A Rapid Assessment Tool for affirming good practice in midwifery education programming.

Objective: to design a criterion-referenced assessment tool that could be used globally in a rapid assessment of good practices and bottlenecks in midwifery education programs.

Design: a standard tool development process was followed, to generate standards and reference criteria; followed by external review and field testing to document psychometric properties.

Setting: review of standards and scoring criteria were conducted by stakeholders around the globe.

Yauk gyar mann yin (Be a man!): masculinity and betel quid chewing among men in Mandalay, Myanmar.

Betel quid chewing is associated with various oral cancers and other health concerns, including reproductive health issues. Nevertheless, the practice is widespread in Myanmar, especially among men. This qualitative study elucidates the gendered aspects of betel quid chewing by examining how it links with masculine ideology among male betel quid chewers in Mandalay, Myanmar.

Case-control study of ectopic pregnancies in Myanmar: infectious etiological factors.

We studied the role of infections in ectopic pregnancy and the different methods of detecting Chlamydia trachomatis infection using serology, cervical and tubal PCR assays, by using a hospital-based, case-control study conducted between November 2007 and September 2009. The sample size was 339 with 113 cases and 226 controls. The cases were women admitted for the management of ectopic pregnancy while the controls were women admitted for spontaneous miscarriage.