Tropical medicine & international health : TM & IH
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Trop. Med. Int. Health · Jan 2005
Temporal relationship between the occurrence of fresh noma and the timing of linear growth retardation in Nigerian children.
Fresh noma (cancrum oris) occurs predominantly in children <4 years of age. The key risk factors are poverty, malnutrition and infections. Evolution from an intraoral inflammation to a grotesque oro-facial gangrene is very rapid. ⋯ These results suggest that occurrence of fresh noma was probably programmed very early in life by malnutrition and chronic infections resulting from replacement of breast milk with contaminated, inferior substitutes. Although not investigated, we speculate that children with fresh noma might also be victims of intrauterine growth retardation as noma is most prevalent during the infantile phase of child growth which starts at mid-gestation and tails off at 4 years.
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Trop. Med. Int. Health · Jan 2005
Disparities in parasitic infections, perceived ill health and access to health care among poorer and less poor schoolchildren of rural Côte d'Ivoire.
Differences in the state of health between rural and urban populations living in Africa have been described, yet only few studies analysed inequities within poor rural communities. We investigated disparities in parasitic infections, perceived ill health and access to formal health services among more than 4000 schoolchildren from 57 primary schools in a rural area of western Côte d'Ivoire, as measured by their socioeconomic status. In a first step, we carried out a cross-sectional parasitological survey. ⋯ The poorest school-attending children lived significantly further away from formal health services than their richer counterparts. Our study provides evidence for inequities among schoolchildren's parasitic infection status, perceived ill health and access to health care in a large rural part of Côte d'Ivoire. These findings call for more equity-balanced parasitic disease control interventions, which in turn might be an important strategy for poverty alleviation.