Radiographic and Clinical Outcomes of Modular Tapered Fluted Stems for Femoral Revision for Paprosky III and IV Femoral Defects or Vancouver B2 and B3 Femoral Fractures.

Background: Extensive femoral bone loss poses a challenge in revision total hip arthroplasty (rTHA). Many techniques have been developed to address this problem including fully porous cylindrical stems, impaction bone grafting, and cementation of long stems, which have had varied success. Modular tapered fluted femoral stems (MTFS) show favorable results.

Should Depression Be Treated Before Lower Extremity Arthroplasty?

Background: Patient optimization is becoming increasingly important before arthroplasty to ensure outcomes. It has been suggested that depression is a modifiable risk factor that should be corrected preoperatively. It remains to be determined whether psychological intervention before surgery will improve outcomes.

The Life Course Implications of Ready to Use Therapeutic Food for Children in Low-Income Countries.

The development of ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) for the treatment of uncomplicated cases of severe acute malnutrition in young children from 6 months to 5 years old has greatly improved survival through the ability to treat large numbers of malnourished children in the community setting rather than at health facilities during emergencies. This success has led to a surge in demand for RUTF in low income countries that are frequently food insecure due to environmental factors such as cyclical drought. Worldwide production capacity for the supply of RUTF has increased dramatically through the expansion and development of new manufacturing facilities in both low and high income countries, and new business ventures dedicated to ready-to-use foods have emerged not only for emergencies, but increasingly, for supplementing caloric intake of pregnant women and young children not experiencing acute undernutrition.

The first 500 days of life: policies to support maternal nutrition.

Background: From conception to 6 months of age, an infant is entirely dependent for its nutrition on the mother: via the placenta and then ideally via exclusive breastfeeding. This period of 15 months--about 500 days--is the most important and vulnerable in a child's life: it must be protected through policies supporting maternal nutrition and health. Those addressing nutritional status are discussed here.

Nutrition capacity development: a practice framework.

Objective: To outline a framework and a process for assessing the needs for capacity development to achieve nutrition objectives, particularly those targeting maternal and child undernutrition.

Design: Commentary and conceptual framework.

Setting: Low- and middle-income countries.

Opportunities for improving maternal nutrition and birth outcomes: synthesis of country experiences.

Background: Undernutrition in women in poor countries remains prevalent and affects maternal, neonatal and child health (MNCH) outcomes. Improving MNCH outcomes requires better policies and programs that enhance women's nutrition.

Objective: The studies aimed to better understand awareness, perceptions, barriers to intervention, and policy and program priorities and approaches, through different platforms, addressing three related priority problems: anemia, intra-uterine growth retardation (IUGR), and maternal thinness and stunting (including incomplete growth with early pregnancy).

Public health interventions, barriers, and opportunities for improving maternal nutrition in India.

Background: Inadequate nutrient intake, early and multiple pregnancies, poverty, caste discrimination, and gender inequality contribute to poor maternal nutrition in India. While malnutrition is seen throughout the life cycle, it is most acute during childhood, adolescence, pregnancy, and lactation. Although nutrition policies are on the books and interventions are in place, child malnutrition and maternal undernutrition persist as severe public health problems.

Public health interventions, barriers, and opportunities for improving maternal nutrition in Northeast Nigeria.

Background: Efficacious strategies to improve maternal nutrition and subsequent maternal, neonatal, and child health exist, but their utilization and application at scale is limited.

Objective: This study explored the gaps, barriers, and opportunities for maternal nutrition policy and programming in Nigeria, a country with a disproportionate share of the global burden of maternal and child mortality

Methods: Research was conducted in three phases in four Local Government Authorities in Taraba State. Phase 1 consisted of a desk review of policies, programs, and sociodemographic and health indicators pertinent to maternal nutrition.

Policies and program implementation experience to improve maternal nutrition in Ethiopia.

Background: Maternal undernutrition persists as a serious problem in Ethiopia. Although there are maternal nutrition interventions that are efficacious and effective in improving maternal, neonatal, and child health (MNCH) outcomes, implementation has been limited.

Objective: This study explored needs, perceptions, priorities,facilitatingfactors and barriers to implementation of relevant policies and programs to find opportunities to improve maternal nutrition in Ethiopia

Methods: Background information was compiled and synthesized for a situation analysis.

Child acute malnutrition and mortality in populations affected by displacement in the Horn of Africa, 1997-2009.

Drought and conflict in the Horn of Africa are causing population displacement, increasing risks of child mortality and malnutrition. Humanitarian agencies are trying to mitigate the impact, with limited resources. Data from previous years may help guide decisions.

