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We have previously demonstrated abnormalities in insulin secretion in adolescents with type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM2) in response to the mixed meal test and to glucagon. In order to further assess beta-cell function in DM2, we measured insulin and C-peptide responses to oral glucose in adolescents with DM2 in comparison to non-diabetic obese and lean adolescents. We studied 20 patients with DM2, 25 obese adolescents with matching body mass index (BMI) (33.8 +/- 1.4 vs 34.3 +/- 1.0 kg/m2),...

Decades of development practice suggest the fundamental importance of improving aid-delivery systems and stakeholder competence in order to improve the well-being of poor people. However, it is questionable whether the aid system is able to change its attitudes and values through such partnerships in a way that will do this. This paper suggests that for this change to be possible, processes of individual, organisational, and inter-organisational learning have to be encouraged, in ways that...

Reports have shown that severe midface trauma causes blindness and visual impairment but information from sub-Saharan Africa is sparse. A retrospective analysis was carried out of patients who sustained trauma to the midface and subsequently lost vision in one or both eyes. There were 25 males and 7 females whose ages ranged from 5 to 65 years (mean +/- SD, 33 +/- 13.3 years). All patients presented between 1 h and 7 days of sustaining injury (mean +/- SD, 1.9 +/- 1.9 days). Road traffic...

RATIONALE: DNA vaccine has been shown to be effetive in the treatment of immune disorders. We want to restore hearing loss induced by beta-tubulin in guinea pig using DNA vacine. METHODS: Female Hartley guinea pigs(350-450g) were used in this study. All animals were immunized by 200 ug tubulin mixed with the same volume of complete Freund's adjuvant. The tubuin was subcautaneously injected in the back of the guinea pigs. The immunization was booosted once with incomplete Freund's adjuvant...

Insecticide-treated bed nets (ITN) provide real hope for the reduction of the malaria burden across Africa. Understanding factors that determine access to ITN is crucial to debates surrounding the optimal delivery systems. The influence of homestead wealth on use of nets purchased from the retail sector is well documented, however, the competing influence of mother's education and physical access to net providers is less well understood.Between December 2004 and January 2005, a random sample...

This study examines if public libraries in a province in South Africa are ready to assume an enhanced responsibility for information literacy education, specifically that of students, and, if so, what inhibiting and facilitating factors might exist. The public libraries in the rural province of Mpumalanga provide the case site. “Readiness”, at one level, refers to physical capacity and, on a second level, to more subjective attributes such as staff attitudes and beliefs. The paper reports on...

A survey of drug use carried out in Zimbabwe in 1990/91 involved 2783 students from five different school categories in two provinces. Results show existence of use and experimenting, although prevalence is generally lower than corresponding European figures. Alcohol and tobacco is more common among urban than rural students and more common among private than public school students. Cannabis prevalence varies less, although high density urban school students report higher figures than...

Abstract The objective of this study was to identify sources of stress among dental students at the University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria. A modified Dental Environment Stress (DES) questionnaire was used to study the 137 students in years 3–6, of which 105 (76.6%) responded. Results show that the year 5 students indicated the highest level of stress overall on items relating to pre‐clinical training with 21 (70%) recording aggregate DES score over the cut‐off point for high stress. For...

Aim: This is a story intended to motivate the reader to become immersed in ‘verbal snapshots’ depicting the reality of nursing in Ghana as experienced by the writer. Its purpose is to encourage dialogue and creative collaboration between nurse educators in radically different settings, which would serve to enrich all those involved. Background: During the summer of 2003, a faculty member from the School of Nursing at Georgia Southern University (GSU) travelled to Africa to establish a...

This article describes the development and validation of an instrument that can be used to assess students’ perceptions of their learning environment as a means of monitoring and guiding changes towards outcomes‐based education. In the first phase, data collected from 2638 Grade 8 science students from 50 classes in 50 schools in the Limpopo Province of South Africa were analysed to provide evidence about the reliability and validity of the new instrument. In the second phase, two case...

This article reports part of the findings of a study carried out to determine the causes, prevalence, and distribution of ocular dis-orders among rural primary school children in Mopani district of Limpopo Province, South Africa. Three hundred and eighty eight children aged 8 to 15 years were randomly selected from five randomly selected schools. Non-cycloplegic retinoscopy and auto-refrac-tion were performed on each child. The preva-lence of hyperopia, myopia, and astigmatism was 73.1%,...

The paper sets out to empirically investigate the paradox that an increase in real educational expenditure reduces economic growth in Nigeria, using annual time series data from 1970 to 2003. Some statistical tools are employed to explore the relationship between these variables. The study examines stochastic characteristics of each time series by testing their stationarity using Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) and Phillip Perron (PP) tests. Then, the relationship between growth rate of real...

One hundred stool samples were collected from children and pupils in Akure, Ondo State, Nigeria. These were examined for the presence of enteric bacteria associated with diarrhea. Seventy of the samples were collected from apparently healthy pupils in some public primary schools in Akure, while thirty samples were collected from children in the Children’s Ward of the Ondo State Specialist Hospital, Akure. All the samples were pre-enriched for Salmonella and Shigella in selenite–F broth and...

This paper argues that current trends in higher education entail a disincentive for universities to enrol students from poor backgrounds and the continuing reproduc- tion of a highly elitist system. The perception of success in the marketplace, shrink- ing allocations to education, and a discourse of efficiency and competitiveness have sidelined previous commitments to access, equity and genuine transformation. These developments follow a global market utopia which sees higher education as a...

Abstract Exposure to air pollution has been associated with adverse respiratory and cardiovascular health outcomes in both children and adults. In this study, we used geographic information systems (GISs) to explore possible associations between chromosomal damage in 65 African American children and their mothers from Oakland, California, and both proximity to traffic and regional ozone levels. Study participants were interviewed at the Healthy Child Clinic of Children's Hospital, Oakland,...

Abstract The HIV/AIDS epidemic in most sub-Saharan African countries has created a crisis in the African family structure. In Uganda, older people's roles have been reversed from being provided for to providers. Older people, who are already poor, face the loss of economic support from their adult children and unexpected social, psychological and economic burden due to the care-giving role they assume. In this study, we used cross-sectional data from Kayunga district in Central Uganda to...

Young people including university students are a justifiable target for health status assessment as they form a large group that only recently escaped the adverse mortality experiences of childhood. This study was conducted in the University of Ibadan to determine the state and correlates of students' physical health.Seven hundred and fifty students were randomly selected from all eleven halls of residence by multi stage sampling. Questionnaires derived from the Duke Health Profile, a...