OBJECTIVE Urinary iodine concentration is the prime indicator of nutritional iodine status and is used to evaluate population-based iodine supplementation. In 1994, WHO, UNICEF and ICCIDD recommended median urinary iodine concentrations for populations of 100- 200 micro g/l, assuming the 100 micro g/l threshold would limit concentrations <50 micro g/l to </=20% of people. Some scientists felt t...

In 1987 UNICEF launched the so-called Bamako Initiative, which has as its main objective to improve the sustainability of primary health care in Africa by making people pay for it. The question is raised whether paying for health care is culturally acceptable in African communities. The author argues that 'money' is not a new phenomenon in Africa and that paying for goods and services does not ...

There has been more than a decade of debate about the increase in child poverty during which the former Secretary of State, John Moore, announced 'the end of the line for poverty' (speech text 11 May 1989). Recently the National Children's Bureau has published an authoritative and well documented account commissioned by Unicef for a comparative study of child poverty in the industrialised count...

Entitled Meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) drinking water and sanitation target A mid-term assessment of progress, the report details the progress of individual countries, regions, and the world as a whole between the MDG baseline year of 1990 and the half-way mark of 2002. It makes two significant predictions on reaching the 2015 goals, based on progress to date: • The global sani...

The rationalist approach to strategizing emphasizes analytical and convergent thinking. Without denying the importance of this approach, this book argues that strategists must learn to complement it with a more creative approach to strategizing that emphasizes synthetic and divergent ways of thinking. The theoretical underpinnings of this approach include embodied realism, interpretivism, pract...

Worldwide, Iodine Deficiency Disorder (IDD) remains a significant public health problem in 130 countries, although it has been eliminated in 61 countries (UNICEF / WHO, 2001). It is estimated that approximately 740 million people (13% of total population) are affected by goiter while 2,225 million people (38%) are at risk of IDD. Eastern Mediterranean (32% of its population), Africa (20%), Euro...

Background It is estimated that in some cases up to 50% of vaccines are wasted by not being administered, where these supply chain inefficiencies may be contributing to the deaths of 1.5 million children each year from vaccine-preventable diseases. The GAVI Alliance partners and Secretariat, WHO, UNICEF, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are currently designing a supply chain strategy to ...

Background papers A review of methods to detect cases of severely malnourished children in the community for their admission into community-based therapeutic care programs —M. Myatt, T. Khara, and S. Collins ............ S7 Efficacy and effectiveness of community-based treatment of severe malnutrition —A. Ashworth .......... S24 Key issues in the success of community-based management of severe ...

Trends in child mortality disparities show that within country inequities have remained constant in some countries and worsened in most of the other ones. Only three countries, with relatively small populations which comprise less than 2 per cent of our sample, were able to achieve both a reduction in disparity and improvements (or no decline) in national average U5MR. The evolution of nutritio...

THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL FOR CONTROL OF IODINE DEFICIENCY DISORDERS (ICCIDD) is a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization dedicated to sustained optimal iodine nutrition and the elimination of iodine deficiency throughout the world. Its activities have been supported by the international aid programs of Australia, Canada, Netherlands, USA, and also by funds from UNICEF, the World Bank and othe...