BACKGROUND The Romanian health system is struggling to retain its health workers, who are currently facing strong incentives for migration to Western European health systems. Retention issues, coupled with high levels of migration, complicate Romania's efforts in providing basic health services for rural, underserved, and marginalized populations, as well as in achieving equitable health access...

AdamSmith’s account of themoral sentiments resonateswithmodern themes in evolutionary biology. His distinction between our reasons and the reasons for these reasons recalls the evolutionary biologist’s emphasis on different levels of causal explanation. In this view, the proximate goals of our psychologicalmotivations are different in kind from the ultimate reasons why we have evolved these mot...

We propose a new evolution model for large strain elastoplasticity. In a quasi-static setting the suggested model can be formulated as a variational evolution. We establish existence of a closely related evolution in a regularized context. We then discuss how the proposed model performs in both a rigid-plastic, and a one-dimensional settings and compare the results with those that could be achi...

The shortage of doctors, especially in remote areas, is a critical issue for the development of national health systems and has thus been the focus of a number of international cooperation projects. An exploratory and qualitative study was conducted to examine cooperation between Brazil, Angola and Cuba. A nonsystematic literature review was conducted of selected open access articles and offici...

The MEPS (musculoskeletal--eyestrain--psychosocial--stress) study involved an extensive degree of multidisciplinary and multicultural cooperation. The objective was to examine the effects of multiple ergonomic interventions on visual, musculoskeletal, postural, and psychosocial outcomes amongst operators of visual display terminals (VDTs). The inherent complexity of a comprehensive ergonomic in...

Rare diseases research in China can be traced back to the 1980s. Currently, control of rare diseases has become a national concern. This paper describes developments concerning rare diseases in China with regard to epidemiology, case registration, basic research, establishment of medical networks, and orphan drugs. A national program for rare disease research is being implemented in China to pr...

DRAFT * The views expressed in this paper are personal and should not be attributed to the World Bank. 1 Introduction A major policy issue for many developing countries is to foster further integration into the world economy. This note discusses the role competition policy can play in the context of efforts to promote the restructuring the economy, focusing in particular on the relationship wit...

There is fortunately increasing international awareness of the problem of needless blindness from trachoma and enhanced international cooperation. This is exemplified by the World Health Organization Alliance for the Global Elimination of Blinding Trachoma by 2020 (GET 2020), the World Health Assembly resolution 51.11, 1998, and the inclusion of trachoma as a priority under the disease control ...