PSIC

Gripe A - Recomendações

2009-07-10T22:36:00.002+01:00

Depois de uma ausência (a vida nem sempre permite virtualidades), aqui fica algo que considero importante divulgar:

Sintomas da Gripe A:

Febre de início súbito (superior a 38º)
Tosse
Dores de garganta
Dores musculares
Dores de cabeça
Arrepios de frio
Cansaço
Diarreia ou vómitos; embora não sendo típicos da gripe sazonal, têm sido verificados em alguns casos recentes de infecção pelo novo vírus da Gripe A (H1N1)

Modo de contágio:

pessoa-a-pessoa através de gotículas quando tosse ou espirra
através do contacto com os olhos, nariz ou boca, de mãos que contactaram com objectos ou superfícies contaminadas com gotículas de uma pessoa infectada

Atenção:

O vírus permanece activo nas superfícies 2 a 8horas. Cuidado com as maçanetas das portas, teclados de computador, ratos, etc.
O vírus não se transmite através da água para consumo humano, águas de piscinas ou parques aquáticos.
Não se transmite através de alimentos.

O que facilita o contágio:

Deficiente higiene das mãos
contacto com objectos ou materiais contaminados (vírus activo 2 a 8h)
Permanência em ambientes fechados e pouco arejados
Proximidade entre pessoas (distância inferior a 1 metro)
cumprimentos pessoais

Período de contágio:

1 dia antes de iniciar os sintomas, até 7 dias depois do seu início.

KENYA: A growing refugee crisis

2009-06-19T22:54:00.001+01:00

Photo: Allan Gichigi/IRIN

A refugee woman awaits registration in Dadaab, Kenya (file phto): Fears of a major refugee crisis in Daadab have been raised with the camp hosting triple its capacity

NAIROBI, 19 June 2009 (IRIN) - Ever-worsening security in Somalia is prompting large numbers of civilians to flee into Kenya, where facilities to host them are stretched to bursting point, raising fears of a major refugee crisis.

Dadaab in eastern Kenya, is home to an estimated 279,000 mainly Somali refugees - triple its designated capacity. Its Dagahaley, Hagadera and Ifo camps together comprise the largest refugee site in the world.

Kenya's closure of its Somali border in January 2007 did little to stem the tide. "On average, about 7,000 Somali refugees are coming into the country every month this year," Kellie Leeson, International Rescue Committee (IRC) country director for Kenya, told IRIN.

"We need more land for Dadaab to spread the camp out so that people can live in dignity," she said. The UN Refugee Agency (UNCHR) is talking with the Kenyan government in an effort to obtain more land.

IRC is providing healthcare services in Dadaab as well as water and sanitation services in Kakuma camp, northwestern Kenya.

"The high [refugee] population has made it extremely challenging to deliver services," Leeson said. "Water has been a really big challenge as well as provision of adequate latrines."

Overcrowding

"The overcrowding [in Dadaab] means that international standards for basic services are not being met," according to Refugees International.

"There is a shortfall of 36,000 latrines and 50 percent of the refugees have access to less than 13 litres of water per day," the NGO said in recent special report on Somali refugees.

The agency went on to appeal for the reopening of a reception centre for Somali refugees shut by the Kenyan authorities in May 2008. "This will ensure an orderly and humane screening and registration process, while having the added benefit for the Kenyan government of reducing cross-border security threats."

On this point Leeson said: "Health screening at a border reception centre is needed in order to prevent the spread of disease inside the congested camps."

In March, Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned that Kenya was in the midst of a rapidly escalating refugee crisis.

Between August 2008 and the end of February 2009, "just over 35,000 new arrivals [in Dadaab] received no shelter and have been forced to sleep under open skies in makeshift shelters that provide little protection from the harsh weather, or in cramped confines with relatives or strangers who were already living in conditions well below minimum humanitarian standards," HRW said.

Soured relations

Relations with the surrounding Kenyan population have also at times soured. "The host community is struggling especially with the high food prices and drought," Leeson said. IRC, along with UNHCR, and other partners, is working with local community leaders in an effort to prevent conflict in Dadaab and Kakuma.

The local community neighbouring Dadaab has in the past resisted the expansion of the camp boundaries, saying it is already encroaching on their land.

In Kakuma, most of the refugees are of Somali origin, coming either via Dadaab or Nairobi. Its population has almost halved since 2006 due to the large scale repatriation of its Sudanese population in the wake of a 2005 peace accord.

"Now there are about 42,000 refugees remaining in the camp, who can't yet return home, and are fully dependent on [external support]," she said.

"A lot of people thought Kakuma would just go [away]," she said, "But the numbers of refugees are still high and we must meet their urgent needs."

Dependency

A statement by the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) said: "Ten percent of the refugees in Kakuma have lived in the camp for over 10 years, some longer than 15 with no perspective and no hope of a durable solution. This causes dependency and problems with the local community."

According to JRS, societies and governments tend to perceive refugees as a problem. "But, we need to see that behind the large numbers are human beings like you and me. They have been uprooted from their countries by conflict, persecution or violence," said Frido Pflueger, JRS/Eastern Africa director.

IRC's Leeson urged the Kenyan government to also fully implement its own Refugees' Act of 2006. "On paper, the act gives rights to refugees, but in practice it is not yet fully enforced and many people in positions of authority aren't aware of its content or the rights it confers," she said. "We also urgently need extended funds as the [refugee] population continues to grow," she said.

GLOBAL: Chronic diseases reach "epidemic" proportions - WHO

2009-06-19T22:53:00.001+01:00

Photo: IRIN

Samjhana Lama from Nepal died from heart disease after treatment delays (file photo)

DAKAR, 19 June 2009 (IRIN) -

Chronic diseases-especially cancer, diabetes, and chronic respiratory and heart diseases - kill twice as many people worldwide every year than do infectious diseases HIV, malaria and tuberculosis, combined. But despite their stealth ascent to epidemic proportions - mostly in poor countries, according to World Health Organization (WHO) - chronic diseases receive scant donor and government attention.

Chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease progress slowly and account for 60 percent of all deaths, according to WHO.

"It [chronic disease] is a silent killer," said WHO's Boureima H. Sambo, non-communicable disease (NCD) advisor for West Africa. "For other epidemics like measles, meningitis or cholera, you see and hear people dying. But in a hospital ward of dying chronic respiratory, hypertension and cancer patients, there is not as much noise," he told IRIN.

Less than 1 percent of official development assistance funds chronic disease prevention and treatment, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). From WHO's overall 2008-2009 budget of US$3.9 billion, 13 percent went toward chronic diseases.

