OBJECTIVE To determine the effectiveness of a sanitation campaign that combines 'shaming' (i.e. emotional motivators) with subsidies for poor households in rural Orissa, an Indian state with a disproportionately high share of India's child mortality. METHODS Using a cluster-randomized design, we selected 20 treatment and 20 control villages in the coastal district of Bhadrak, rural Orissa, fo...

To the Editor: Buruli ulcer (BU), caused by Mycobacterium ulcerans, is one of 13 recently classifi ed neglected tropical diseases (1). Little is known about factors infl uencing its focal distribution. In Benin, altitude may play a role in such distribution of BU. Incidence, prevalence, and other health-related data are usually reported at national or district levels. These data convey the impo...

OBJECTIVE To assess the effects of provided fluoride-safe drinking-water for the prevention and control of endemic fluorosis in China. DESIGN A national cross-sectional study in China. SETTING In 1985, randomly selected villages in 27 provinces (or cities and municipalities) in 5 geographic areas all over China. PARTICIPANTS Involved 81 786 children aged from 8 to 12 and 594 698 adults ag...

OBJECTIVE Trachoma (Chlamydia-triggered blinding infection) provoked irreversible visual impairment in about 8 million people in 2011, and the prevalence among children with dirty faces is more than three fold that among children with clean faces. In 250 villages with a high prevalence of trachoma (Kolofata district, Far North Region, Cameroon), the lack of water for facial cleanliness was repo...

Nine districts in West Bengal, India, and 42 districts in Bangladesh have arsenic levels in groundwater above the World Health Organization maximum permissible limit of 50 microg/L. The area and population of the 42 districts in Bangladesh and the 9 districts in West Bengal are 92,106 km(2) and 79.9 million and 38,865 km(2) and 42.7 million, respectively. In our preliminary study, we have ident...

We develop a star-network of connections between a central city and peripheral villages and analyze the epidemic dynamics of a vector-borne disease as influenced by daily commuters. We obtain an analytical solution for the global basic reproductive number R0 and investigate its dependence on key parameters for disease control. We find that in a star-network topology the central hub is not alway...

BACKGROUND Hypertension is not considered to be a characteristic of endemic nephropathy (EN). Recent observations suggested that it might be more prevalent than it was reported before. AIM The aim of our study was to analyze prevalence, treatment and control of hypertension in a Croatian endemic area. METHODS In the present cross-sectional study, 1,602 farmers were enrolled, 1,246 from EN a...

Human plague in the Western Usambara Mountains in Tanzania has been a public health problem since the first outbreak in 1980. The wildlife reservoir is unknown and eradication measures that have proved effective elsewhere in Tanzania appear to fail in this region. We use census data from 2002 and hospital records kept since 1986 to describe the temporal, spatial and demographic variation in hum...

This paper provides evidence concerning political participation (turnout, awareness, attendance at meetings, campaign involvement, voting) and its relation to local governance (targeting of public services) in a developing country, based on a rural household survey in West Bengal, India. We find that reported participation rates varied remarkably little with socio-economic status, with the exce...

A study was carried out in six villages located at different altitudes in Mpwapwa district of central Tanzania to determine malaria parasitaemia and transmission levels in villages with or without health care facilities. A total of 1119 schoolchildren (age = 5.9-12.3 years) were examined for malaria parasitaemia. Plasmodiumfalciparum was the predominant malaria species accounting for 92.8% of a...