BioMed Central Blog
Reduction
in maternal morbidity is the fifth of the UN Millennium Development Goals. To achieve this, the
aim is to have 90% of births in low and middle income countries attended by a
skilled birth attendant (SBA). Whilst difficult to definitively prove, it is
estimated that the attendance of a SBA could prevent between 16-33% of maternal
deaths.
This study, published in BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, estimates the numbers of non-SBA births that will occur between 2011-2015. The information is intended to inform policy makers and to assist them in the instigation of measures, which look to decrease the risks posed to mothers giving birth in the absence of a SBA.
The calculations are based on current SBA attendance and a prediction of the increase in rural and urban populations. Several varyingly optimistic scenarios were considered, based on the success of the Development Goal. Unfortunately, the conservative estimation of the number of non-SBA births in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa between 2011-2015 was between 130 and 180 million.
Whilst significant efforts are being undertaken to provide SBA attendance at more births, it is apparent that this target will not be met. Additional measures must be taken to ensure the safety of mothers in births that are unattended.
Posted by Georgina Giddens at 15:34 Comments (0)
Infants' failure to regain birth weight in Africa
It is one of the Millennium Development Goals that, by 2015, the under-five morbidity rate should be reduced by a third. Whilst significant amounts of work are ongoing to achieve this target, there are still almost 4 million deaths worldwide within the first month of life.
Healthy newborns tend to lose approximately 8-15% of birth weight in the first 7 days of life, but regain this weight within 21 days postpartum. A study, in BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, investigates this phenomena in low birth weight (LBW) infants in Uganda. Unfortunately, it was found that 48% of LBW infants had not regained their birth weight within the 21-day period. The length of hopitalisation and the provision of the first feed postpartum were both associated with this inability to regain birth weight.
Findings such as this, and the estimation that LBW infants are 13 times more likely to die than normal birth weight infants along with the fact that almost 96% of LBW infants being born in developing countries, indicate a serious hurdle to achieving the Millennium Development Goals.
Posted by Georgina Giddens at 13:42 Comments (0)
Relatively little is known about the status and population of the snow leopard (Panthera uncia); it is believed that there may be somewhere between 350 and 500 distributed across Nepal's northern frontier. This lack of knowledge is due to the snow leopard's secretive behaviour, its inaccessible habitat, and the sparse distribution of its population. Although information regarding its population distribution is limited, it is believed, sadly, that its numbers are dwindling.
A study published recently in BMC Research Notes is the first wildlife genetics research to come out of Nepal, and is a collaborative effort between (amongst others) the World Wildlife Fund and the Nepalese Center for Molecular Dynamics. It seeks ultimately to work towards facilitating the conservation of the snow leopard by using genetic analysis to demonstrate that the snow leopard’s population is actually much smaller than previously thought, whilst establishing a more realistic estimate of the status of this fascinating animal.
By utilising alternative non-invasive methods involving the analysis of scat samples collected from two sites in Nepal, it was possible to acquire more accurate statistics regarding the endangered animal's distribution. They found that only 19 of the original 71 samples were actually P. Uncia; of these 19 samples only, 10 were successfully genotyped. These were found to come from nine individual snow leopards; three males and six females.
Lead author Dibesh Karmacharya commented, "This method has the advantage over traditional methods - it is non-invasive and does not require us to disturb the cats in any way. We have also been able to show that traditional methods of counting snow leopards overestimate the size of the population."
The hope is that further research into this endangered animal will follow, resulting in a deeper understanding of its behaviour, thereby facilitating its conservation. Mr. Karmacharya went on to say “With more (and fresher) samples we will be able to investigate the family relationships, genetic diversity, social structure and territories of snow leopards, and better understand how to conserve this endangered animal."
