scholarly journals A long-lasting emerging epidemic of anthroponotic cutaneous leishmaniasis in southeastern Iran: population movement and peri-urban settlements as a major risk factor

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Taiebeh Karimi ◽  
Iraj Sharifi ◽  
Mohammad Reza Aflatoonian ◽  
Behnaz Aflatoonian ◽  
Mohammad Ali Mohammadi ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Epidemics of cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) are occurring more frequently and spreading faster and farther than before in many areas of the world. The present study aimed to assess a long-lasting emerging epidemic (2005–2019) of 5532 cases with anthroponotic CL (ACL) in peri-urban areas of Kerman city in southeastern Iran. Methods This descriptive-analytical study was carried out for 15 years in Kerman province, southeastern Iran. The data were passively obtained through the health surveillance system and the Kerman Leishmaniasis Research Center. Every subject was diagnosed using direct smear microscopy. The representative causative agent was further examined by ITS1-PCR, PCR-RFLP, 7SL RNA gene sequencing and phylogenetic analyses. For each subject, a case report form designating demographic and clinical data was recorded. Results A different pattern of ACL incidence was found in peri-urban areas compared to that in the city of Kerman. The incidence rate of ACL cases has significantly increased (P < 0.001) from 2005 to 2016 in new settlements with a gradual decline after that. The overall average risk of contracting the disease was 7.6 times higher in peri-urban areas compared to Kerman city, an old endemic focus. All isolates consisting of six variants were confirmed to be Leishmania tropica. The overall pattern of the ACL infection indicates that the etiological agent of ACL is propagated and transmitted by the bite of female Phlebotomus sergenti sandflies from person to person from dissimilar clones as reflected by the complexity of the migrants’ backgrounds in the province. Conclusions The movement of populations and establishment of new settlements in peri-urban areas close to endemic areas are major risk factors for and are directly linked to CL. The underlying factors of this emerging ACL epidemic caused by L. tropica were disasters and droughts, among others. A robust commitment to a multilateral approach is crucial to make improvements in this area. This will require decisive coordinated actions through all governmental factions and non-governmental organizations. Furthermore, active and passive case detection strategies, early diagnosis, and effective treatment could help control the disease.

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 606-621 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bethuel Sibongiseni Ngcamu ◽  
Malcolm Alan Henworth Wallis

Informal settlements in urban areas have long been afflicted by disasters and exposed to exploitation by politicians, shacklords, academics, journalists, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), tavern owners and government officials. This problem is caused to some degree by limited land for expansion which has resulted in the creation of highly densified and unplanned, irregular settlements using poor, combustible building materials. The purpose of the article is to investigate whether eThekwini Municipality’s strategies are sufficient to respond to and recover from the impact of disasters. The research was undertaken at the Foreman and Kennedy Road informal settlements located in Clare Estate, under Ward 25, in Durban within eThekwini Municipality in KwaZulu-Natal (refer to Annexure 1). These areas are very important politically as they are densily populated and highly contested between political parties and local resistant’s organizations such as Abahlali baseMjondolo. Questionnaires were self-administered to a sample size of 220 of which 140 respondents completed the questionnaires, thereby generating a response rate of 63.6%. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with municipal officials. The findings indicate that 44.3% of the victims of disasters received assistance from NGOs and regard civil society as playing an important role after disasters compared to 7.1% of the responding municipal officials.


2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 595-610 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Moore ◽  
Zenzo Moyo

Research on NGOs in rural Zimbabwe suggests that ideas of automatic opposition between ‘civil society’ and/or non-governmental organizations and authoritarian states are too simple. Rather, relations between state and non-state organizations such as those referenced in this article, in the rural district of Mangwe about 200 kilometres south-west of Zimbabwe’s Bulawayo, are symbiotic. This contrasts with urban areas where political histories have led to more contested state-civil society relations in the last two decades, during which social movements with a degree of counter-hegemonic (or counter-regime) aspirations were allied with many NGOs and opposition political parties. Gramsci’s idea of ‘rural intellectuals’ could complement the widely used notion of ‘organic intellectuals’ to examine the members of the intelligentsia appearing to be at one with subordinate groups in the countryside and at odds with the state. Likewise state workers distant from the centre and close to their class peers in NGOs as well as their ‘subjects’ may operate with autonomy from their masters in ruling parties and states to assist, rather than repress, citizens and also to co-operate with NGO workers. This research indicates that discerning how hegemony works across whole state-society complexes is more complicated than usually perceived, given the many regional variations therein.