Major donor funding for chronic diseases has increased since 2004 when it was less than US$200 million to US$700 million in 2008, according to OECD.

But funding still lags far behind the numbers of deaths caused by chronic illnesses, as reported in the medical journal "The Lancet". HIV prevention and care received US$2.5 billion from major donors in 2005 when there were less than five million reported HIV deaths.

While more than 25 million died from chronic diseases the same year, donors gave US$200 million toward NCD's.

Double burden

Africa is expected to have the biggest increase in deaths from NCD's over the next decade, or an additional 28 million sufferers, according to WHO. "The emphasis thus far [in Africa] has been on infectious diseases," Boureima told IRIN. "But we have a growing burden of NCD alongside the known burden of communicable [infectious] diseases."

Hypertension and obesity affected up to 60 percent of those surveyed in West Africa by WHO, said Boureima. "Children as young as 12 are smoking, some parts of the region abuse alcohol and vegetable consumption is low. Risk factors of today are chronic diseases of tomorrow," he told IRIN.

Despite dozens of resolutions at WHO to fight chronic disease dating back more than 60 years, Stig Pramming with the UK-based NGO Oxford Health Alliance told IRIN chronic illness is still not "on the [international development] agenda."

Recommendations from a UN-organized ministerial meeting in Doha, Qatar in May on NCDs will be considered at the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) 7 July meeting in Geneva. WHO is working with governments to incorporate chronic diseases into the UN Millennium Development Goals, according to WHO NCD staff.

How much?

While the cost of chronic diseases has been estimated to be in the hundreds of billions in lost income and health fees, it is hard to put a price tag on fighting those diseases, said Oxford Health Alliance's Pramming. "Chronic diseases are a complex problem not solved through a simple treatment. It is the way we eat, move. It is our lifestyle and social determinants like access to health care and [quality of] those health systems.

"Health care systems are very much focused on acute diseases and are not geared to follow people over the long term."

SOMALIA: Coping with humanitarian tragedy in Mogadishu

2009-06-07T22:09:00.000+01:00

Photo: Yasmin Omar/IRIN Radio

A man with his child in a Mogadishu hospital: Fighting between insurgents and government troops has resulted in deaths, injuries and displacements of hundreds of thousands of civilians in the city - File photo

MOGADISHU, 5 June 2009 (IRIN) - A woman sits holding a baby in a queue at a medical clinic in Mogadishu, the violence-hit capital of Somalia, where fighting between government troops and insurgents has displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

"His leg is paralysed; maybe because we don't have anything to eat," the young mother says.

More than 100 people are waiting in the burning sun. Some will be here for hours, but there is no alternative. The few hospitals in the city are overcrowded, and the remaining civilians have to go to great lengths to find help.

The clinic is run by AMISOM, the African Union peace-keeping force in Somalia.

"At least we can do something," says Joseph Asea, head of the AMISOM health clinic in Mogadishu. "We have 30 patients now, but when fighting is bad there can easily be 70."

An ambulance arrives. A boy with an improvised bandage around his elbow is carried in. The nurse takes it off to reveal a fresh gunshot wound. She treats it with disinfectant.

He is lucky to be alive; over the past few weeks, hundreds of people have died in the fighting.

The people in the clinic are relatively safe and treatment is still available. "So far, we are able to supply the people with treatment and medicines," Asea said.

Photo: Hassan Mahamud Ahmed/IRIN

An ambulance driver in Mogadishu: The few hospitals in teh Somali capital are overcrowded and civilians have to go to great lengths to find help

Access issues

According to the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, at least 96,000 people have been displaced from Mogadishu since the start of the latest fighting on 8 May.

Most are in informal camps outside the city, with hardly any access to humanitarian aid.

"The situation is deteriorating and the daily rate of displacement is increasing," said Roberta Russo, spokeswoman for UNHCR Somalia.

She said the rate of new arrivals this week from Somalia to Kenya "went from an average of 100 a day to 150-200 a day".

Russo said access was still one of the major problems faced by humanitarian agencies trying to bring relief to the displaced.

This week UNHCR had to stop distributing aid to the outskirts of Mogadishu because of the fighting and consequent insecurity on the roads.

Food and security

AMISOM patrols some of the roads to monitor security. AMISOM troops also protect the port of Mogadishu where the UN World Food Programme (WFP) is dispatching much-needed food aid.

At the main berth, the cargo of MV Jaipur is being offloaded. It was hijacked by Somali pirates, but is now on duty again. From here, the food aid will be distributed across the country. Some three million people in Somalia depend on food aid.

"Without the protection of AMISOM we couldn't do this work," says Abdi Yusuf, a government police officer in the port.

The AMISOM peacekeepers also protect President Sheik Sharif Ahmed at Villa Somalia in Mogadishu, a multi-storey building in the heart of town.

"I feel very safe here," the president said, but he called for more international help for his country. "We have an influx of foreign fighters who support the insurgents. If they manage to take over, it's easy to imagine what can happen next. So we are urging the international community to do more."

A first step could be boosting AMISOM numbers. From the initially pledged 8,000 soldiers, only 3,400 were deployed by African Union countries.

"So far we could deliver the services to the people that we want to," said Maj Ba-Hoku Barigye, AMISOM spokesman. "Happily we understand that Ghana, Zambia and Malawi are close to contributing to the force."

The UN Security Council's unanimous decision to extend the mandate of AMISOM by another eight months could provide some breathing space.

Magnitude 7.3 - OFFSHORE HONDURAS

2009-05-30T22:43:00.002+01:00

Obrigada João pela informação.

A 7.1 magnitude earthquake rocked Honduras on Thursday, killing at least four, and causing homes to fall in neighboring Guatemala. Read more on the Honduras earthquake 2009 below.

Local officials fear the death toll will be rising as reports come in from the moutainous areas near the coast.

The quake ruined buildings across the north of Honduras, a poor country of about 7 million people.

Four children between the ages of 3 and 15 died when their homes collapsed after the earthquake struck at 2:24 a.m. local time offshore near the Honduran Caribbean resort island of Roatan.

“They were all asleep. Most of them died crushed,” said Randolfo Funes, a top official at Honduras’ civil protection agency. “There will be many more dead.”

Security guard Pedro Ramirez, 52, was in his truck outside an office building in Tegucigalpa when the tremor hit.

“I felt the car rock and I started to hear little bits of debris from the building next door hitting the roof,” he said. “It was frightening because it was shaking a lot. I’ve never felt anything like it.”

The earthquake hit 39 miles northeast of Roatan, the biggest of the country’s three Bay Islands where many tourists go to snorkel to see dolphins and a big coral reef. It had a shallow depth of 6.2 miles.

