7,603 research outputs found

    The direct-medical costs associated with interferon-based treatment for Hepatitis C in Vietnam.

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    Background: Injectable interferon-based therapies have been used to treat hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection since 1991. International guidelines have now moved away from interferon-based therapy towards direct-acting antiviral (DAA) tablet regimens, because of their superior efficacy, excellent side-effect profiles, and ease of administration. Initially DAA drugs were prohibitively expensive for most healthcare systems. Access is now improving through the procurement of low-cost, generic DAAs acquired through voluntary licenses. However, HCV treatment costs vary widely, and many countries are struggling with DAA treatment scale-up. This is not helped by the limited cost data and economic evaluations from low- and middle-income countries to support HCV policy decisions. We conducted a detailed analysis of the costs of treating chronic HCV infection with interferon-based therapy in Vietnam. Understanding these costs is important for performing necessary economic evaluations of novel treatment strategies. Methods: We conducted an analysis of the direct medical costs of treating HCV infection with interferon alpha (IFN) and pegylated-interferon alpha (Peg-IFN), in combination with ribavirin, from the health sector perspective at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, in 2017. Results: The total cost of the IFN treatment regimen was estimated to range between US1,120andUS1,120 and US1,962. The total cost of the Peg-IFN treatment regimen was between US2,156andUS2,156 and US5,887. Drug expenses were the biggest contributor to the total treatment cost (54-89%) and were much higher for the Peg-IFN regimen. Conclusions: We found that treating HCV with IFN or Peg-IFN resulted in significant direct medical costs. Of concern, we found that all patients incurred substantial out-of-pocket costs, including those receiving the maximum level of support from the national health insurance programme. This cost data highlights the potential savings and importance of increased access to generic DAAs in low- and middle-income countries and will be useful within future economic evaluations

    The policy of free healthcare for children under the age of 6 years in Vietnam: assessment of the uptake for children hospitalised with acute diarrhoea in Ho Chi Minh City.

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    OBJECTIVE: To assess the proportion of, and reasons for, households not utilising the policy of free healthcare for children under 6 years of age (FCCU6) for hospitalisation with diarrhoea, and assess the risk of catastrophic expenditure for households that forgo FCCU6 and pay out of pocket. METHODS: Invoices detailing insurance information and charges incurred from 472 hospitalised diarrhoeal cases in one paediatric hospital in Ho Chi Minh City were retrieved. Hospital charges and the utilisation of elective services were analysed for patients utilising and not utilising FCCU6. Associations between socio-economic factors with non-utilisation of FCCU6 were evaluated. RESULTS: Overall, 29% of patients were FCCU6 non-users. The FCCU6 non-users paid a median hospital charge of 29.13(interquartilerange,IQR:29.13 (interquartile range, IQR: 18.57-46.24), consuming no more than 1.4% of a medium-income household's annual income. Seventy per cent of low-income FCCU6 non-users utilised less-expensive elective services, whereas only 43% of medium income patients and 21% of high-income patients did (P = 0.036). Patients from larger households and those with a parent working in government were more likely to use FCCU6. CONCLUSIONS: The rate of FCCU6 non-usage in this study population was 29%. A significant proportion of those that did not use FCCU6 was from lower income households and may perceive a justifiable cost-benefit ratio when forgoing FCCU6. Although a single diarrhoeal hospitalisation is unlikely to induce a catastrophic expenditure, FCCU6 non-usage may disproportionately increase the risk of catastrophic expenditure for lower income households over multiple illnesses