2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-27
Author(s):  
W. G. OJEBIYI ◽  
O. R., ASHIMOLOWO ◽  
T. O. A. BANMEKE ◽  
A. M. ARIYO

Protecting the rights of children has become important to local and international agencies of government and non-governmental organizations. This led to the formulation of laws that provided for and protected the rights of the child. Such laws include the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child, the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, the Nigeria’s Child’s Rights Act (CRA) and the Child’s Rights Law of Ogun State. However, the provisions of these documents seem to be inefficient in curbing the violation of child’s rights due to the high prevalence of street hawking, raping, corporal punishment, etc among children in Nigeria and Ogun State in particular. Hence, this study sought the societal awareness of CRA in rural and urban areas of Ogun State. About 243 rural and urban residents were interviewed through multistage sampling techniques with the aid of questionnaires and interview schedules administered on the different groups of respondents. The result showed that 69.14% of Ogun State residents were aware of the CRA. It further revealed that awareness of CRA was higher in urban than rural areas. Awareness of CRA was primarily sourced through the radio (42.86%) and television (42.86%). Radio and awareness campaigns were the most common sources of awareness among rural (51.76%) and urban (65.06%) residents respectively. The study recommended that government agencies and non-governmental organizations should sponsor more programmes that will be specifically directed to raising residents’ awareness of CRA in rural areas of the state.  


2017 ◽  
Vol 53 (5) ◽  
pp. 733-748 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yishak Abraham Lailulo ◽  
A. Sathiya Susuman

Fertility is one of the elements in population dynamics that makes a significant contribution towards changing population size and structure over time. In Ethiopia, for the last 10 years the total fertility rate (TFR) has declined slightly from 5.5 to 4.8 children in 2011. But, the TFR in urban areas has increased from 2.4 to 2.6 per 1000 live births. The Bongaarts model was applied to estimate the indices of the four main proximate determinants of fertility. Bongaarts defines the TFR of a population as a function of the total fecundity rate (TF), index of marriage (Cm), index of contraception (Cc), index of postpartum infecundability (Ci), and index of abortion (Ca); this can be written as TFR = Cm × Cc × Ci × Ca × TF. In 2005, the index of married women in urban areas was lower than rural, but it was unfortunately the same in urban and rural areas in 2011. For the last decade, the index of postpartum infecundability had a great fertility reduction effect compared with the contraception index and marriage index in rural Ethiopia. The lower the four indices of proximate determinants, the more fertility will be reduced. As such, the Ethiopian government, international non-governmental organizations and policy-makers must pay attention to increase the prevalence of contraceptive use and educate society to fight against child marriage. Permanent contraceptive use, such as female sterilization, should be promoted; moreover, legal organizations and the community must work together to raise the legal age of marriage to 18 years.


2014 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 547-561 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shara M. Batliboi ◽  
Suhas Tambe

India’s health care infrastructure has not kept pace with the economy’s growth. Today only 25 per cent of the Indian population has access to allopathic medicine, practiced mainly in urban areas. Rural India’s health is supported, not always adequately, by the government’s National Rural Health Mission (NRHM).  This study proposes a model for distributing free medicines to villages. Medicines, a few months before their expiry dates, normally wasted, would be obtained from urban stockists/chemists. Pharmaceutical companies, by giving their consent, could partner with the model. The transfer of drugs to rural India would be via the widespread Indian postal network. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs), postal employees and trained NRHM personnel would mobilize the model. Such a public–private partnership brings together members of civil society (e.g., NGOs), public sector (e.g., government agencies) and private sector (e.g., pharmaceutical companies) to fund, coordinate and drive the model, addressing the gaps in rural access to health care.


