Purification and characterization of Taxol and 10-Deacetyl baccatin III from the bark, needles, and endophytes of Taxus baccata by preparative high-performance liquid chromatography, ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry, and nuclear magnetic resonance.

Taxol and 10-Deacetyl baccatin III are major taxanes in the bark, needles, and endophytes of Taxus baccata. The current study aimed to develop a process for their separation from different matrices. Crude taxoid was prepared by extraction of samples with methanol, followed by partitioning with dichloromethane and precipitation with hexane. Analytical high-performance liquid chromatography involved isocratic elution on C18 column (4.6 × 250 mm, 5 µm) with methanol-water (70:30 v/v) at a flow rate of 1 ml/min. Injection volume was 20 µl and detection was carried out at 227 nm. The content of Taxol and 10-Deacetyl baccatin III in bark, needles and endophytic culture broth was 11.19 and 1.75 µg/mg; 11.19 and 1.75 µg/mg; and 2.80 and 0.22 µg/L, respectively. Preparative high-performance liquid chromatography was done on C18 column (10 × 250 mm, 5 µm) at a flow rate of 10 ml/min. About 20 g crude taxoid was processed in < 3 h with a recovery of about 90% for both the analytes. The purity of recovered Taxol and 10-Deacetyl baccatin III determined by ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry was found to be 95.78 ± 3.63% and 99.72 ± 0.18%, respectively. The structure of recovered Taxol was confirmed by nuclear magnetic resonance. The method can find use in biotransformation studies.

Spatial accessibility to healthcare facilities in coastal region of Bangladesh.

Though equal and easy accessibility to healthcare facilities are a fundamental right, people of the coastal region often get poor accessibility to healthcare facilities. This research aimed to assess the spatial accessibility to healthcare facilities in the coastal region of Bangladesh. Patuakhali district was selected as the study area. Accessibility to three levels of healthcare facilities: Community Clinic (CC), Upazila Health Complex (UHC) and District Hospital (DH) was measured individually using Geographic Information System (GIS) adopting the simple distance measures. Finally, overall accessibility to healthcare facilities was measured by overlaying accessibility to all three levels of healthcare facilities according to their relative importance. The findings of this study showed that a significant portion (70%) of Patuakhali district had high accessibility to CC; whereas, almost 60% and 40% of the area had poor accessibility to UHC and DH, respectively. Furthermore, 40% and 28% of the area of Patuakhali district had low and high accessibility to overall healthcare facilities, respectively. Furthermore, accessibility to healthcare facilities was found very poor in rural areas, char areas, and seashore. Thereafter, it is recommended to provide an UHC in every upazila and a DH in the southern part of Galachipa upazila to ensure high spatial accessibility of healthcare facilities.