On Roatan,officials said the quake had knocked out power and caused minor damage to buildings.

A tsunami watch was issued for Honduras, Guatemala and Belize, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said, but it was lifted about an hour later.

Vídeo das imagens, Reuters.

Reuters

* Quake of 7.1 magnitude strikes just off coast

* Sixty houses destroyed

* Death toll might rise (Adds 25 injured, 60 houses destroyed)

By Gustavo Palencia

TEGUCIGALPA, May 28 (Reuters) - A powerful 7.1 magnitude earthquake shook Honduras on Thursday, killing at least five people, knocking down flimsy homes and causing damage in neighboring Guatemala.

The offshore quake destroyed some 60 houses and damaged scores of other buildings across the north of Honduras, a poor country of 7 million people, and briefly triggered a tsunami alert for Central America's Caribbean coast.

A quake of that size can cause serious damage over a wide area.

Four children, aged 3 to 15, died when their houses collapsed after the quake struck in the early hours of the morning near the resort island of Roatan.

"They were all asleep. Most of them died crushed," said Randolfo Funes, an official at Honduras' civil protection agency who said a fifth person died.

At least 25 people were injured and officials said the death toll could rise as reports came in from poor villages and towns in the mountainous area around Honduras' Caribbean coast.

Security guard Pedro Ramirez, 52, was in his truck outside an office building in the capital of Tegucigalpa.

"I felt the car rock and I started to hear little bits of debris from the building next door hitting the roof," he said. "It was frightening because it was shaking a lot. I've never felt anything like it."

The earthquake hit 39 miles (64 km) northeast of Roatan, the biggest of the country's three picturesque Bay Islands, where snorkelers and divers come to see dolphins and a big coral reef. It had a relatively shallow depth of 6.2 miles (10 km). Earthquakes that close to the earth's surface are often more powerful than deeper tremors.

On Roatan, rescue officials said the quake had knocked out power and caused minor damage to buildings.

Houses also collapsed in Puerto Cortes and Santa Barbara, where the ceiling of an old colonial church caved in, while fires broke out in the northern business city of San Pedro Sula.

The tremor sent people running into the street and the power was cut in some areas.

SRI LANKA: UN Human Rights Council to discuss plight of IDPs

2009-05-27T15:24:00.001+01:00

Photo: Zelmira Sinclair/UNHCR

Thousands of Tamil civilians are now staying in government camps after fleeing the fighting in the north

BANGKOK, 25 May 2009 (IRIN) - Human rights groups have welcomed a decision by the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) to address the condition of more than a quarter of a million conflict-displaced in Sri Lanka in a special session.

"This is an important opportunity to examine issues of accountability on both sides to the conflict and to ensure protection of displaced persons and their rights in the post-conflict transition," Julie de Rivero, Geneva advocacy director for Human Rights Watch (HRW), told IRIN, one day before the session was due in Geneva.

On 25 May, the watchdog group said government restrictions on humanitarian access to government camps and to the wounded in the conflict area had worsened the already serious conditions.

"For the sake of hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people in Sri Lanka, the Council should ensure that the Sri Lankan government takes immediate and concrete steps to address this crisis, beginning with providing immediate, unhindered access to international aid workers and monitors," Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International's Asia-Pacific director, added.

SOMALIA: Aid work in Mogadishu grinding to a halt

2009-05-27T15:23:00.000+01:00

Photo: Hassan Mahamud Ahmed/IRIN

A displaced family: Aid work in Mogadishu has virtually ground to a halt because of increasing violence, according to civil society officials

NAIROBI, 25 May 2009 (IRIN) - Local NGOs in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, have set up a task force in a bid to mobilise urgent help for thousands of displaced civilians.

"The situation is so bad that if nothing is done many will die," Asha Sha'ur, a civil society activist, told IRIN on 25 May. "We are appealing to the international aid agencies to help these desperate people before it is too late."

Aid work in Mogadishu has virtually ground to a halt because of increasing violence. An estimated 57,000-60,000 people have fled their homes since the latest fighting flared on 8 May, according to the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR.

According to Ali Sheikh Yassin, deputy chairman of the Mogadishu-based Elman Human Rights Organisation (EHRO), 207 people have been killed since the latest clashes began on 8 May. He said that on 22 May alone some 59 people were killed in the city but the figure reflected only the deaths the group could verify. "Many people have been buried where they died."

Yassin said the death toll included seven policemen killed by a suicide bomber on 24 May.

The violence has forced Médecins Sans Frontières to close its outpatient clinic in Yaaqshid district. The health facility would re-open once there was minimum security, it said.

Photo: Hassan Mahamud Ahmed/IRIN

A family flees Mogadishu following fighting between government troops and insurgents

"Even local NGOs are afraid to respond because of the uncertain security situation," a local humanitarian worker said.

Last week, the UN Children's Agency (UNICEF) reported the looting of its compound in Jowhar, 90km south of Mogadishu, when Al-Shabab militia captured the town.

More than 50,000 severely malnourished children and at least 85,000 moderately malnourished children in south-central Somalia have been affected by the interruption in nutritional and medical supplies.

The 17 May looting resulted in the destruction of humanitarian supplies, assets and equipment. "The cold chain [vaccine storage] equipment was affected, destroying thousands of doses of measles, polio and other vaccines meant for Somali children," UNICEF said.

Sha'ur and other civil society leaders urged the international community and Somalis in the diaspora to help the thousands of desperate people displaced by the violence that has pitted government forces against insurgents.

"The reason we set up this task force is to make sure that we accompany [aid agencies] wherever they want to go," Sha'ur said. "We were at some of these camps [on the outskirts of the city] and found the conditions heart-wrenching."

The newly displaced were living in dire conditions. "Many of them have no shelter and so are sharing small spaces with others and have very little food, if any," Sha'ur said. "They need help in all areas but shelter is most urgent."

Nasteho Osman, a 29-year-old single mother of four, returned last week to the camps for the displaced which she left only a month ago.

"I was in Bakara market when the fighting began [on 8 May]; I had to rush back to my house to make sure my children were safe," Osman said. "I got out six days ago with only what we could carry."

The situation deteriorates whenever it rains. "We only have one small shack that we use for shelter and when it rains, no one can sleep," Osman added.

NIGERIA: Thousands flee violence, hundreds suspected dead

2009-05-27T15:21:00.001+01:00

Photo: Wikimedia

Niger Delta states

ABUJA, 22 May 2009 (IRIN) - Thousands of civilians have fled their villages in Nigeria's Delta state after government troops launched an offensive against militant groups in the state on 13 May.