    The 1961 Kampong Bukit Ho Swee fire and the making of modern Singapore

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    By 1970, Singapore’s urban landscape was dominated by high-rise blocks of planned public housing built by the People’s Action Party government, signifying the establishment of a high modernist nation-state. A decade earlier, the margins of the City had been dominated by kampongs, home to semi-autonomous communities of low-income Chinese families which freely built, and rebuilt, unauthorised wooden houses. This change was not merely one of housing but belied a more fundamental realignment of state-society relations in the 1960s. Relocated in Housing and Development Board flats, urban kampong families were progressively integrated into the social fabric of the emergent nation-state. This study examines the pivotal role of an event, the great Kampong Bukit Ho Swee fire of 1961, in bringing about this transformation. The redevelopment of the fire site in the aftermath of the calamity brought to completion the British colonial regime’s ‘emergency’ programmes of resettling urban kampong dwellers in planned accommodation, in particular, of building emergency public housing on the sites of major fires in the 1950s. The PAP’s far greater political resolve, and the timing of and state of emergency occasioned by the scale of the 1961 disaster, enabled the government to rehouse the Bukit Ho Swee fire victims in emergency housing in record time. This in turn provided the HDB with a strategic platform for clearing other kampongs and for transforming their residents into model citizens of the nation-state. The 1961 fire’s symbolic usefulness extended into the 1980s and beyond, in sanctioning the PAP’s new housing redevelopment schemes. The official account of the inferno has also become politically useful for the government of today for disciplining a new generation of Singaporeans against taking the nation’s progress for granted. Against these exalted claims of the fire’s role in the Singapore Story, this study also examines the degree of actual change and continuity in the social and economic lives of the people of Bukit Ho Swee after the inferno. In some crucial ways, the residents continued to occupy a marginal place in society while pondering, too, over the unresolved question of the cause of the fire. These continuities of everyday life reflect the ambivalence with which the citizenry regarded the high modernist state in contemporary Singapore

    FROM PHILOSOPHY TO HO CHI MINH'S IDEOLOGY

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    Abstract: The article points out that Ho Chi Minh is a typical philosopher whose core is political philosophy, thereby clarifying Ho Chi Minh’s ideology and practicing Ho Chi Minh’s ideology in Vietnam. Keywords: Philosophy, ideology, Ho Chi Minh. Title: FROM PHILOSOPHY TO HO CHI MINH’S IDEOLOGY Author: Dr. Nguyen Thi Hong Hai International Journal of Social Science and Humanities Research ISSN 2348-3156 (Print), ISSN 2348-3164 (online) Vol. 11, Issue 2, April 2023 - June 2023 Page No: 121-126 Research Publish Journals Website: www.researchpublish.com Published Date: 25-April-2023 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7861846 Paper Download Link (Source) https://www.researchpublish.com/papers/from-philosophy-to-ho-chi-minhs-ideologyInternational Journal of Social Science and Humanities Research, ISSN 2348-3156 (Print), ISSN 2348-3164 (online), Research Publish Journals, Website: www.researchpublish.co

    FIG. 2 in First record of Bursaphelenchus hildegardae Braasch et al., 2006 (Nematoda) in New Zealand with updated information on morphology, sequencing and a key to species of the eggersi-group

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    FIG. 2. Light microscope photographs of Bursaphelenchus hildegardae. A: Anterior part of female; B–C:Vulva with flap; D: Female tail; E: Anterior part of male; F: Male lateral lines; G–J: Male spicules, busa & Tail. (Scale bars: A–J = 10 μm)Published as part of Zhao, Zeng Qi, Surrey, Michael, Ho, Wellcome, Marinov, Milen, Bleach, Carolyn, Rogan, Brent & Alexander, Brett, 2021, First record of Bursaphelenchus hildegardae Braasch et al., 2006 (Nematoda) in New Zealand with updated information on morphology, sequencing and a key to species of the eggersi-group, pp. 151-165 in Zootaxa 5071 (1) on page 156, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5071.1.9, http://zenodo.org/record/572344

    FIG. 1. Bursaphelenchus hildegardae. A in First record of Bursaphelenchus hildegardae Braasch et al., 2006 (Nematoda) in New Zealand with updated information on morphology, sequencing and a key to species of the eggersi-group

