THE World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that 500 000 women in developing countries die every year from complications of pregnancy, abortion attempts, and childbirth.’ 100-300 maternal deaths per 100 000 births are common in the Third World, and rates are much higher in rural areas.2 In contrast developed countries have only 7-15 maternal deaths per 100 000 live births. Morbidity rates are...

Background: Poverty leads to many social ills including suicide. Hanging is the method of choice for a poor person in committing suicide. Transkei is one of the poor regions of the Eastern Cape in South Africa. Objective: To study the trend of suicides in Transkei region and to follow the link between suicide and poverty. Method: This is a retrospective study from 1996 to 2006, carried out at M...

BACKGROUND 94% of all birth defects (BD) and 95% of deaths due to the BD occur in low and middle income countries, many of which are preventable. In Tanzania, there is currently a paucity of BD data necessary to develop data informed prevention activities. METHODS A cross-sectional analysis was conducted of deliveries identified with BD in the labor ward registers at four Dar es Salaam hospit...

the loss of a child is a tragedy - families suffer and human potential is wasted. 6.3 million children under the age of five died in 2013, nearly 17 000 every day. most deaths among children aged one to five years are due to diseases that can be prevented, but that can also be easily treated at home or in health facilities. leading causes of death in under-five children are preterm birth compli...

OBJECTIVES To conduct the first population-level incidence study of aortic dissection in pregnancy using linked hospital-based data in England. SETTING Hospital-based data (Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) linked with mortality data from the Office of National Statistics), national enquiries (Confidential Enquiries into Maternal Mortality) and surveys (UK Obstetric Surveillance System; UKOSS...

Cholera is an acute diarrheal infection caused by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The causative agent of this disease was originally described by Filippo Pacini in 1854, and afterwards further analyzed by Robert Koch in 1884. It is estimated that each year there are 1.3 million to 4 million cases of cholera, and 21 000 to 143 000 deaths worldwide ...

Dengue/dengue haemorrhagic fever is the leading cause of death from the declared infectious diseases in children in southern Vietnam. The dengue epidemic in 1998 was an extensive one, with the morbidity rate of 455 cases/100 000 pop. and mortality rate of 1.27/100 000 pop. DEN-3 was the predominant serotype. However, in 1999, there was a lower morbidity (80.7 cases/100 000) and a lower mortalit...

background and objectives: infection with parvovirus may induce spontaneous abortion, non-immune hydrops fetalis, and intrauterine death in full term infants. the aim of this study was to determine the frequency of parvovirus b19 in paraffin-embedded formalin fixed placental tissues in lost fetuses by pcr method and comparison with its frequency in healthy full term neonates as controls. mater...

This review will be limited specifically to the beneficial prevention by the n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) of arrhythmic deaths, including sudden cardiac death, which annually causes some 300 000 deaths in the United States and millions more worldwide. We will also show that the growing body of positive clinical studies is supported by what has been learned in animal and laboratory st...