Suchergebnisse

A traditional fermented cereal-based food made from whole wheat and buttermilk, Kishk Sa'eedi (KS) of Egypt is a millennial food that is home produced in five Governorates of the south of Egypt. It is little known to Egyptians outside the limits of its production area, and in turn, nearly unheard of outside Egypt. Extensively investigated and researched within the European funded "AFTER" FP7 project (African Food Tradition rEvisited by Research) KS revealed appreciable marketable qualities as a safe food of high nutritive value with a long shelf life, a low cost source of quality proteins, as well as possessing certain health attributes. More importantly, it satisfies the passion (Egyptomania) of many westerners for products of ancient Egyptian origin. The challenge was how to manage the situation where the highly marketable product is also a staple food for the rural communities of the KS producing region where the prevailing poverty and undernutrition was aggravated by the three years of political strife following the 25 January 2011 revolution. The paper explains how a win win situation was reached whereby the AFTER project objective of benefiting the national and European food industry from new food processing technologies derived from African traditional foods is realized without depriving the poor KS producing communities from their lifeline. The weaknesses and gaps in the Egyptian laws and regulations and the absence of a national system for protection of cultural heritage and traditional knowledge are reviewed. The AFTER project results were instrumental in providing substantive support for initiation of measures to strengthen national intellectual property rights protection systems for the bearers of traditional knowledge and to guarantee their fair share of benefits and economic returns. (Texte intégral)

Abstract
Background
Somalia has been ravaged by more than two decades of armed conflict causing immense damage to the country's infrastructure and mass displacement and suffering among its people. An influx of humanitarian actors has sought to provide basic services, including health services for women and children, throughout the conflict. This study aimed to better understand the humanitarian health response for women and children in Somalia since 2000.

Methods
The study utilized a mixed-methods design. We collated intervention coverage data from publically available large-scale household surveys and we conducted 32 interviews with representatives from government, UN agencies, NGOs, and health facility staff. Qualitative data were analyzed using latent content analysis.

Results
The available quantitative data on intervention coverage in Somalia are extremely limited, making it difficult to discern patterns or trends over time or by region. Underlying sociocultural and other contextual factors most strongly affecting the humanitarian health response for women and children included clan dynamics and female disempowerment. The most salient operational influences included the assessment of population needs, donors' priorities, and insufficient and inflexible funding. Key barriers to service delivery included chronic commodity and human resource shortages, poor infrastructure, and limited access to highly vulnerable populations, all against the backdrop of ongoing insecurity. Various strategies to mitigate these barriers were discussed. In-country coordination of humanitarian health actors and their activities has improved over time, with federal and state-level ministries of health playing increasingly active roles.

Conclusions
Emerging recommendations include further exploration of government partnerships with private-sector service providers to make services available throughout Somalia free of charge, with further research on innovative uses of technology to help reaches remote and inaccessible areas. To mitigate chronic skilled health worker shortages, more operational research is needed on the expanded use of community health workers. Persistent gaps in service provision across the continuum must be addressed, including for adolescents, for example. The is also a clear need for longer term development focus to enable the provision of health and nutrition services for women and children beyond those included in recurrent emergency response.

Background: Somalia has been ravaged by more than two decades of armed conflict causing immense damage to the country's infrastructure and mass displacement and suffering among its people. An influx of humanitarian actors has sought to provide basic services, including health services for women and children, throughout the conflict. This study aimed to better understand the humanitarian health response for women and children in Somalia since 2000.Methods: The study utilized a mixed-methods design. We collated intervention coverage data from publically available large-scale household surveys and we conducted 32 interviews with representatives from government, UN agencies, NGOs, and health facility staff. Qualitative data were analyzed using latent content analysis.Results: The available quantitative data on intervention coverage in Somalia are extremely limited, making it difficult to discern patterns or trends over time or by region. Underlying sociocultural and other contextual factors most strongly affecting the humanitarian health response for women and children included clan dynamics and female disempowerment. The most salient operational influences included the assessment of population needs, donors' priorities, and insufficient and inflexible funding. Key barriers to service delivery included chronic commodity and human resource shortages, poor infrastructure, and limited access to highly vulnerable populations, all against the backdrop of ongoing insecurity. Various strategies to mitigate these barriers were discussed. In-country coordination of humanitarian health actors and their activities has improved over time, with federal and state-level ministries of health playing increasingly active roles.Conclusions: Emerging recommendations include further exploration of government partnerships with private-sector service providers to make services available throughout Somalia free of charge, with further research on innovative uses of technology to help reaches remote and inaccessible areas. To mitigate chronic skilled health worker shortages, more operational research is needed on the expanded use of community health workers. Persistent gaps in service provision across the continuum must be addressed, including for adolescents, for example. The is also a clear need for longer term development focus to enable the provision of health and nutrition services for women and children beyond those included in recurrent emergency response.

Armed conflict disproportionately affects the morbidity, mortality, and wellbeing of women, newborns, children, and adolescents. Our study presents insights from a collection of ten country case studies aiming to assess the provision of sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health and nutrition interventions in ten conflict-affected settings in Afghanistan, Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. We found that despite large variations in contexts and decision making processes, antenatal care, basic emergency obstetric and newborn care, comprehensive emergency obstetric and newborn care, immunisation, treatment of common childhood illnesses, infant and young child feeding, and malnutrition treatment and screening were prioritised in these ten conflict settings. Many lifesaving women's and children's health (WCH) services, including the majority of reproductive, newborn, and adolescent health services, are not reported as being delivered in the ten conflict settings, and interventions to address stillbirths are absent. International donors remain the primary drivers of influencing the what, where, and how of implementing WCH interventions. Interpretation of WCH outcomes in conflict settings are particularly context-dependent given the myriad of complex factors that constitute conflict and their interactions. Moreover, the comprehensiveness and quality of data remain limited in conflict settings. The dynamic nature of modern conflict and the expanding role of non-state armed groups in large geographic areas pose new challenges to delivering WCH services. However, the humanitarian system is creative and pluralistic and has developed some novel solutions to bring lifesaving WCH services closer to populations using new modes of delivery. These solutions, when rigorously evaluated, can represent concrete response to current implementation challenges to modern armed conflicts.