Sante Publique
-
Following the Kosovo crisis, this paper questions the contents of hygiene kits to be distributed to refugees, the definition of hygiene and the hygiene promotion practises in emergency aid work. Hygiene promotion cannot be reduced to cleanness promotion. ⋯ Hygiene promotion should include systematic attempts to implement community services by volunteer refugees. One has to be careful also that the financial mechanisms of aid do not pervert programmation.
-
Emergency visits are one of the most common ways patients are admitted to hospitals. This study aims to characterise emergency visits in the Annecy District, in order to identify future actions for better management. ⋯ Implementation of alternative structures, outside the hospital, to offer similar service must be considered. Co-operation among the different actors must be improved, and can benefit from new communication technology.
-
Despite the fact that child labour is regulated through the work code, and the convention on child rights adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1989 and ratified by Morocco in 1993, multiple surveys have shown that children are often put to work at a very early age and few employers respect the work conditions laid out in the texts. The aim of this study was to assess the different situations of child labour in the handicraft sector, the reasons and the problems surrounding it, to study its repercussions on health and to propose several preventive measures. From March to July 1997, a retrospective cohort study of working children and children in school was carried out in a small neighbourhood of Casablanca. ⋯ Each subject was given a standardized questionnaire that was translated into dialectal Arabic and administered by a occupational health doctor and a communications specialist. The results of the study have pointed out the small school network of the working children, the painful conditions of work and the important consequences on their health state with a wide prevalence of pathologies higher than for the children attending school. The misery in addition of the rural exodus, the no-adapted educative and socio-economic systems, the splitting of the family unit often go to generate a submissive childhood without defense and "ready to be used".
-
According to the World Health Organization, 585,000 women die each year from a pregnancy-related cause, 99% of whom are from developing countries. The first International Conference on Safe Motherhood in 1987 sensitized the world community to this drama. Ever since, maternal mortality and its medical causes are better known. ⋯ Indirect causes are essentially anemia, malaria, hepatitis C and AIDS. Severe maternal morbidity is 6 to 10 times more frequent than maternal mortality but it also leads to handicaps which end up often in women's social rejection. However, WHO estimates that 95% of these deaths and handicaps are avoidable, and at a low cost.
-
Future hospital accreditation could take into account the quality of medical files. The objectives of this study is to test a method for auditing and evaluating the quality of the handing of medical files. We conducted a retrospective regional audit based on the frame of reference the National Agency for Medical Development and Evaluation, by using a sample of cases, stratified by establishment. ⋯ The make-up of medical files can alos be improved by raising the percentage of the presence of important data or documents such as the reason for admission (74.1%), the surgery report (83.2%), and the hospitalisation report (66.6%). A system for classifying the paraclinical results is shared and systematic throughout the service or hospital in only 73.2% of cases. The quality of the handing of medical files seems problematic in our hospitals and actions for improving the quality should be undertaken as a priority.