Although much has changed since publication of this document to address vulnerabilities, the threat remains for adversaries to attack our Nation, interests and military forces by unconventional or asymmetric appro...

Iraq’s economy has undergone a number of profound changes over the last several decades, many of which have had significant implications for the manner in which the country’s informal economy has evolved. The statist, heavy-handed economic policies of the Ba'athist government concentrated much of Iraq’s productive capacity in nationalized factors, which degraded under the sanctions regime of th...

T he Oil-For-Food program was established by United Nations Security Council Resolution 986 in 1995 as a means of providing humanitarian relief to Iraq, which had been under U.N. economic sanctions since the Persian Gulf War in 1991. The Oil-For-Food program was divided into six-month phases and required renewal by the Security Council at each phase. The first phase lasted from December 1996 to...

The question of human resources is central to the success of VISION 2020 and of any health programme. The VISION 2020 global initiative document clearly spelt out what personnel was required and, more recently, the World Health Organization document on human resources for health care made recommendations on the type and number of people needed in order to meet all our objectives in global healt...

The purpose of this article is to introduce non-verbal tools as a way to initiate the psychosocial support response after a major disaster. The psychosocial interventions that follow the application of the Non Verbal Tool in its different configurations are based on the principle of fostering and strengthening the social and psychological attributes among the community members. The various psyc...

Family caregivers of persons following neurotrauma function as de facto extensions of our health care system. Their challenges may result in negative consequences for their physical and mental health, which directly impacts the well-being of their care-recipient. In this paper, we survey current practices in providing caregiver support, outline considerations for developing collaborative interv...