Villagers in Delta state's Gbramatu kingdom reported Oporoza and Okerenkoko villages being attacked with heavy machine-gun fire from low-flying helicopters on 15 May. Eyewitness accounts reported at least 100 bodies, according to Amnesty International's Nigeria campaigner Lucy Freeman.

The Nigerian Red Cross estimates that 1,000 displaced people have fled to Ogbe Ijoh - capital of Warri south government area - where they are sheltering in a primary school and hospital.

Witnesses report that about 3,000 people have fled and Amnesty International estimates that as many as 10,000 could be on the move.

Patricia Okolo from Okerenkoko told IRIN from Ogbe Ijoh: "I had to run from my home. I did not take a single item with me. I have 10 children but I don't know where any of them are. I could not count the number of people who were killed or injured but there were many. I could not even count."

"I don't know where my husband is. I am the only one who got here."

Most of the displaced are women and children as most men are too frightened of being attacked or killed, said Nigerian Red Cross officer Egbero Ococity from Ogbe Ijoh. Many men are hiding in the forest with no access to clean water, food or shelter, he said.

Joint Task Force troops, made up of the army, navy, air force and mobile police, launched an offensive on communities across Warri south and southwest government areas on 13 May after JTF troops were reported to have been attacked by armed groups in Delta state, according to Amnesty International.

In response, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), an umbrella group representing a number of militant factions, declared an "all-out war" in a 15 May press statement. The militant groups claim they are fighting for more local control of oil wealth in the impoverished region.

...I could not count the number of people who were killed or injured but there were many. I could not even count...

"Traumatised"

"Civilians are bearing the brunt of this violence. We are very concerned about bystanders who have been killed, injured or displaced," said Amnesty's Freeman.

Community members from targeted villages say military forces were searching for militants.

Some villagers told Amnesty International they were attacked while fleeing on boats - the only way to get away from the site of the violence. The delta is made up of a dense network of freshwater creeks, much of it accessible only by boat.

The Nigerian Red Cross's disaster management coordinator, Attah Benson, told IRIN it was still too dangerous for NGOs to approach the affected area. "We are able to access only those who are on their way out."

The Red Cross is working with the International Committee of the Red Cross, National Emergency Management Agency and other agencies to get food, water, blankets, utensils and hygiene kits to people in need, said Benson.

"They [the displaced] need food, water, shelter and blankets to relieve their suffering," the Red Cross's Ococity told IRIN. "They are sleeping on the bare floor. They are traumatised as a result of the attacks and what they went through in the mangroves while escaping.

"You can see the frustration in their faces. Hunger is taking its toll because most of them did not have anything to eat for four days."

A local official said government troops have not attacked communities but have gone after what he called criminals. Col Rabe Abubakar, military spokesman in the Niger Delta, told IRIN: "Anybody who says we attacked a community let him come and show us which community we attacked. We are raiding, based on our information, the militants' hideouts and arms dumps."

He added: "The essence is to secure the region. We are not targeting any group or any community or individual. We are targeting criminals who carried out these heinous, uncivilised and barbaric attacks."

The offensive suggests a "worrying change in direction" in the government's approach, Freeman told IRIN. In recent months a government committee recommended amnesty for some politically-motivated militants.

In February 2009 the government of President Umaru Yar'Adua assured the UN Human Rights Council it would refrain from military offensives in the Delta region because of the risk of loss of innocent lives.

DRC: Attacks against civilians and aid workers increase in the east

2009-05-27T15:20:00.000+01:00

Photo: Eddy Isango/IRIN

National army soldiers are among those attacking civilians in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (file photo)

KINSHASA, 22 May 2009 (IRIN) - Humanitarian organisations are increasingly coming under attack in North and South Kivu in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), with the civilian population also being affected by attacks and counter-attacks between Forces démocratiques pour la libération du Rwanda (FDLR) militia and the Congolese army, aid officials said.

"Humanitarian organisation vehicles have been intercepted to transport FARDC [Congolese army] soldiers or passengers' belongings looted," Ndiaga Seck, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said.

". The perpetrators of the attacks are either the FDLR or FARDC," said Seck, adding that some NGOs had been threatened. "This has led, for example, to some partners suspending their activities in Fizi and in other territories."

According to a UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) situation report for 6-20 May, DRC army and non-state combatants continue to commit human rights violations, particularly in areas of FARDC deployment, in preparation for Operation Kimia II, and in zones held by the FDLR.

". These include targeted attacks committed by armed forces against civilians and humanitarian workers; this environment has reduced [UNICEF] ... and its humanitarian partners' [access] to assist the people in need," stated the report.

While returns have been registered in North Kivu, new, massive population displacement has occurred after renewed fighting, said UNICEF.

Grim statisitics from South Kivu
	120,000 people have been displaced since March 2009
	450,000 have been displaced in total in the province
	400,000 more people could be displaced because of the new operation (Oxfam)
	1,300,000 is the total number of displaced people in DRC
	65 cases of rape were recorded in South Kivu's Shabunda territory between 1 April and 7 May
	39 of these have been attributed to DRC soldiers newly deployed in the area
	103 cases of rape were recorded in Minova health zone between 1 April and 7 May
	150 civilians, at least, have been killed this month by FDLR
	77 were killed on 10 May in the village of Busurungi in Kalehe territory
	702 homes were torched during the attack
	224 cases of cholera were recorded in Ziralo in Bunyakiri health zone
	32 of these died, with the high mortality rate attributed to the sick not reaching medical centres
Source: OCHA

"The increasing insecurity is an obstacle to the implementation of humanitarian activities," it said. "From January to April 2009, 44 attacks against humanitarian workers have been registered; this means on average there is one attack every three days."

The attacks represent a 22 percent increase on the same period in 2008, stated the report.

More sexual violence cases are being reported in the Kalehe and Shabunda territories of South Kivu since the deployment of army soldiers there, according to a 20 May update by OCHA. The soldiers have been deployed in preparation for a joint anti-FLDR operation with the UN Mission in the DRC (MONUC).

The soldiers are engaging in looting and rape during their foot patrols and are contributing to a new wave of population displacement, according to the update (see box). It said the village of Karega has twice been looted in separate incidents by the FDLR and FARDC.

Seck said two women and four men had been taken into the forest and that residents in some villages had been threatened and were being held hostage by the FDLR.

According to MONUC spokesman Lt-Col Jean-Paul Dietrich, the clashes are due to FDLR counter-attacks in inhabited areas or in FARDC-occupied zones.

Dietrich said the reprisals were also targeting civilians who have had dealings with the armed groups, adding that FARDC had managed to push the FDLR back.

