Highly sensitive case definitions were first introduced by national poliomyelitis eradication programmes to avoid missing true cases of the disease, though false-positive diagnostic errors could still occur owing to low specificity. Extensive data from all 1620 cases of acute, flaccid paralysis reported in Brazil during 1987-88 provided an opportunity to study the characteristics of confirmed p...

INTRODUCTION Public Health Innovation and Research in Europe (PHIRE), building on previous European collaborative projects, was developed to assess national uptake and impacts of European public health innovations, to describe national public health research programmes, strategies and structures and to develop participation of researchers through the organizational structures of the European Pu...

The implementation of guidelines released by the National Resuscitation Council in 2006 involved all the main areas of resuscitation, especially basic life support and defibrillation. The emphasis was on community training, creation of simplified programmes, combining cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and defibrillation, and using simpler training devices. As a result, public access defibrill...

A survey of publicly funded research specifically targeting alternatives to animal testing was conducted over 2006/2007. Responses were received from 16 European countries (Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom). The responses were compiled by national agencies or nati...

The Kenya Ophthalmic Programme (KOP) is a Ministry of Health (MOH) programme receiving administrative support from the Kenya Society for the Blind (KSB). It started as a small project in 1956 but has grown into a major National Programme rendering comprehensive eye care (CEC) through a network of about 70 Government and NGO static and outreach service delivery points scattered all over the coun...

Sure Start local programmes (SSLPs), the forerunners to Sure Start Children’s Centres, aim to support young children and their families by integrating early education, childcare, healthcare and family support services in disadvantaged areas. The programmes aim to improve the health and well-being of families and young children, so that the children will have a greater opportunity to do well in ...

The Ministry of Health of Slovenia decided to support the introduction of two new organised screening programmes for cancer, one for breast and the other for colon cancer in 2005. This was an addition to the first, already running, programme for cervical cancer. Two of them are entrusted to the Institute of Oncology while the National CINDI programme takes care of the third one. Besides connect...

BACKGROUND Over thirty years have passed since the Alma-Ata Declaration on primary health care in 1978. Many governments in the first decade following the declaration responded by developing national programmes of community health workers (CHWs), but evaluations of these often demonstrated poor outcomes. As many CHW programmes have responded to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, international interest in t...

This paper compares the performance of engineering education programmes in India under varied management styles. The comparison is based on the scores allotted to various engineering programmes by the expert teams of National Board of Accreditation, India. The study has been formulated on the statistical techniques of hypothesis testing and multiple comparisons on the performance scores of 160 ...