advanced search

<< Back To Home

CSU 35/2009: POSTGRADUATE PUBLIC HEALTH TRAINING IN AFRICA/ SOMMER ON VITAMIN A

Wednesday, 3rd of June 2009

 CSU 35/2009: POSTGRADUATE PUBLIC HEALTH TRAINING IN  AFRICA/ SOMMER ON VITAMIN A
 
 POSTGRADUATE PUBLIC HEALTH TRAINING IN AFRICA
 
 For those wishing to do postgraduate public health work, Africa offers more
 and more courses. The largest academic centers for public health are
 in Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and Uganda.
 
 The site below has listings on six webpages covering African postgraduate
 programmes in public health in English, French and Portuguese. Despite
 expansion in the postindependence era, 29 African countries offer no
 postgraduate public health courses. For the French speaking countries,
 Ouidah in Benin remains the center for international public health
 training. Portuguese speakers, with only one programme on the continent,
 sometimes pursue their studies in Brazil or Portugal.
 
 http://www.admin2.alesco.co.za/~upafrih/dynamic/list_public.php
 
 
 SOMMER ON VITAMIN A
 
 The long, hard fight for acceptance of vitamin A as a tool against child
 mortality began with field research by Al Sommer and Indonesian colleagues.
 Below, his reflections.
 
 Good reading.
 
 BD
 
 To subscribe or unsubscribe from this list, pls contact Evelyn Chege,
 echege@unicef.org
 
 1: J Nutr. 1989 Jan;119(1):96-100.  New imperatives for an old vitamin (A).
 
 Sommer A.
 International Center for Epidemiologic and Preventive Ophthalmology, Dana
 Center, Wilmer Institute, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, MD 21205.
 
 This year marks the 75th anniversary of the discovery of vitamin A by E.V.
 McCollum. Interest over the past 40 years has focused almost exclusively on
 the ocular complications of deficiency. Recent data from Indonesia, India,
 Thailand, Tanzania, Guatemala and elsewhere are reorienting concerns.
 Observational studies indicate that vitamin A--deficient children grow
 poorly, are more anemic, have more infections and are more likely to die
 than their peers, and that the magnitude of many of these consequences is
 directly related to the severity of the deficiency, even after adjusting
 for other variables. The few supplementation trials completed to date
 support these conclusions. Even after excluding children with frank
 deficiency at baseline, vitamin A-supplemented children have grown faster,
 developed higher hemoglobin values, and died less frequently (by 30-60%)
 than their nonsupplemented peers. The great surprise is not the central
 role vitamin A plays in each of these areas (McCollum and others recognized
 this long ago), but that this single nutrient can so profoundly affect
 children who are subject to multiple adverse influences.
 
 Full text is at http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/reprint/119/1/96