SOMALIA: Exodus continues despite lull in Mogadishu fighting

2009-05-27T15:18:00.002+01:00

Photo: Hassan Mahamud Ahmed/IRIN

An IDP camp on the outskirts of Mogadishu (file photo)

NAIROBI, 21 May 2009 (IRIN) - Hundreds of families are still fleeing the Somali capital, Mogadishu, despite relative calm in the past week following intense fighting between insurgents and government troops.

They are joining hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in camps on the outskirts of the city and in safer neighbourhoods inside Mogadishu.

"Even today [21 May], many families are leaving because they believe the current break in the fighting is just temporary," Ali Sheikh Yassin, the deputy chairman of the Mogadishu-based Elman Human Rights Organisation (EHRO), told IRIN. "I think many people have lost hope that this city will ever return to normal.

"Many markets and businesses have shut down because of the security situation." He said Suuq Ba'ad in the north, the second-largest open-air market in Mogadishu, was closed.

"There is not a single store or shop open there," Yassin said. "This market did not close at the height of the conflict in 2007-2008."

People's livelihoods have been destroyed, "so anyone who can leave is doing so", he added.

The impact of the current displacement is also being felt in neighbourhoods that had escaped much of the recent violence in the city, such as Madina in the southwest, and Huriwa in the north.

"Almost every family in these neighbourhoods is hosting one or more families," Yassin said.

Photo: ReliefWeb

Relying on relatives

Mogadishu resident Abdiwali Nur returned to the city with his family from an IDP camp in April, hoping the situation would improve. However, he is staying with a relative in Madina, with his wife and three children.

"We could not afford to go the IDP camps again so my relative has given us a small place in his house," Nur said. "All the neighbours are hosting people."

Another returnee, Halima Warsame, mother of five, fled her home in Towfiq, north Mogadishu, last week to Arbiska area near Afgoye, 30km south of Mogadishu, where she was previously an IDP.

"I left a month ago thinking this was the end of our ordeal but I was wrong," Warsame said. "I thought with the Ethiopian troops gone and the new government [in place] everything would be alright, only it got worse.

"I don't see any hope that our situation will ever improve."

Warsame's husband and son were killed in 2007 after a shell landed on their shop. She told IRIN their situation in the camp was desperate: "We have no shelter from the constant rain."

Sporadic shelling has been continuing between government forces and insurgents since major clashes ended on 17 May.

According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the number of people displaced since 8 May has reached 45,000.

In a briefing note on 20 May, the agency said the deteriorating security situation was hampering aid delivery.

"Even local agencies that have often provided a lifeline to the IDPs are encountering new risks as they try to help out the needy," UNHCR said.

It said the most urgent needs were shelter and non-food items, "which humanitarian agencies led by UNHCR plan to provide first to over 100,000 people in the Afgoye corridor and neighbourhoods in northwest Mogadishu, and afterwards to others in other affected areas of the city as soon as the security permits".

GLOBAL: Auditing aid providers - how well do they fare?

2009-05-27T15:18:00.001+01:00

Photo: Shabbir Hussain Imam/IRIN

Aid agencies are more accountable but still too "top down" says the latest Humanitarian Accountability Report (file photo)

DAKAR, 21 May 2009 (IRIN) - Aid agencies are far more accountable to disaster affected people than they were a decade ago, says the latest Humanitarian Accountability Report, but problems remain in transparency about interventions, communication with aid recipients, monitoring and reporting on sexual abuse and eliminating corruption.

"More and more agencies are getting better at accountability to beneficiaries through establishing complaints procedures and designating staff to be accessible to aid recipients, but such accountability cannot yet be described as the norm," Tearfund disaster management director David Bainbridge told IRIN.

Progress

Aid practitioners say there has been a change in mindset. "Recognition of the importance of accountability is the biggest system-wide shift," said Meri Ghorkhmazyan, Emergencies Monitoring and Evaluation Adviser at Save the Children. "And the understanding that it goes beyond one person or department to take a commitment at all levels, including leaders, to champion it."

Numerous aid agencies have developed tools to improve their accountability to beneficiaries, say agency staff. More and more agencies have set up complaints-handling systems, and are putting accountability at the heart of project evaluations, which they increasingly make publicly available.

...accountability cannot yet be described as the norm...

Particularly pertinent, said Ghorkhmazyan, are country or emergency-led accountability drives, such as the Myanmar Accountability and Learning Working Group (ALWG), or schemes in Pakistan, India and the Philippines to certify accountable NGOs.

"The overall impression gained is of a widening and deepening of accountability within the humanitarian system during 2008," John Borton, author of the annual report, produced by the Humanitarian Accountability Project (HAP-I).

For Nick Stockton, HAP-I director, the clearest measure of commitment to better programming is an agency's joining the "HAP-I certification scheme", by which an agency agrees to be audited by HAP-I and meet accountability standards, such as strong beneficiary participation.

In 2008 nine agencies became HAP-I members, bringing the total to 28; two became certified making five in all; and a further 14 enrolled in the certification scheme.

Photo: M. Baiwong/UNHCR

Refugees from the Central African Republic in southeastern Chad (file photo)

"Agencies that are working towards certification are genuinely ensuring that their quality systems are robust and are thereby assuring [targeted beneficiaries] that their concerns and complaints.will influence the way [the agency's] operations are run," said Stockton.

Donors are also championing the scheme. UK Under-Secretary for International Development Gareth Thomas has suggested that the HAP-I certification could become a condition for DFID aid in future.

But this is risky, according to Stockton. "This would be coercive.accountability will work only if organisations make a commitment to high-level programming, and to the dignity of their stakeholders because they believe it is the proper thing to do."

Click here to find out about additional accountability drives

Still top-down

While many agencies are attempting to be more transparent about their operations, information often flows more freely upwards to donors, than downwards to beneficiaries, noted the report.

Accountability and high-quality programming still does not necessarily determine an agency's financial success, said Stockton. "Instead, high quality professional marketing capacities play a huge part in the fortunes of major humanitarian agencies."

"And If they are from an OECD [Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development] country, the prospects of income success are far more likely than if they are from a non-OECD country."

"The Listening Project", an extensive consultation, with aid beneficiaries in 13 countries revealed confusion over who is responsible for what in aid delivery, particularly with international non-profits increasingly sub-contracting to local organisations.

"People in recipient communities find this confusing and distancing - they often do not know who is really behind the assistance.and do not therefore know who to hold accountable or how to do so," the consultation said.

...The overall impression is of a widening and deepening of accountability within the humanitarian system ...

Despite aid agencies stressing participatory language in their project documents and communication materials, many stakeholders said they were still not consulted on programme design and feedback opportunities were limited.