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    FIG. 1. Bursaphelenchus hildegardae. A: Female; B: Male; C: Anterior part of female; D: Reproductive system of female; E: Posterior part of female; F: Spicules; G: Bursa; H: Posterior end of male; I: Lateral lines. (Scale bars: A–C = 50 μm; D–I = 20 μm)Published as part of Zhao, Zeng Qi, Surrey, Michael, Ho, Wellcome, Marinov, Milen, Bleach, Carolyn, Rogan, Brent & Alexander, Brett, 2021, First record of Bursaphelenchus hildegardae Braasch et al., 2006 (Nematoda) in New Zealand with updated information on morphology, sequencing and a key to species of the eggersi-group, pp. 151-165 in Zootaxa 5071 (1) on page 155, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5071.1.9, http://zenodo.org/record/572344

    FIG. 6 in First record of Bursaphelenchus hildegardae Braasch et al., 2006 (Nematoda) in New Zealand with updated information on morphology, sequencing and a key to species of the eggersi-group

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    FIG. 6. Bayesian phylogenetic tree inferred from ITS gene region DNA sequences of Bursaphelenchus hildegardae. Posterior probabilities greater than 50% are given on appropriate clades. Nematode species, GenBank accession numbers and locations are listed for each taxon, if known.Published as part of Zhao, Zeng Qi, Surrey, Michael, Ho, Wellcome, Marinov, Milen, Bleach, Carolyn, Rogan, Brent & Alexander, Brett, 2021, First record of Bursaphelenchus hildegardae Braasch et al., 2006 (Nematoda) in New Zealand with updated information on morphology, sequencing and a key to species of the eggersi-group, pp. 151-165 in Zootaxa 5071 (1) on page 162, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5071.1.9, http://zenodo.org/record/572344

    FIG. 5. Bayesian phylogenetic tree inferred from D2D3 in First record of Bursaphelenchus hildegardae Braasch et al., 2006 (Nematoda) in New Zealand with updated information on morphology, sequencing and a key to species of the eggersi-group

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    FIG. 5. Bayesian phylogenetic tree inferred from D2D3 gene DNA sequences of Bursaphelenchus hildegardae. Posterior probabilities greater than 50% are given on appropriate clades. Nematode species, GenBank accession numbers and locations are listed for each taxon, if known.Published as part of Zhao, Zeng Qi, Surrey, Michael, Ho, Wellcome, Marinov, Milen, Bleach, Carolyn, Rogan, Brent & Alexander, Brett, 2021, First record of Bursaphelenchus hildegardae Braasch et al., 2006 (Nematoda) in New Zealand with updated information on morphology, sequencing and a key to species of the eggersi-group, pp. 151-165 in Zootaxa 5071 (1) on page 161, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5071.1.9, http://zenodo.org/record/572344

    Cooling rates of neutron stars and the young neutron star in the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant

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    We explore the thermal state of the neutron star in the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant using the recent result of Ho & Heinke that the thermal radiation of this star is well described by a carbon atmosphere model and the emission comes from the entire stellar surface. Starting from neutron star cooling theory, we formulate a robust method to extract neutrino cooling rates of thermally relaxed stars at the neutrino cooling stage from observations of thermal surface radiation. We show how to compare these rates with the rates of standard candles – stars with non-superfluid nucleon cores cooling slowly via the modified Urca process. We find that the internal temperature of standard candles is a well-defined function of the stellar compactness parameter x=rg/R, irrespective of the equation of state of neutron star matter (R and rg are circumferential and gravitational radii, respectively). We demonstrate that the data on the Cassiopeia A neutron star can be explained in terms of three parameters: f?, the neutrino cooling efficiency with respect to the standard candle; the compactness x; and the amount of light elements in the heat-blanketing envelope. For an ordinary (iron) heat-blanketing envelope or a low-mass (? 10?13 M?) carbon envelope, we find the efficiency f?? 1 (standard cooling) for x? 0.5 and f?? 0.02 (slower cooling) for a maximum compactness x? 0.7. A heat blanket containing the maximum mass (?10?8 M?) of light elements increases f? by a factor of 50. We also examine the (unlikely) possibility that the star is still thermally non-relaxe
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