Constraints on the delivery of animal-source foods to infants and young children: case studies from five countries.

UNLABELLED: BACKGROUND. Optimal feeding of infants and young children in developing countries includes daily feeding of animal-source foods. OBJECTIVE. To evaluate constraints on the availability of animal-source foods at the community level, access to animal-source foods at the household level, and intake of animal-source foods at the individual level among children under 3 years of age in case studies in five developing countries: Mexico, Peru, Haiti, Senegal, and Ethiopia. METHODS: Data were obtained from published and unpublished research and from program experiences of health and agriculture specialists. RESULTS: In Ethiopia, 27% to 51% of case-study children had consumed an animal-source food on the previous day; from 56% to 87% of children in the other case-study sites had consumed an animal-source food on the previous day. Data on intake of animal-source foods in grams were only available for the Latin American case-study sites, where daily milk intake was high in Mexico and Peru (195 and 180 g/day, respectively) and the intakes of meat, fish, and poultry (MFP) (29.0 and 13.6 g/day) and of egg (18.4 and 4.9 g/day) were low. The conceptual model guiding this work identified more constraining factors at the community and household levels than at the individual level. The most common constraints on feeding animal-source foods to young children were poverty, animal health, and land degradation at the community level; cost of animal-source foods and limited livestock holdings at the household level; and caregivers' perceptions of giving animal-source foods to children at the individual level. CONCLUSIONS: For program planning, it is useful to simultaneously consider factors that affect community availability of household access to, and children's intake of animal-source foods. Efforts to overcome individual-level constraints on intake of animal-source foods should be coupled with activities to address community and household constraints.

Social benefits of non-criminal genetic databases: missing persons and human remains identification.

A Missing Persons Genetic Identification Program (Phoenix Program) was implemented in Spain in order to try to identify cadavers and human remains that could not be identified using traditional forensic approaches; to our knowledge, this is the first database ever implemented and in function in the world. Two separate mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) databases have been generated and comparisons can be made automatically to match identical or similar sequences contained in both databases. One database is called the Reference Database (RD), which contains mtDNA sequences from maternal relatives of missing persons that provide the samples voluntarily after informed consent. The other database is called the Questioned Database (QD) and is comprised of mtDNA data on unknown remains and cadavers that could not be unequivocally identified. The combined database is a civil database designed solely for human identification and because of the informed consent and voluntary donation of reference samples is different from other databases now used to solve criminal cases. It is timely and incumbent on other willing countries to begin an international collaboration so compatibility and full utility can be enjoyed with this kind of non-criminal database.

Calidad de las aguas en la formación moderna de la Cuenca del Río Santiago

Este informe estudia los parámetros físicos y químicos y la presencia de contaminantes inorgánicos y orgánicos. Se analiza la presencia de metales pesados en las aguas que entran a la planta de tratamiento 2"Ing. Donanto Gerardi". Además se presenta un estudio de los bioindicadores en la evaluación y control de la contaminación del agua y de la calidad bacteriológica en la cuenca del Río Santiago

Calidad de las aguas en la formación moderna de la Cuenca del Río Santiago

Este informe estudia los parámetros físicos y químicos y la presencia de contaminantes inorgánicos y orgánicos. Se analiza la presencia de metales pesados en las aguas que entran a la planta de tratamiento 2"Ing. Donanto Gerardi". Además se presenta un estudio de los bioindicadores en la evaluación y control de la contaminación del agua y de la calidad bacteriológica en la cuenca del Río Santiago