Monitoring abuse

Separate reports by HAP-I and Save the Children revealed that much of the sexual exploitation and abuse of beneficiaries - by aid workers, security forces, community members and others - goes unreported because of lack of information about where to report and fear of aid being cut.

Though progress on joint monitoring has been slow, HAP-I member agencies are now discussing how to set up shared monitoring and reporting mechanisms on sexual exploitation and abuse, Ghorkhmazyan said.

On the whole, communities are speaking out more, said Tearfund's Bainbridge. "Good participation is the backbone of relief..Communities are requesting more information from aid agencies, and are learning to manage the international community better and keep them accountable for the commitments they make." In all field sites Tearfund now sets up signboards in the local language stating who they are, what they are doing and how to give feedback.

Save the Children increasingly charts beneficiary feedback, but acting on it can take time and it costs - factors that donors must take into account, Ghorkhmazyan said. "We need to create more flexible communication systems [among] agencies, beneficiaries and donors to aid this process."

Champions needed

HAP-I's message is spreading, partly evidenced by the number of accountability initiatives. Competition around accountability is a good thing, said Stockton. "I have no doubts about healthy competition. That's the way the market, when it's working with a degree of regulation around it, will be good for beneficiaries."

The UN Refugee agency, UNHCR, has just undergone its first HAP-I accountability audit; and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) set up its own accountability drive in 2007.

Three donors - Sweden, Denmark and the United Kingdom - are now associate members of HAP-I.

Increasingly accountability-evaluators are teaming up: Sphere, which outlines minimum standards in humanitarian programming, and People in Aid, which pushes accountability in human resources, are discussing ways to collaborate with HAP-I to create one-stop-shop accountability tools.

Ghorkhmazyan said that in future agencies need to set up more concrete accountability measures. "Staff need to know they will be rated against criteria such as transparency or beneficiary feedback, and that the system will be triggered at an early stage if misbehavior occurs," she told IRIN.

But ultimately accountability will improve only if leaders across all organisations champion it, Bainbridge said. "We need a fundamental culture change from one where we have the resources and "do help to" [impose help on] people to one where we exist to serve and support those affected by disasters on their terms.this [change] needs to come from the top of an organisation and be shared by all serving individuals."

Mais artigos interessantes

2009-05-27T15:11:00.004+01:00

A program for Veterans' return from war: Stressful and hopeful.

Darwin, Jaine

PsycCRITIQUES. Vol 54(20), 2009, No Pagination Specified.

Reviews the books, Clinician's guide to treating stress after war: Education and coping interventions for veterans by Julia M. Whealin, Lorie T. DeCarvalho, and Edward M. Vega (see record 2008-05648-000) and Strategies for managing stress after war: Veteran's workbook and guide to wellness by Julia M. Whealin, Lorie T. DeCarvalho, and Edward M. Vega (see record 2008-05650-000).

These books combine to make a two-volume set describing a cognitive-behavioral program for treating stress after war, a clinician's guide and a workbook for veterans, in an effort to provide tools to ease this transition. Utilizing a nonpathologizing approach, this cognitive-behavioral program consists of psychoeducation, teaching stress management and exercises aimed at reconnecting the veteran to a social network.

The program can be done in an individual or group therapy format by a therapist with minimal knowledge of the treatment of trauma. This two-part set, a clinician's guide and a workbook for the veteran to use, provides an excellent education about the challenges of reintegration. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Computing the mind.

Everson, Howard T.

PsycCRITIQUES. Vol 54(20), 2009, No Pagination Specified.

Reviews the book, The Cambridge handbook of computational psychology edited by Ron Sun (see record 2008-06911-000). With the publication of this book, the newly emerging, interdisciplinary field of computational cognitive modeling has come of age. Ron Sun of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has done a remarkable job of organizing the work of a collection of researchers to provide us with a cutting-edge overview of classic and current work in computational psychology.

This handbook stakes out this important and promising area of cognitive science. In developing this handbook, Ron Sun set forth a clear, yet ambitious, writing agenda, and he selected a first-rate group of scholars and researchers to pull all this together. The goal of the handbook, according to Sun, is "to provide a definitive reference source for the rapidly growing, increasingly important, and strongly interdisciplinary field of computational cognitive modeling" (p. vii). Ron Sun and his colleagues have achieved their goal. This book represents a milestone, marking a number of important contributions to the larger field of cognitive science. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Why is it so hard to lose weight? A comprehensive review of the research on obesity.

Barongan, Christy

PsycCRITIQUES. Vol 54(20), 2009, No Pagination Specified.

Reviews the book, Obesity: Causes, mechanisms, prevention, and treatment edited by Elliott M. Blass (see record 2008-06750-000). For those individuals who seek a more complex exploration of some the major factors that contribute to obesity than what our mainstream culture provides, this book is an excellent start.

This book provides a comprehensive review of the literature on the biological, psychological, and social research relevant to obesity. The book explains why there is a global trend toward weight gain and why this trend is difficult to reverse. In particular, the book provides a thorough review of the biological and physiological factors that contribute to and maintain weight gain. Social factors such as the media, the food stamp program, and built environments are also addressed, as are psychological factors such as conditioning, reinforcement, modeling, psychometric challenges, and addiction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Wealthy plunderers of the planet.

Pilisuk, Marc; Pellegrini, Gianina

PsycCRITIQUES. Vol 54(20), 2009, No Pagination Specified.

Reviews the book, How the rich are destroying the Earth by Hervé Kempf and Leslie Thatcher (see record 2008-13229-000). In this book, Kempf uses stories to illustrate the impact of the global environmental crisis. He argues that people in wealthy countries lack interest in their more desperate communities. He also links poverty to environmental destitution and shows how the poor are suffering the most from environmental pollution.

The essence of Kempf's case is given in his comments about affluent exploiters. He identifies the top officials and board members of international corporations that reap the benefits of environmental degradation. Kempf extends the blame beyond the wasteful spending of the superrich to their middleclass followers in North America, Europe, and Japan; these individuals consume 80 percent of the global wealth but constitute only 20 percent of the global population. While Kempf focuses a needed light upon a powerful elite, his spirited account does not answer important questions about why a change to a kinder and more sustainable world is so difficult. The book leaves us with questions about how this group of wealthy and powerful people operates to prevent social change and how powerful values are tapped to justify its privileged status. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Reducing global poverty: Moving beyond traditional approaches.

Flores, Roseanne L.

PsycCRITIQUES. Vol 54(20), 2009, No Pagination Specified.

