scholarly journals Autism in Developing Countries: Lessons from Iran

2011 ◽  
Vol 2011 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sayyed Ali Samadi ◽  
Roy McConkey

Most research into Autism Spectrum Disorders has been conducted in affluent English-speaking countries which have extensive professional support services. This paper describes a series of investigations that was undertaken in Iran, and these findings, together with reviews of research in other low-income countries, are used to identify key lessons in three areas of service provision of particular relevance to developing countries with scarce professional resources: first, the issues to be considered in establishing the prevalence of the condition nationally; second, identification of parental understanding of ASD and the impact it has on them as carers; third, the education and training that could be provided to families when professional supports are sparse. It is concluded that culturally sensitive, parental support strategies must be central to the planning and development of services. Moreover, future research should further elucidate the needs of families and evaluate the impact of culturally tailored interventions designed to promote the children’s development and overall family quality of life.

Author(s):  
Giorgia Gon ◽  
Abdunoor M. Kabanywanyi ◽  
Petri Blinkhoff ◽  
Simon Cousens ◽  
Stephanie J. Dancer ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Healthcare associated infections (HAI) are estimated to affect up to 15% of hospital inpatients in low-income countries (LICs). A critical but often neglected aspect of HAI prevention is basic environmental hygiene, particularly surface cleaning and linen management. TEACH CLEAN is an educational intervention aimed at improving environmental hygiene. We evaluated the effectiveness of this intervention in a pilot study in three high-volume maternity and newborn units in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Methods This study design prospectively evaluated the intervention as a whole, and offered a before-and-after comparison of the impact of the main training. We measured changes in microbiological cleanliness [Aerobic Colony Counts (ACC) and presence of Staphylococcus aureus] using dipslides, and physical cleaning action using gel dots. These were analysed with descriptive statistics and logistic regression models. We used qualitative (focus group discussions, in-depth interviews, and semi-structured observation) and quantitative (observation checklist) tools to measure why and how the intervention worked. We describe these findings across the themes of adaptation, fidelity, dose, reach and context. Results Microbiological cleanliness improved during the study period (ACC pre-training: 19%; post-training: 41%). The odds of cleanliness increased on average by 1.33 weekly during the pre-training period (CI = 1.11–1.60), and by 1.08 (CI = 1.03–1.13) during the post-training period. Cleaning action improved only in the pre-training period. Detection of S. aureus on hospital surfaces did not change substantially. The intervention was well received and considered feasible in this context. The major pitfalls in the implementation were the limited number of training sessions at the hospital level and the lack of supportive supervision. A systems barrier to implementation was lack of regular cleaning supplies. Conclusions The evaluation suggests that improvements in microbiological cleanliness are possible using this intervention and can be sustained. Improved microbiological cleanliness is a key step on the pathway to infection prevention in hospitals. Future research should assess whether this bundle is cost-effective in reducing bacterial and viral transmission and infection using a rigorous study design.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (22) ◽  
pp. 6249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shahram Heydari ◽  
Adrian Hickford ◽  
Rich McIlroy ◽  
Jeff Turner ◽  
Abdulgafoor M. Bachani

Road safety in low-income countries (LICs) remains a major concern. Given the expected increase in traffic exposure due to the relatively rapid motorisation of transport in LICs, it is imperative to better understand the underlying mechanisms of road safety. This in turn will allow for planning cost-effective road safety improvement programs in a timely manner. With the general aim of improving road safety in LICs, this paper discusses the state of knowledge and proposes a number of future research directions developed from literature reviews and expert elicitation. Our study takes a holistic approach based on the Safe Systems framework and the framework for the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety. We focused mostly on examining the problem from traffic engineering and safety policy standpoints, but also touched upon other sectors, including public health and social sciences. We identified ten focus areas relating to (i) under-reporting; (ii) global best practices; (iii) vulnerable groups; (iv) disabilities; (v) road crash costing; (vi) vehicle safety; (vii) proactive approaches; (viii) data challenges; (ix) social/behavioural aspects; and (x) capacity building. Based on our findings, future research ought to focus on improvement of data systems, understanding the impact of and addressing non-fatal injuries, improving estimates on the economic burden, implementation research to scale up programs and transfer learnings, as well as capacity development. Our recommendations, which relate to both empirical and methodological frontiers, would lead to noteworthy improvements in the way road safety data collection and research is conducted in the context of LICs.