Effects on vitamin A deficiency in children of periodic high-dose supplements and of fortified oil promotion in a deficient area of the Philippines.

Regular semi-annual distribution of high-dose (200,000 IU) vitamin A capsules (VACs) to children 1 - 5 years of age (previously identified as underweight), in Leyte Province, the Philippines, was compared to providing extra VACs to give three-monthly dosing, and to vitamin A-fortified cooking oil (VAFO) promotion (with continued VACs every 6 months). Serum retinol (SR) was measured at baseline and after 12 or 18 months (for VAFO). No sustained increase in SR was determined from the three-month VAC dosing regimen, and the prevalence of vitamin A deficiency (VAD) as assessed by SR (< 20 mcg / dL) remained around 30 % (in line with national survey estimates over the previous 15 years).

The impact of orphanhood on food security in the high-HIV context of Blantyre, Malawi.

Background: A 2004 UNICEF/UNAIDS/USAID survey in Blantyre, Malawi, examined methods to improve monitoring and evaluation of interventions aimed at orphans and vulnerable children.

Objective: A derivative of this larger study, the present study utilized the household data collected to assess differences in food security status among orphan households with the aim of helping food security programmers focus resources on the households most affected.

Methods: Orphan households were classified by number and type of orphans supported.

The contribution of child health days to improving coverage of periodic interventions in six African countries.

Background: Child Health Days have been implemented since the early 2000s in a number of sub-Saharan African countries with support from UNICEF and other development partners with the aim to reduce child morbidity and mortality.

Objective: To estimate the effect of Child Health Days on preventive public health intervention coverage, and possible trade-offs of Child Health Days with facility-based health systems coverage, in sub-Saharan Africa.

Methods: Data were assembled and analyzed from population-based sample surveys and administrative records and from local government sources, from six countries.

Identifying priorities for emergency intervention from child wasting and mortality estimates in vulnerable areas of the Horn of Africa.

Background: The relation between anthropometric measures and mortality risk in different populations can provide a basis for deciding how malnutrition prevalences should be interpreted.

Objective: To assess criteria for deciding on needs for emergency interventions in the Horn of Africa based on associations between child wasting and mortality from 2000 to 2005.

Methods: Data were analyzed on child global acute malnutrition (GAM) prevalences and mortality estimates from about 900 area-level nutrition surveys from Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, and Uganda; data on drought, floods, and food insecurity were added for Kenya (Rift Valley) and Ethiopia, from Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports at the time.

Fluctuations in wasting in vulnerable child populations in the Greater Horn of Africa.

Background: Malnutrition in preschool children, usually measured as wasting, is widely used to assess possible needs for emergency humanitarian interventions in areas vulnerable to drought, displacement, and related causes of food insecurity. The extent of fluctuations in wasting by season, year-to-year, and differential effects by livelihood group, need to be better established as a basis for interpretation together with ways of presenting large numbers of survey results to facilitate interpretation.

Objective: To estimate levels of and fluctuations in wasting prevalences in children from surveys conducted in arid and semiarid areas of the Greater Horn of Africa according to livelihood (pastoral, agricultural, mixed, migrant), season or month, and year from 2000 to 2006.

Impact of drought and HIV on child nutrition in Eastern and Southern Africa.

Background: Intermittent food insecurity due to drought and the effects of HIV/AIDS affect child nutritional status in sub-Saharan Africa. In Southern Africa in 2001-3 drought and HIV were previously shown to interact to cause substantial deterioration in child nutrition. With additional data available from Southern and Eastern Africa, the size of the effects of drought and HIV on child underweight up to 2006 were estimated.

AIDS, drought, and child malnutrition in southern Africa.

Objective: To investigate trends in child malnutrition in six countries in southern Africa, in relation to the HIV epidemic and drought in crop years 2001/2 and 2002/3.

Design: Epidemiological analysis of sub-national and national surveys with related data.

Setting: Data from Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe, compiled and analysed under UNICEF auspices.

Lessons on nutrition of displaced people.

Policies for protecting the nutrition of displaced people (including refugees) have evolved significantly since the sharp increase in numbers began in the 1970s. Food supplies have often been grossly inadequate, probably contributing to the very high mortality rates and severe malnutrition observed in camps. These are related, in part, to low estimates of food energy needs, moving from the idea of "survival" rations (1200-1800 kcal/person/day) through "minimum" (1900 kcal) to a current target level, likely to be usually adequate, of 2100 kcal.