Management of Medical Wastes: Public Awareness and Associated Health Risks

A study was carried out in 49 institutions involved in the provision of health care services in Morogoro Municipality, Tanzania. The aim was to assess the common practices with respect to the management of medical waste. Awareness of workers in the institutions on the public and environmental health risks associated with improper management of medical waste was also assessed. The results showed that the most common types of wastes include sharps, waste blood and fluids, and anatomical and pathological wastes. About 91.8% of the facilities separated medical wastes depending on their types although 77.6% of the facilities did not treat the wastes before disposal. The commonest method for disposal of solid wastes was land filling (57.1%) while for liquid wastes; most facilities drained them into the municipal sewage system (85.7%). Large proportions of interviewed workers were aware of the environmental (59.2%) and public (69.4%) health risks caused by improper management of medical wastes although some of them violated the regulations related to waste management. It can be concluded from this study that although the generation of medical wastes is increasing, there is still lack of health education on proper methods for waste management among workers in health care institutions. This calls for the need of awareness programmes and enforcement of legislation on proper medical waste management in order to prevent hazards and risks to the public and environment.Keywords: medical wastes, environment, public healt

Everyday vulnerabilities and ''social dispositions'' in the Malian Sahel, an indication for evaluating future adaptability to water crises?

International audienceSince the 1970s, precipitation in the Sahel has decreased and become very irregular, leading to widespread drought, whilst the human need for water has rapidly increased. A new ''dispositions''-based approach was adapted in order to analyse human interactions with environmental hazards and applied to the case of Hombori village in northeastern Mali. This article explores how the population and political stakeholders perceive, live with and respond to the increasing scarcity of water. It also explores how their current vulnerability and ability to cope with variations in available water resources indicate future adaptability to climate shocks. On the one hand, this research shows how the population copes with variations in water resource availability: the population's socio-spatial organisation explains the inhabitants' exposure to this problem and some of the factors affecting vulnerability, the elderly and women being the hardest hit. The water issue is generally managed on a ''day-to-day'' basis and considered a big problem only in the dry season, thus lowering any incentive for self-protection. The main two variables that could explain this kind of risk management are the conflicting local governance and current social rules. On the other hand, the discussion of results, based on a conceptual model of social responses, explains why these current ''social dispositions'' to cope with and even address the water scarcity issue do not guarantee future adaptability to climate change

History of clinical transplantation

The emergence of transplantation has seen the development of increasingly potent immunosuppressive agents, progressively better methods of tissue and organ preservation, refinements in histocompatibility matching, and numerous innovations is surgical techniques. Such efforts in combination ultimately made it possible to successfully engraft all of the organs and bone marrow cells in humans. At a more fundamental level, however, the transplantation enterprise hinged on two seminal turning points. The first was the recognition by Billingham, Brent, and Medawar in 1953 that it was possible to induce chimerism-associated neonatal tolerance deliberately. This discovery escalated over the next 15 years to the first successful bone marrow transplantations in humans in 1968. The second turning point was the demonstration during the early 1960s that canine and human organ allografts could self-induce tolerance with the aid of immunosuppression. By the end of 1962, however, it had been incorrectly concluded that turning points one and two involved different immune mechanisms. The error was not corrected until well into the 1990s. In this historical account, the vast literature that sprang up during the intervening 30 years has been summarized. Although admirably documenting empiric progress in clinical transplantation, its failure to explain organ allograft acceptance predestined organ recipients to lifetime immunosuppression and precluded fundamental changes in the treatment policies. After it was discovered in 1992 that long-surviving organ transplant recipient had persistent microchimerism, it was possible to see the mechanistic commonality of organ and bone marrow transplantation. A clarifying central principle of immunology could then be synthesized with which to guide efforts to induce tolerance systematically to human tissues and perhaps ultimately to xenografts

Community based train locating system (CBTLS)

Rail transportation has been considered as a main mode oftransportation in Sri Lanka since a long time. Therefore it is important to further develop and enhance railway transportation as an alternative method of transportation, especially considering the traffic congestion that could be observed in city areas. With the advancement of information technology, over the past time there have been many attempts to enhance the quality of railway services, but despite ofthem, some major concerns for the train passengers in Sri Lanka still remaining unsolved to date. The main objective of this project is to propose and implement a crowdsourced real time train tracking system based on GPS named Community Based Train Locating System (CBTLS), for the benefit of train passengers and train transportation of Sri Lanka, aiming to address the major concerns and enhance the railway service. CBTLS is a community based (crowdsourced) system, therefore data is retrieved from the train passengers, and then organized, processed and analyzed by the system, and resulting information and predictions is given back to the train passengers. The proposed system consists of a native Android mobile application and a Web application. Any train passenger with a smart mobile device or a computer would be able to access the system through internet, update the train locations, compartment details, and view current and/or last known locations of a train, view analysis, predictions and suggestions on train schedules. Other than static train schedules, rest of the data required for system’s functionality is acquired from the train passengers, hence the system is community based. As an additional feature, a location aware alarm clock is integrated into the native android application, for the use of passengers to indicate when their destination has been reached. Other than train passengers, the system consists of an administrative functionality as well. System administrators hold responsibility to control and overview the user accounts created by train passengers and manage static master data. With this system, it is expected to facilitate train passengers to make better travelling decisions by providing required information for them, hence facilitating efficient usage ofrailway services

Memory and superposition in a spin glass - art. no. 092401

Nonequilibrium dynamics in a Ag(Mn) spin glass are investigated by measurements of the temperature dependence of the remanent magnetization. Using specific cooling protocols before recording the thermo- or isothermal remanent magnetizations on reheating,</p

Coexistence of ferromagnetic and glassy behavior in the La0.5Sr0.5CoO3 perovskite compound

Dc magnetization, ac susceptibility, and zero-field-cooled relaxation measurements are carried out for a cluster glass compound of La0.5Sr0.5CoO3. The temperature dependence of the magnetic properties could be distinguished into two regimes: a high-temper</p

Effects of Mg-doping in Nd0.7Sr0.3Mn1-yMgyO3(y &lt;= 0.3)

The magnetic transition temperature, T-c, of Nd0.7Sr0.3Mn1-yMgyO3 decreases with increasing y. In between y = 0.1 and 0.2 the system undergoes a transition from being conducting and ferromagnetic to become insulating and spin glass like. This study is foc</p