Articles: health.
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Conflict and health · Jan 2013
Syrian refugees, between rocky crisis in Syria and hard inaccessibility to healthcare services in Lebanon and Jordan.
Around 3% of the world's population (n = 214 million people) has crossed international borders for various reasons. Since March 2011, Syria has been going through state of political crisis and instability resulting in an exodus of Syrians to neighbouring countries. More than 1 million Syrian refugees are residents of Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Egypt and North Africa. The international community must step up efforts to support Syrian refugees and their host governments.
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To review the epidemiological evidence for vegetarian diets, low-meat dietary patterns and their association with health status in adults. ⋯ The health benefits of vegetarian diets are not unique. Prudent plant-based dietary patterns which also allow small intakes of red meat, fish and dairy products have demonstrated significant improvements in health status as well. At this time an optimal dietary intake for health status is unknown. Plant-based diets contain a host of food and nutrients known to have independent health benefits. While vegetarian diets have not shown any adverse effects on health, restrictive and monotonous vegetarian diets may result in nutrient deficiencies with deleterious effects on health. For this reason, appropriate advice is important to ensure a vegetarian diet is nutritionally adequate especially for vulnerable groups.
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BMC Int Health Hum Rights · Nov 2012
Experiences, opportunities and challenges of implementing task shifting in underserved remote settings: the case of Kongwa district, central Tanzania.
⋯ Task shifting implementation occurs as an ad hoc coping mechanism to the existing shortages of health workers in many undeserved areas of the country, not just in the study site whose findings are reported in this paper. It is recommended that the most important thing to do now is not to determine whether task shifting is possible or effective but to define the limits of task shifting so as to reach a consensus on where it can have the strongest and most sustainable impact in the delivery of quality health services. Any action towards this end needs to be evidence-based.
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In contemporary society, prolonged sitting has been engineered into our lives across many settings, including transportation, the workplace, and the home. There is new evidence that too much sitting (also known as sedentary behavior - which involves very low energy expenditure, such as television viewing and desk-bound work) is adversely associated with health outcomes, including cardio-metabolic risk biomarkers, type 2 diabetes and premature mortality. ⋯ We describe recent evidence from epidemiological and experimental studies that makes a persuasive case that too much sitting should now be considered an important stand-alone component of the physical activity and health equation, particularly in relation to diabetes and cardiovascular risk. We highlight directions for further research and consider some of the practical implications of focusing on too much sitting as a modifiable health risk.