Evaluation of a new pediatric intraosseous needle insertion device for low-resource settings.

Background And Purpose: The Near Needle Holder (NNH) (Near Manufacturing, Camrose, Alberta, Canada) is a reusable tool to introduce a standard hollow needle for pediatric intraosseous (IO) infusion. We compared the NNH to the Cook Dieckmann (Cook Critical Care, Bloomington, IN) manual IO needle in a simulation setting.

Methods: Study subjects were 32 physicians, nurses, and medical students participating in a trauma course in Guyana.

Identifying nutritional need for multiple micronutrient interventions.

Micronutrient deficiency remains a major public health problem in many countries worldwide with important consequences for the health of the population and child growth and development. The objective of this article is to review information that should be taken into consideration in identifying the need for and in designing micronutrient programs. We review information that could be used to identify nutritional need, including the prevalence of deficiency and evidence of inadequate dietary intake as well as potential data sources and some strengths and weakness of such data for program decision-making.

Estimating the prevalence of iron deficiency in the first two years of life: technical and measurement issues.

National-level data on iron deficiency is not available for most countries and many rely on the prevalence of anemia as a proxy estimate, assuming that approximately 50% of anemia cases are caused by iron deficiency. Anemia, however, has multiple causal factors and the risk attributable to any one cause will depend on its relative importance in a population in relation to other causes. The present review summarizes current estimates on the prevalence of iron deficiency and anemia in children younger than 2 years and evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of currently available indicators of iron deficiency in children.