Posted by Gabriella Anderson at 17:09 Comments (0)
The Global Open Access Portal: A snapshot of open access progress worldwide
The Global Open Access Portal (GOAP), recently launched by UNESCO,
offers a current snapshot of the status of open access to scientific
information around the world. It is designed to provide the necessary
information for policy-makers to learn about the global open access environment
and to view their country’s status to understand where and why open access has
been most successful. For scientists and medical researchers in low income
countries, restricted access to research can be a major impediment to their
work, and can mean the difference between life and death. Enabling researchers
to access and publish their work without
barriers is a major step towards helping scientists in developing
countries to tackle the problems outlined in the millennium development goals,
of hunger, health and poverty. The open
access movement is now attracting the global recognition it deserves and many
organizations are working together to find ways to make open access a reality
across the globe. Open Access Africa, for example, is a collection of initiatives, led by BioMed Central, which are
designed to increase the output and visibility of scientific research published
by African research institutes. The initiatives include a commitment to allow
researchers from low income countries to publish their research in open access
journals without
incurring any charges, a Membership
scheme for institutions in those countries to help members to promote open
access within their institutions, and an annual Open
Access Africa conference. However, our initiative is only one of numerous
initiatives run by various organizations globally.
In order to alert interested parties to these schemes and to help make open access a reality, excellent up-to-date information is needed. GOAP has now joined initiatives such as the OSI-supported Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook (OASIS), led by foremost open access experts Dr Alma Swan and Professor Leslie Chan, and Peter Suber’s authoritative monthly report on the status of OA. It offers researchers a complete overview of the services and support available to them both locally and internationally. The portal will allow researchers to develop and sustain their open access policies, which will improve access to research and lead to more effective research. Detailed, region-specific information will offer inspiration and help to researchers and institutions to set up an open access journal, an institutional repository or an open access advocacy campaign, and will act as a reference source to show how others went about their open access developments and with which possible partnerships. The more we can encourage open access to research the quicker scientific, social and economic development can progress.
Posted by Guy Melzack at 16:04 Comments (0)
Advancing diagnosis of HIV-infected infants
HIV is known as one of the world's leading infectious killers, and remains one of the most challenging global epidemics. This week WHO has released its Report on the global HIV/AIDS response, it is the fifth annual report from WHO, UNICEF and UNAIDS, amongst other collaborators, which provides an update of the HIV epidemic and health sector progress in 2010. 
The report reflects on the key areas highlighted for development, which include updates to health sector interventions for HIV prevention; improving treatment and care for people living with HIV, increasing knowledge around HIV, increasing availability of HIV services for women and children and current progress on elimination of mother to child transmission by 2015.
Although the aim of eliminating mother to child transmission by 2015 is an ambitious goal to achieve, several African countries including South Africa have already made significant progress by providing antiretrovirals to 80% of infected pregnant women.
HIV-infected infants have a high mortality rate, and although recent recommendations by WHO are to treat HIV infected infants as soon their HIV status is known, diagnostic testing commonly occurs when the infant is approximately 6 weeks old. Whilst the recent report demonstrates there have been improvements in many areas, of 65 reporting countries, approximately only 28% of infants born to mothers living with HIV received an HIV test within the first two months of life.
An article recently published in BMC Pediatrics initiates the development of a clinical algorithm for presumptive HIV diagnosis in infants less than 10 weeks old, using screening data such as weight-for-age, more lymphadenopathy (disease of lympnodes), oral thrush, enlarged spleen, enlarged liver, and anaemia for example. Applications of this algorithm would mean that infants with a high probability of HIV infection can be fast-tracked for early diagnosis and treatment, essential in areas with limited resources and where there is increased exposure to HIV.
Earlier this month marked the annual United Nations Universal Children's Day held on 20th November. The aims of this global day directly impact the efforts of the WHO collaborative Global HIV/AIDS response group, and researchers worldwide advancing HIV science.
Posted by Shivani Patel at 14:57 Comments (0)
Open Access Africa 2011: A brief report
Guest blog by Pablo de Castro, GrandIR, speaker at Open Access Africa
2011
The first Open Access Africa conference, which was held
in November 2010 at Jomo Kenyatta University in Nairobi, was originally planned
to be a one-time event. However, the enthusiasm and insistent calls by conference
attendees to hold further Open Access Africa conference editions resulted in the
second Open Access Africa being
scheduled from October 25-26 2011 at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science
and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi, Ghana. The conference, organized
by BioMed Central, aimed to bring together researchers, librarians and funding
bodies from within and outside of Africa to discuss the benefits of open access
publishing in an African context.
The number of attendees at Open Access Africa events keeps increasing; at
this year’s event more than 150 representatives from various African countries including
Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia and Sudan were in attendance at KNUST to listen to the talks on different open
access-related subjects.
