scholarly journals Evaluating laboratory screening tests for malaria on blood donors candidates to reduce the risk of transfusion-transmitted malaria in an endemic area of Indonesia

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 191-7
Author(s):  
Nethasia Louhenapessy ◽  
Ria Syafitri Evi Gantini ◽  
Susan Rahayu ◽  
Elisabeth Lilipory ◽  
Heri Wibowo ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND Laboratory screening of blood donors for malaria has not been routinely performed in Indonesia. Current policy and practice simply exclude donors based on a history of active clinical malaria. This study was aimed to evaluate laboratory screening tests for malaria among blood donors in an endemic area of Indonesia. METHODS The study was conducted on 550 consecutive blood samples withdrawn from volunteer donors at the Red Cross Blood Transfusion Unit in Ambon city using microscopic and rapid diagnostic tests for antigen as well as for antibody. Furthermore, 248 of those 550 samples were also tested for the presence of malaria DNA using 18S rRNA marker. Statistical analysis was done descriptively using SPSS software version 15 (SPSS Inc., USA). RESULTS The overall malaria positivity rate among the donors was 4.5% (25/550). None of the specimens tested using microscopy or rapid test for malaria antigen assay were positive. However 22 (4.0%) samples were positive for malaria antibody against Plasmodium falciparum; while 3 (1.2%) were positive by PCR. CONCLUSIONS Laboratory testing for blood donors may be used to prevent transfusiontransmitted malaria in an endemic area of Indonesia.

Author(s):  
Wynne Pereira Nogueira ◽  
Matheus Figueiredo Nogueira ◽  
Jordana de Almeida Nogueira ◽  
Maria Eliane Moreira Freire ◽  
Elucir Gir ◽  
...  

Abstract Objective: To estimate the prevalence of syphilis and associated factors in riverine communities. Method: This is a cross-sectional and analytical study carried out with 250 riverside dwellers living in five communities in the city of João Pessoa, state of Paraíba. Data were collected through interviews and rapid screening tests to investigate syphilis. Bivariate, logistic regression and weight of evidence analysis were performed to identify the association between risk factors and behavior variables and rapid test positivity. Results: he prevalence of syphilis was 11.6% (95%CI: 7.5–15.6). Riverside dwellers who have a previous history of Sexually Transmitted Infection (OR 8.00; 95%CI: 2.76–23.2), history of imprisonment (OR 7.39; 95%CI: 1.61–33.7) and who reported having more than two sexual partners in the last 12 months (OR 4.31; 95%CI: 1.55–11.9) were more likely to be positive for syphilis. Conclusion: High prevalence of syphilis among riverside dwellers and the presence of behavioral factors that increase vulnerability to acquiring the infection. The need to invest in preventive and screening strategies for syphilis in populations considered vulnerable is highlighted.


Author(s):  
Mariane C. Ferme

Out of War is an ethnographic engagement with the nature of intercommunal violence and the material returns of history during and after the 1991–2002 Sierra Leone civil war. The questions raised concern the nature and reckoning of time and reality, fact and fiction; the experience of violence and trauma; the reversibility of perpetrator and victim, friend and enemy; and past, present, and future in the colony and postcolony. The book is a reflection on West African epistemologies and ontologies that contribute to questions in counterpoint with those of international humanitarianism, struggling with the possibilities of truth and quandaries of justice. In the context of massive population displacements and humanitarian interventions, the ethnography traces strategies of psychological, political, and cultural survival and material dwelling in liminal spaces in the midst of the destruction of the social fabric engendered by war. It also examines the juridical creation of new figures of crimes against humanity at the Special Court for Sierra Leone. The Sierra Leone scene, in the aftermath of war, is visualized as a landscape of chronotopes, neologisms that summon the uncertainty of war: the sobel (“soldier by day, rebel by night”), pointing to the instability of distinctions between enemy and friend, or of opposing parties in the war (the rebels of the Revolutionary United Front [RUF] and soldiers in the national army), and the rebel cross, pointing to the possibility that the purported neutrality of the Red Cross masked partisan interests alongside the RUF. Chronotopes also testify to the difficulty of discerning between facts and rumors in war, and they freeze in time collective anxieties about wartime events. Finally, beyond the traumas of war, the book explores the returns of material traces in counterpoint to the more “monumental” presence of Chinese investments in Africa today, and it explores the forgotten sensory history of another China (Taiwan versus the People’s Republic of China) and another Africa inscribed in ordinary agrarian practices on rural landscapes, and in the fabric of domestic life, particularly since the non-aligned movement emerged from the Bandung conference in 1955.


Author(s):  
Rebecca S. Bigler ◽  
Lynn S. Liben

Morality and gender are intersecting realms of human thought and behavior. Reasoning and action at their intersection (e.g., views of women’s rights legislation) carry important consequences for societies, communities, and individual lives. In this chapter, the authors argue that children’s developing views of morality and gender reciprocally shape one another in important and underexplored ways. The chapter begins with a brief history of psychological theory and research at the intersection of morality and gender and suggests reasons for the historical failure to view gender attitudes through moral lenses. The authors then describe reasons for expecting morality to play an important role in shaping children’s developing gender attitudes and, reciprocally, for gender attitudes to play an important role in shaping children’s developing moral values. The authors next illustrate the importance and relevance of these ideas by discussing two topics at the center of contentious debate in the United States concerning ethical policy and practice: treatment of gender nonconformity and gender-segregated schooling. The chapter concludes with suggestions for future research.