2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (01) ◽  
pp. 27-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. E. Baumann

SummaryThe shift towards a rights-based approach to health which has taken place over the past decade has strengthened the role of civil society and their organizations in raising and claiming the entitlements of different social groups. It has become obvious that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are central to any successful multi-stakeholder partnership, and they have become more recognized as key actors in health policy and programme development and implementation. There is a broad spectrum of NGOs active in the area of mental health in Europe which aim to empower people with mental health problems and their families, give them a voice in health policy development and implementation and in service design and delivery, to raise awareness and fight stigma and discrimination, and foster implementation of obligations set by internationally agreed mental health policy documents. With the endorsement of the Mental Health Action Plan 2013-2020 (20) and the European Mental Health Action Plan (19) stakeholders agree to strengthen capacity of service user and family advocacy groups and to secure their participation as partners in activities for mental health promotion, disorder prevention and improving mental health services.


2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 342-358 ◽  
Author(s):  
Apostolos G. Papadopoulos ◽  
Christos Chalkias ◽  
Loukia-Maria Fratsea

The paper explores the challenges faced today, in a context of severe economic crisis, by immigrant associations (ΙΜΑs) and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Greece. The data analysed here was collected between October 2009 and February 2010 and incorporates references to all recorded migration-related social actors operating in Greece. The paper takes into account such indicators as legal form, objectives, financial capacity and geographical range of activity, concluding with a typology of civil society actors dealing with migration issues. This study aims at informing the migration policymaking and migrant integration processes. By a spatial hot-spot clustering of IMAs and NGOs, we also illustrate the concentration patterns of civil society actors in Greece.


2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
V. S. CHAUHAN ◽  
BHANUMATI SINGH ◽  
SHREE GANESH ◽  
JAMSHED ZAIDI

Studies on air pollution in large cities of India showed that ambient air pollution concentrations are at such levels where serious health effects are possible. This paper presents overview on the status of air quality index (AQI) of Jhansi city by using multivariate statistical techniques. This base line data can help governmental and non-governmental organizations for the management of air pollution.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Robyn Gulliver ◽  
Kelly S. Fielding ◽  
Winnifred Louis

Climate change is a global problem requiring a collective response. Grassroots advocacy has been an important element in propelling this collective response, often through the mechanism of campaigns. However, it is not clear whether the climate change campaigns organized by the environmental advocacy groups are successful in achieving their goals, nor the degree to which other benefits may accrue to groups who run them. To investigate this further, we report a case study of the Australian climate change advocacy sector. Three methods were used to gather data to inform this case study: content analysis of climate change organizations’ websites, analysis of website text relating to campaign outcomes, and interviews with climate change campaigners. Findings demonstrate that climate change advocacy is diverse and achieving substantial successes such as the development of climate change-related legislation and divestment commitments from a range of organizations. The data also highlights additional benefits of campaigning such as gaining access to political power and increasing groups’ financial and volunteer resources. The successful outcomes of campaigns were influenced by the ability of groups to sustain strong personal support networks, use skills and resources available across the wider environmental advocacy network, and form consensus around shared strategic values. Communicating the successes of climate change advocacy could help mobilize collective action to address climate change. As such, this case study of the Australian climate change movement is relevant for both academics focusing on social movements and collective action and advocacy-focused practitioners, philanthropists, and non-governmental organizations.


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (09) ◽  
pp. 21041-21049 ◽  
Author(s):  
I Putu Sudana Satria Artha ◽  
Nyoman Utari Vipriyanti ◽  
I Putu Sujana

Garbage can be interpreted as a consequence of the activities of human life. It is undeniable, garbage will always be there as long as life activities continue to run. Every year, it can be ascertained that the volume of waste will always increase along with the increasing pattern of public consumerism. The landfill which is increasingly polluting the environment requires a technique and management to manage waste into something useful and of economic value, Bantas Village, Selemadeg Timur District, Tabanan Regency currently has a Waste Management Site (TPS3R) managed by Non-Governmental Organizations (KSM ) The source of waste comes from Households, Stalls, Restaurant Entrepreneurs, Schools, Offices and Ceremonies which are organic and inorganic waste. The waste management system at Bantas Lestari TPS with 3R system is Reduce (reduction of waste products starts from the source), Reuse (reuse for waste that can be reused) and Recycle (recycling waste) to date it is still running but not optimal. The method used in this research is descriptive quantitative with data analysis using SWOT analysis. This study produces a Waste Management Strategy which is the result of research from the management aspect, aspects of human resources and aspects of infrastructure facilities.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document