Articles: health.
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Comparative Study
HIV infection and breast-feeding: policy implications through a decision analysis model.
(1) To develop a comprehensive decision analysis model to compare mortality associated with HIV transmission from breast-feeding with the mortality from not breast-feeding in different populations and (2) to perform sensitivity analyses to illustrate critical boundaries for guiding research and policy. ⋯ Based on available data, the model supports current World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control recommendations on HIV infection and breast-feeding. Given the importance of breast-feeding and the global impact of HIV infection, more research is needed, especially to clarify the range of HIV transmission rates from breast-feeding and to expand specific assessments of relative risks for different areas of the world.
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Innovative home care programs, providing a variety of services to persons with HIV infection and their families and reflecting different health, political, cultural, social, and philosophical concepts, have been developed in Africa, starting in 1987. In 1989 the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Programme on AIDS conducted a descriptive study of some of these programs. It is hoped that these experiences will assist planners and health care providers in their decision making and thereby benefit persons with HIV infection and their families. The lessons learned about the context, backgrounds, structure, process, and outcome of the six selected home care programs can be used and adapted by policymakers and program planners in their own settings when deciding on "their" model of home care.
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As Asia becomes increasingly urbanized the effect of new industrial development on child mortality becomes of increasing interest. In India, considerable investment has been made in the social infrastructure of industrial new towns. This survey of Durgapur steel town in West Bengal shows that although the average level of child mortality in the working class population is favourable in comparison with other Indian cities, considerable differentials, that can be related to social, economic and environmental differences within the population, have arisen since the creation of the city in the late 1950s. The paper argues that the undertaking of selective sanitary interventions to improve access to drinking water (in particular) would be administratively feasible in these industrial new towns, of immediate impact, and indeed necessary if the differentials in mortality are to be eliminated.