Reviews the book, Out of poverty: What works when traditional approaches fail by Paul Polak (see record 2008-01574-000). In this book, the author reviews the traditional methods that have been tried and have failed. He proposes that new approaches, when correctly implemented, can empower people and thus break the cycle of poverty for generations to come. This book is a must read for psychologists, sociologists, economists, government officials, and all those interested in helping to eliminate global poverty.

Polak has demonstrated that by using our imagination, thinking outside the box, making structural changes, and simultaneously respecting and including poor people in the conversation, we have the potential to empower people by helping them realize their potential and providing them with the tools necessary to take care of themselves and their families. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

GLOBAL: How much money for climate change adaptation?

2009-05-27T15:11:00.001+01:00

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

More greenbacks needed to adapt

JOHANNESBURG, 19 May 2009 (IRIN) - With barely six months left before countries have to clinch a climate change deal in Copenhagen in December, a call for more money - over and above development aid - to help poor countries adapt to climate change has been backed by a major report.

The report - Closing the Gaps: Disaster Risk Reduction and Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries - is the work of the international Commission on Climate Change and Development (CCCD), set up in 2008 by the Swedish government and chaired by Gunilla Carlsson, Sweden's Minister for international development cooperation.

The first in its two-step approach urged rich countries to speedily mobilise US$1 billion to $2 billion to help nations most vulnerable to the impact of global warming: low-income small island states and, particularly, African countries.

"This stepwise approach aims to narrow the trust gap between industrial and developing countries," said the report. "The second step is an effective mechanism for funding adaptation that would be created through climate negotiations."

Adaptation is much more than climate-proofing development efforts and ODA

The Official Development Assistance (ODA) provided by rich countries and other public funds "are unlikely to provide the full resources required to finance adaptation efforts of all developing countries in the long term", the CCCD commented. The global economic recession is also likely to shrink available funding.

Money for climate adaptation, and the diversion of ODA into it, has been a major issue in the talks on a new deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol - the international agreement to curb harmful greenhouse gas emissions - when it lapses in 2012.

Under the "polluter pays" principle, industrialised countries are obliged to help developing ones adapt to climate change, but developing countries and environmental lobby groups have been wary of much needed ODA being repackaged to pay for adaptation.

Antonio Hill, senior policy advisor at Oxfam, the UK-based development agency, said the report's findings were significant because Sweden would assume presidency of the European Union (EU) in July 2009, and "we can assume that this will provide an important reference point, as Sweden leads the charge towards an EU finance package ... [to present at] Copenhagen [in December]."

Johan Schaar, director of the CCCD, said Sweden was in the process of building a position based on the report; a joint paper by the European Commission and the Presidency of the EU was also being drafted and would be ready in early July.

The CCCD consists of 13 prominent individuals, including Kenyan Nobel prize winner Wangari Maathai, Indian environmentalist Sunita Narain, deputy head of the UN Environment Programme Angela Cropper, deputy head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Margareta Wahlström, and Jacques Aigrain, head of Swiss Re, one of the world's largest reinsurance companies.

"Adaptation is much more than climate-proofing development efforts and ODA," said the report. "It requires sustainable development: meeting the needs of the present in ways that do not compromise the ability of future generations to meet their need."

It's about the money

The report noted that ODA totalled $104 billion in 2007, and the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimated that more than 60 percent of ODA could be considered as relating to adaptation.

"Obviously, increasing ODA would both provide funds for climate-proofing development assistance and increase funding for adaptation. The appropriate role of ODA in supporting climate adaptation needs to be articulated."

However, Oxfam's Hill said adaptation cost estimates should take account of the most recent scientific assessments, which showed that previous estimates were dramatically low.

He cited a recent article by Martin Parry, former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC), an international scientific body, and two co-authors, in Nature magazine: "The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has estimated that between $50 billion and $170 billion per year (in current values) will be needed by the year 2030."

The authors noted that "This is only a twentieth of current spending on development of new infrastructure globally, and a tenth of the expected cost of emissions reductions."

SUDAN: Peace in Darfur - one step forward, two steps back

2009-05-27T15:09:00.000+01:00

Photo: Derk Segaar/IRIN

What flared up in 2003 as a conflict between the government and two main rebel groups - the JEM and SLM/A - over marginalisation and distribution of wealth and power, has resulted in fighting between splintered rebel groups - file photo

NAIROBI, 18 May 2009 (IRIN) - Rebels in Sudan's Darfur region are showing signs of unity, but it has not brought their region any closer to a comprehensive peace, analysts said, as the government wrapped up another round of unsuccessful discussions with the most active rebel group.

Since the indictment on 4 March http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=83299 of President Omar al-Bashir for war crimes, the Justice and Equality Movement claims to have made big strides towards uniting fractious rebels by bringing other groups under its umbrella.

"We are quite hopeful that by mid-June [at the latest], we will have one organisation," Gebreil Ibrahim, JEM's economic adviser and brother of the group's leader, Khalil, told IRIN. "Now we have started calling it the New JEM."

What flared up in 2003 as a conflict between the government and two main rebel groups - the JEM and the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army, or SLM/A - over marginalisation and distribution of wealth and power, has resulted in fighting between splintered rebel groups, increased banditry and ethnic clashes.

"Unity by attrition"

But Darfur's rebellion has come "full circle" and is once again re-emerging as two main groups - the JEM and the faction of the SLM/A led by Abdel Wahid Mohammed Nur, according to Theodore Murphy of the Geneva-based Humanitarian Dialogue Centre, which has helped facilitate negotiations between rebels and the government.

"To a degree, it's down to efforts within the movements to unite, but also because the smaller groups are falling apart and being absorbed into the larger," he told IRIN, calling it "unity by attrition".

Last month, Suleiman Jamous, an influential commander with the Unity faction of the SLM/A, announced that he, 30 commanders and 500 soldiers were joining the JEM, virtually decapitating the SLA-Unity faction.

New recruits

The JEM said hundreds more soldiers from various factions of the SLA and other rebel groups had also joined.

Following the government's expulsion of 13 major international aid agencies from Sudan http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=83311 - most of whom were serving the 2.7 million people living in camps in Darfur - hundreds of civilians have also joined JEM ranks, according to spokesman Ahmed Hussain Adam.

For the first time, Hussain said, members of Arab groups traditionally aligned with the government - the Beni Halba, the Rizeigat and the Misseriya - were joining the JEM in their hundreds.

Nur's faction of the SLM/A is similarly "dabbling" with bringing in former splinter groups, Murphy said.

But despite these strides, a comprehensive peace deal remains elusive in the semi-arid western region of Sudan, where as many as 300,000 people are estimated to have died and another 4.7 million depend on aid to survive.