A large number of presentations regarding open access projects and initiatives
being presently carried out in Africa
were held at the recent event, such as the UN Economic Commission for
Africa (ECA) Institutional Repository, launched
last May in Addis Ababa (presented by Irene Onyancha, UNECA Chief Librarian),
promotion of open access availability of case reports (by Joseph Ana, British Medical
Journal West Africa), KNUST open access
Institutional Repository (Helena Assamoah-Hassan, KNUST Library) and the OASCIR Project for setting up the first Sudanese Institutional Repository (Pablo de
Castro, GrandIR). However, the Open Access Africa 2011 talks had a somewhat wider
scope, with presentations such as those by Google Ghana or mPedigree, a successful Ghanaian startup for fighting drug counterfeiting in
Africa, going beyond open access into specific technological application
initiatives; arising a remarkable interest along the round table held right after
the talks.
On day one at the event, Deborah Kahn, Publishing Director at BioMed Central,
had offered an overview of open access in developing countries. She
showed how connectivity is gradually improving in Africa
and how that gives way to other issues such as access to computers and computer
skills, research funding, research literature, skills to write research papers
and where to publish research works. The
Open Access Africa 2011 conference was a very good opportunity for discussing
all these issues, with Mathew Harvey from Department for International
Development (DFID) providing the funders' viewpoint, Edanz
introducing support programmes for English
language research paper editing and Gladys Muhunyo, Director of Computer Aid Kenya, describing their intensive work for supplying low-cost
technology to partners in many African countries.
There was also a lively interest from local media to reflect the
scientific event being held at KNUST, and interviews with Carrie Calder, BioMed
Central Head of Marketing and Digital Sales, were performed as a result at Focus FM and by a local TV
station.
There was also an Open Access Africa 2011 poster section, in which
initiatives such as EU FP7 Africa Build Project, aiming to
build a research and educational infrastructure for Africa, or the Nigerian experience at developing Open Access, by Oluwatoyosi Owoeye from the College of Medicine at University of
Lagos, were featured.
Posted by Tara Cronin at 11:32 Comments (0)
Views of an Open Access Africa 2011 delegate: Open access and the unlimited benefits
Guest
article by Dr. Tobias Innocent Ndubuisi Ezejiofor, Federal University of Technology,
Owerri, Nigeria.
The benefits of open access are unlimited. As a medical and
environmental scientist involved in biological and environmental monitoring and
always needing to analyze human and environmental specimens, three major
factors are critical to me: background information on the theme of interest, analytical technique and equipment to carry through the desired analyses and less
cumbersome publication processes that would also guarantee visibility of my
work.
In all these, Western scientists and researchers have always had the upper hand because of the leaner resource base of people in Africa and the developing world. Information is power yet access to information is restricted because of the need to subscribe to sources, especially journals, and in most cases this has to be done in, often stronger, foreign currencies. A major consequence of this is inhibition to information flow. It is in this connection that open access has done a lot in creating a level playing ground to all scientists and researchers in terms of access to available information. Through open access, my research efforts have been greatly enhanced and my work made more visible, as attested to by sundry requests from across the world. For us in Africa, open access means liberation from information inhibitions and from research/publication visibility clouds. Indeed the trappings/benefits of open access can hardly be over estimated that I am sufficiently led to say that I see a great future for quality research and publication outputs for and from African Scientists and professionals through the open access initiative.
Posted by Tara Cronin at 09:04 Comments (1)
Open Access Africa 2011: Speaker presentations, images and poster abstracts available online
Open
Access Africa 2011, a BioMed Central and Computer Aid International event, was
hosted at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana, during Open Access Week 2011.
All presentations,
delivered by representatives from Google,
British Medical Journal (BMJ), Department for International Development (DFID),
Pan African Medical Journal
and the United Nations Economic Commission for
Africa (UNECA), are now available online, together with conference
images and poster
abstracts. Videos of all presentations will follow shortly.
The conference, now in its second year, discussed open
access publishing in an African context and the diverse programme offered insights
from library, funding and technology perspectives as part of Open Access Africa, a collection of
initiatives designed to increase the output and visibility of scientific
research published by African learning institutes.
The birth of Sudan’s first Institutional
Repository, created by the University of Khartoum, was a direct result of a
meeting held last year at Open
Access Africa 2010. What further developments will be sparked by this
year’s event?