2021 ◽  
pp. 026455052110255
Author(s):  
Kelly Lockwood ◽  
Tony Long ◽  
Nancy Loucks ◽  
Ben Raikes ◽  
Kathryn Sharratt

Prison visits are recognised as an important feature of a humane prison system, providing important benefits for prisoners and their family in maintaining ties (McCarthy and Adams, 2017). Scotland has a history of penal welfarism and a right-based agenda in relation to visits (McCarthy and Adams, 2017); however, there is a lack of research that focuses on visits in the context of Scottish prisons. Equally, there is limited research that considers the perspective of children visiting a parent in custody. This paper explores the experiences of children visiting a parent in prison in Scotland, highlighting lessons for policy and practice.


Author(s):  
Shytierra Gaston

African Americans are disproportionately victimized by various forms of racialized violence. This long-standing reality is rooted in America’s history of racist violence, one manifestation being racial lynchings. This article investigates the long-term, intergenerational consequences of racial lynchings by centering the voices and experiences of victims’ families. The data comprise in-depth interviews with twenty-two descendants of twenty-two victims lynched between 1883 and 1972 in the U.S. South. I employed a multistage qualitative analysis, revealing three main domains of harmful impacts: psychological, familial, and economic. The findings underscore that racist violence has imposed harm beyond victims and for many decades and generations after the violent event. These long-term, intergenerational harms, especially if multiplied across countless incidents, can fundamentally impact the well-being of individuals, families, and communities as well as contribute to structural and macrolevel forces. Findings from this study have implications for research, policy, and practice, including efforts toward redress and reparations.


World Affairs ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 004382002110247
Author(s):  
James Alexander Foley

This article describes and analyzes the desperate situation of Korean first-generation divided family members who are still separated from their relatives nearly 70 years since the end of the Korean War (1950–1953). I aim to provide the reader with a reasonable quantification of the problem and make projections as to this first generation's likely future survival. The elements of the approach adopted to resolve the issue of family separation by the humanitarian bodies charged with addressing the problem, the Red Cross Societies of the two Koreas are described, and suggestions are made for improvement. The reunion program's successes and failures are critically assessed as is the key role played by the Red Cross Talks in the history of inter-Korean relations. Finally, conclusions are drawn as to the practical measures which may contribute to a resolution to the problem before the final disappearance of Korea's first generation of aged, separated family members.


1981 ◽  
Vol 61 (s7) ◽  
pp. 367s-368s ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Fernandez-Cruz ◽  
M. Luque Otero ◽  
L. Llorente Perez ◽  
C. Fernandez Pinilla ◽  
N. Martell Claros

1. Human leucocyte AB antigens were determined by means of a lymphocyte toxicity test in 84 patients with essential hypertension and in 1000 blood donors. 2. The prevalence of HLA B8 was 16.4% in hypertensive patients and 8.9% in controls (P = 0.07). 3. The prevalence of HLA B12 was 34.5% in hypertensive patients and 26.9% in the control group (N.S.). In WHO stage III hypertension HLA B12 was found in six out of 10 patients. 4. The prevalence of HLA B15 was 1.2% in hypertensive patients and 6.4% in controls (P < 0.05). 5. In view of a previous report of HLA antigens in a Spanish diabetic population, this study does not support the suggestion of a genetic and possibly HLA-linked connection between essential hypertension and diabetes mellitus among the Spanish population. 6. A positive family history of hypertension tended to be more common in those patients with essential hypertension associated with HLA B8.


1987 ◽  
Vol 99 (2) ◽  
pp. 413-419 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Maffei ◽  
A. Marracino ◽  
F. Di Stanislao ◽  
P. Pauri ◽  
M. Clementi ◽  
...  

SUMMARYIn one locality in Italy where the incidence of psittacosis has increased rapidly since 1980, a hospital-based study and a seroepidemiological survey were carried out in order to define the clinical and epidemiological features of psittacosis in that area.Registers of the Virology Unit of the University of Ancona, Italy, were reviewed and all hospitalized patients with a serological diagnosis of psittacosis were identified. A total of 76 cases were found and studied. A presumptive bird source was identified in 80% of 62 patients, on whom a detailed investigation had been possible. Poultry represented the most frequent probable source of infection. Clinically, the predominant pattern of illness was a moderately severe lower respiratory tract infection, with chest X-rays showing pulmonary shadowings in 68 patients (89%).In the seroepidemiological study, 51 out of 143 subjects were exposed to birds (35·7%), but only 7 out of 90 urban adult blood donors (7·3%) were positive for chlamydial antibodies using the microimmunofluorescence test.


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