Author(s):  
Giovanni Andrea Cornia

The chapter discusses the reasons whycKeynesian policies and development macroeconomics in low-income countries received any attention relatively late, as well as the factors that led to a gradual acceptance of demand-side measures. It also discusses the data, conceptual, and accounting problems encountered when measuring economic performance in low-income countries, including the importance of self-consumption, barter, unilateral transactions, and unrecorded monetary transactions in the informal economy. All this reduces the impact of monetary and fiscal policies and underline the importance of structural policies. The chapter also discusses the accounting conventions and practices used to overcome such problems, and the impact all this has on the estimates of the main macroeconomic aggregates and the evaluation of the impact of public policies.


2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Joselyne Nájera

<p><strong>Resumen</strong></p><p>Las cadenas de valor global a menudo representan una opción, para las empresas y proveedores locales en los países en desarrollo, para obtener acceso a mercados de alto valor y nuevas tecnologías. Considerando que los beneficios potenciales de las cadenas de valor globales para los países en desarrollo están bien documentados, los estudios que se ocupan del impacto en los países en vías de desarrollo son escasos. El objetivo principal del artículo es analizar los principales retos y oportunidades que se derivan de la inserción de los pequeños agricultores en las cadenas de valor globales. El artículo sugiere que los pequeños agricultores se enfrentan a desafíos y oportunidades para el desarrollo dentro del mercado globalizado actual. Asimismo, se propone un modelo para la inserción sostenible y competitiva que pueda ser puesto en práctica, dado que aspectos como la educación, el acceso a la tecnología, el acceso a las finanzas, el apoyo a las políticas y la innovación pueden contener la clave para convertir una crisis en una oportunidad.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Abstract</strong></p><p>Global value chains often represent an option for local firms and suppliers in developing countries to get access to high-value markets and new technologies. Whereas the potential benefits from global value chains for medium-income developing countries are well documented, the studies dealing with the impact on low-income countries are scarce. The  objective of the article is to analyze the main challenges and opportunities derived from the insertion of small farmers in global value chains.The article suggests that small farmers are intertwined between both challenges and opportunities for development in this globalized market, nonetheless a model for sustainable and competitive insertion can be placed under consideration since aspects like education, access to technology, access to finance, policy support, and innovation can hold the key for turning a crisis into an opportunity.</p>


Author(s):  
Yasmin Bani

This study attempts to tackle the inequality and globalization issue by departing from the usual convention and studying the effect of globalization on another distribution, which is the distribution of human capital. We would like to investigate whether globalization helps to alleviate or worsen inequality in education and benefit everyone in the observed population in the same way in terms of education. Moreover, we would also like to analyze whether the benefit or loss experienced by countries differ across the level of development. Our focus is on the impact of the composite index of globalization as well as its three different dimensions on education inequality. The study shows that the developing countries (low and middle-income countries) do not necessarily benefit from globalization, which clearly contradicts the standard trade theory. This is because we observe the existence of variation of effects within the developing countries itself. Globalization narrows the education gap in low-income countries but it widens the gap in middle-income countries. Additionally, the study also show the importance of social and political globalization, which is often ignored in existing literature. The results are robust to different measures of globalization, exclusion of countries from different regions and inclusion of several control variables.Keywords: Globalization; Human Capital Inequality; System GMM.


2021 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 299-305
Author(s):  
Tania Pastrana ◽  
Liliana De Lima ◽  
Katherine Pettus ◽  
Alison Ramsey ◽  
Genevieve Napier ◽  
...  