Dr. Tobias I. Ndubuisi Ezejiofor, one of the attending
delegates, commented, ‘For us in Africa, open access means liberation from
information inhibitions and from research/publication visibility clouds. Indeed
the trappings and benefits of open access can hardly be over estimated that I
am sufficiently led to say: “I see a great future for quality research and
publication outputs for and from African scientists and professionals through the open access initiative.”’
Advocate. Share the presentation
link. And help ensure a great future for African science.
Posted by Tara Cronin at 10:26 Comments (1)
The Blossoming of Open Access in Africa
Last week, I returned from Ghana, where BioMed Central and ComputerAid were running the 2nd annual Open
Access Africa conference. The conference was hosted by Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and
Technology (KNUST) and ran like clockwork due to the outstanding efforts of
the University Librarian, Helena Asamoah-Hassan, and her team. Mrs Asamoah-Hassan
is a leader in open access developments in Africa ; KNUST implemented the first
Institutional Repository in
Ghana, was the first Foundation
Member of BioMed Central, and the
Vice Chancellor is in the process of signing the Berlin Declaration. On these merits it was a really
appropriate venue to hold the conference.
I have been to a lot of open access talks over the last years, and these days rarely hear much that makes me sit up and listen. This conference was different. Here were a group of exceptionally motivated people, doing extraordinary things with few resources and showing how open access really can change lives. It was inspiring. It also raised some questions to consider.
The need for African based open access journals, and the issues with funding them, was a theme throughout the conference. African journals publish research which is relevant to Africa and needs to be accessible to other African researchers. Lesley Chan from Bioline used the example of Professor Mary Abukutsa-Onyango’s research into African indigenous vegetables, as an example of why important research relevant to the continent needs to be published in open access journals, which can be read and the results applied in Africa.
There is much support for African journals to be published under an open access model, but this does raise the question of sustainability. Many open access publishers, such as BioMed Central, waive the Article Processing Charge (APC) automatically for researchers in low-income countries. However, as open access gains momentum in these countries, this may not remain a sustainable option, so it was interesting to hear the Vice Dean of the Medical School at KNUST, Yaw Adu-Sarkodie, saying that he would always pay the APC when his work has the funding to do so even if he was offered a waiver, enabling others who did not have funding to get published.
Another aspect of this was raised by Raoul Kamadjeu who founded and runs the Pan African Medical Journal , an open access journal. Only a couple of years old, it is an outstanding success, having received over 800 submissions this year alone. However with this success, it needs urgently to consider how it will fund itself in the future. He asks “with the international publishers granting waivers to African authors, how can I persuade them to pay an APC?”.
A conversation needs to continue on these issues.
Institutional Repositories are playing a big part in making African research open and in raising the visibility of the research in many universities, and we were presented with interesting views of experiences of building repositories from Helena Asamoah-Hassan of KNUST and from Irene Ochyancha from the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). It was especially exciting for us to hear from Pablo de Castro that the new Institutional Repository built at the University of Khartoum was a direct result of a meeting held at the first Open Access Africa conference.
At this conference, many more relationships were forged and ideas hatched. New open access groups were formed at the conference for Nigeria and Ghana. We look forward to hearing next year at Open Access Africa 2012 about the blossoming of open access in Africa, and the new developments which will doubtless have been born at this conference.
Posted by Deborah Kahn at 17:03 Comments (0)
Tunisia: Plant extracts from Nitraria retusa induce apoptosis in human cancer cells
Plant extracts have long been used in
traditional medicines to treat a variety of ailments and diseases. One such plant is Nitraria
retusa, a salt-tolerant bush
native to the deserts of Northern Africa. Its ashes have the ability to remove
fluids from infected wounds and, in Morocco, the leaves are used to treat cases of
poisoning, upset stomach, ulcers, gastritis, enteritis, heartburn, colitis and
colonic abdominal pain. The
effectiveness of these remedies was often cast into doubt and they became
labelled as ‘alternative therapies’.
More recently, however, studies into plant compounds have found that
they may have a role to play in the treatment of various diseases, including
cancer.
The evasion of apoptosis through the blocking of cell signaling pathways has long been established as a common feature of cancer cells. Certain plant extracts have been shown to activate apoptotic pathways and it is thought that these could play an important role in the treatment of cancer by promoting the apoptosis of cancerous cells and restricting the concurrent death of normal cells.