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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
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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