Objectives: The COVID-19 pandemic and the measures taken to mitigate spread have affected countries in different ways. Healthcare workers, in particular, have been impacted by the pandemic and by these measures. This study aims to explore how COVID-19 has impacted on palliative care (PC) workers around the world. Materials and Methods: Online survey to members of the International Association for Hospice and PC during the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Convenience sampling was used. Statistical descriptive and contingency analyses and Chi-square tests with P < 0.05 were conducted. Results: Seventy-nine participants (RR = 16%) from 41 countries responded. Over 93% of those who provide direct patient care reported feeling very or somewhat competent in PC provision for patients with COVID-19. Eighty-four felt unsafe or somewhat safe when caring for patients with COVID-19. Level of safety was associated with competence (P ≤ 0.000). Over 80% reported being highly or somewhat affected in their ability to continue working in their PC job, providing care to non-COVID patients and in staff availability in their workplace. About 37% reported that availability and access to essential medicines for PC were highly or somewhat affected, more so in low-income countries (P = 0.003). Conclusion: The results from this study highlight the impact of COVID-19 on the provision of PC. It is incumbent on government officials, academia, providers and affected populations, to develop and implement strategies to integrate PC in pandemic response, and preparedness for any similar future events, by providing appropriate and comprehensive education, uninterrupted access to essential medicines and personal protective equipment and ensure access to treatment and care, working together with all levels of society that is invested in care of individuals and populations at large. The long-term effects of the pandemic are still unknown and future research is needed to monitor and report on the appropriateness of measures.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
M-Nasan Abdul Baki ◽  
Mahmoud Alhaj Hussein

AbstractHealth sciences research is a major tool in exchanging publications and knowledge between the various countries of the world. Researchers in developing countries barely have any financial funding from governmental or educational institutes to support their research. In low-income countries such as Syria, With less than 30$ per month and almost no financial support, Syrian residency doctors are fighting to push the scientific research reality of this ongoing crisis country forward and without a doubt, APC waiver plays a crucial role in this continuing mission.


Actually in some cases, the IMF has a little positive effect on developing economics while has a vast bad effect on all developing economics. The main purpose of the study is to examine the impact of IMF on developing countries. The globalization of the world economy gives rise to large global inequalities. The inequalities are responsible for increasing absolute poverty and starvation. Low-income countries are suffering from financial crises to reduce their absolute poverty and starvation. So they have to depend on IMF and various financial institutions. But the IMF policies are heavily criticized and unhelpful. The IMF sometimes led to an increased dependency of developing countries upon developed countries. The social sectors of developing countries such as the health and education sectors are most affected by these policies. So these policies increase poverty and underdevelopment of the developing world.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 74 (4) ◽  
pp. 648-666
Author(s):  
Francis Notzon

In recent years, interest in breast-feeding and infant-supplementation practices in the developing world has been growing. Numerous community, regional, and national studies have described the patterns of breast-feeding and, to a lesser extent, of supplementation in a wide range of low-income countries. Nevertheless, adequate documentation of national trends in breast-feeding is available for only a small number of developing countries, and trends in supplementation remain to be described. The apparent decline in breast-feeding in the developing world has been the subject of numerous articles describing the impact of this trend on infant morbidity and mortality, fertility levels, and family finances. Frequently, the examples used to illustrate the decrease in breast-feeding are methedologically flawed; they use nonrepresentative or noncomparable samples, for example, or make implicit assumptions about past breast-feeding practices. In spite of such shortcomings, the consistent reports of important declines appear to indicate that some basic changes are taking place in breast-feeding practices in certain areas of the developing world. The fact that these changes seem to be following the general pattern of breast-feeding decline that occurred at earlier times in developed countries adds to their plausibility. Although a general awareness of changes in lactation in the developing world now prevails, the documentation of this trend is far from complete. Even for those countries in which trends have been appropriately measured, the amount and pattern of change may vary widely from country to country. In most of the countries with information on breast-feeding trends, recent declines have occurred, although the decreases range from sharp to moderate.


2005 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 357-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wim Pelupessy ◽  
Luuk Van Kempen

The economic position of small-scale developing country farmers has been observed to weaken in many global agri-food chains. Several studies in the global commodity chain tradition suggest that recent consumer trends in developed country markets are the ultimate cause. However, these studies have not come up with a conceptual framework in which the effects of changing consumer preferences on farmer earnings can be explicitly analysed. This paper makes a first attempt towards building such a framework by drawing mainly on Lancaster's product characteristics approach. Within this framework it is shown how enhanced consumer-orientation in the global food system leads to adverse power shifts for small farmers in low-income countries. As signalled by previous global commodity chain studies, smallholders in developing countries will face growing inequality in intra-chain surplus distribution as well as a higher risk of exclusion from global agri-food chains. We discuss how thinking in terms of product characteristics may also help smallholders to reap a larger share of the surplus in the chain.


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