Negotiations

The JEM was the only player in a February attempt at restarting peace talks with the government, at which it signed a "goodwill agreement" to exchange prisoners and facilitate the flow of aid to Darfur. Renewed discussions beginning 6 May on implementing that agreement came to a close in the Qatari capital Doha last week with no tangible results.

Photo: Derk Segaar/IRIN

Fighting between splintered rebel groups, increased banditry and ethnic clashes have devastated Darfur - file photo

While the return to two main rebel groups is a "step forward", Murphy said both groups refused to negotiate together, so "it may not get us that much closer to a comprehensive process".

Others fear the JEM can never be the only unifying force, as some groups will always oppose its Islamist nature. Many analysts say its recent popularity is due to the money it offers new recruits. It has also engaged in various battles over the last few months, in an effort, analysts said, to prove its military strength and thus increase its leverage in negotiations.

Focus on JEM

"Unless the structural approach that has been taken to the Doha talks is opened to include other movements .comprehensive peace agreements in Darfur will not be possible," said Paula Roque, a researcher at the Institute for Security Studies, a Pretoria-based think-tank.

On 15 March, the SLM's Unity and Juba factions, as well as the SLM faction led by Khamis Abdallah Abakar, the breakaway JEM faction led by Idris Azraq and the United Revolutionary Forces Front, signed an agreement in Libya "to create a unified front and participate in the peace negotiations", according to the latest Darfur report by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon.

This small alliance was not present during the recent discussions between the JEM and the government, which ended on 12 May and will resume on 27 May.

"The special relationship the US and the Sudan government are building up with the JEM, prioritising [leader] Khalil Ibrahim's movement in peace talks, risks backfiring unless balanced by other contacts, especially with Arabs," writes Julie Flint on the blog, Making sense of Darfur. http://www.ssrc.org/blogs/darfur/category/darfur/

The Darfur conflict pits mostly non-Arab rebels against the Arab-dominated government and has exacerbated tensions between nomadic Arabs and settled Africans in the region. While the Africans have suffered most in the conflict, Arabs have also been victims.

"The peace process has always been between the government on one side and the predominantly non-Arab rebel movements on the other," Flint writes. As the JEM becomes the main negotiating partner, and Arabs continue to be excluded from the process, "the parameters of the peace process are shrinking rather than expanding, as they must".

Representing the Fur

Who represents the region's native group, the Fur, has become another problem. Nur, the Fur's rebel leader and one of the founders of the rebellion, refuses to negotiate with the government until the violence in Darfur stops. Other rebel groups say he has been averse to any co-operation with them as well.

"Abdel Wahid [Nur] has essentially painted himself into a corner," said Colin Thomas-Jensen, a policy adviser at the Washington-based Enough Project. The JEM's political and military surge has led to increasing discontent with Nur's leadership, "but there's no one to fill that vacuum.

Photo: Derk Segaar/IRIN

Rebels in south Darfur: An analyst says Darfur's rebellion has come "full circle" and is once again re-emerging as two main groups, the JEM and a faction of the SLM/A - file photo

"The Fur, being the largest group in Darfur and being the largest group affected by this war, need strong representation in any peace process. The consensus view among negotiators and mediators has developed that Abdel Wahid will not provide that. Finding a Fur representation has become an obsession for many within the mediation."

Thus while some degree of rebel unity is a step forward for Darfur, increased politicisation of the conflict and the lack of representation of some groups continue to plague peace efforts. Meanwhile, analysts and civil society alike have grown "tired" of the constant making and breaking of alliances among the rebels.

For Ibrahim Mudawi, chairman of the Sudan Social Development Organization, Sudan's largest NGO, which is active in Darfur, these latest rebel mergers are insignificant.

"All of them [the rebel groups] are irrelevant. All are fragmented. They are sitting on smaller and smaller constituencies," he said. "There is no one having a vision or plan."

NEPAL: Political impasse delays humanita

2009-05-27T15:08:00.000+01:00

Photo: Naresh Newar/IRIN

Many flood victims may not get the assistance they need due to governmental uncertainty

KATHMANDU, 15 May 2009 (IRIN) - The ongoing political impasse in Nepal has affected the flow of humanitarian assistance and development work, local and international aid workers say.

Nepal has been left without a government since Prime Minister Puspa Kamal Dahal, also chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPNM), quit his office on 4 May.

CPNM is the political body of the former Maoist rebels who ended a decade-long armed conflict following a 2006 peace agreement.

The Maoists make up the majority of the 601-member Constituent Assembly (CA) and head the coalition government comprising five national political parties.

"The withdrawal of the Maoists from the government is a serious sign of a severe political crisis in the near future and risks the country going back to war," said independent political analyst Krishna Adhikari.

Dahal quit over the decision by President Ram Baran Yadav to reinstate the Chief of Army Staff, General Rookmangud Katawal, despite his dismissal by the cabinet for defying government orders by recruiting more solders.

The general was accused by the Maoists of recruiting 3,010 soldiers to the Nepal Army (NA) and reinstating eight senior NA brigadier-generals without coordinating with the Defence Ministry.

Impact on humanitarian aid

According to aid workers, humanitarian assistance would be most affected as there is now uncertainty about the formation of a government.

Moreover, major political parties are still not in agreement as to how the next government should be formed.

"There is rising concern about the impact on the most vulnerable communities, especially the victims of the Koshi flood," Vincent Omuga, humanitarian affairs officer at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told IRIN.

For the past nine months, thousands of people displaced by the Koshi flood have been living in the camps of Sunsari and Saptari of eastern Nepal, nearly 300km south of the capital, Kathmandu.

Before the political crisis, the government had passed a compensation package of thousands of dollars to help resettle the displaced families in their homes.

"But now the relief aid for the displaced will not be delivered because the release of funds is done only through the government," said an international aid worker, who requested anonymity.

Early recovery activities are supported by the UN and other donor agencies through the government.

"All this will be delayed now because the district level decisions by local government offices and institutions depends on the decision of the central level government, which is still lagging behind," the aid worker said.

Meanwhile, local NGO workers are also worried about the impact on their development work as most of their activities depend on their partnership with local government bodies such as the Village Development Committees and District Development Committees, none of which can make any decisions to implement aid projects without permission from central government.

"It is quite unlikely that aid services will be delivered soon until this political deadlock is over," Netra Timilsina, an aid worker and senior official of NGO Federation of Nepal, told IRIN.

"There is a huge vacuum as we are now a government-less state. Ministries and departments are not functioning and the donors are in a wait-and-see position," said Timilsina.

Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world, with more than 30 percent of its 28 million inhabitants living below the poverty line of less than US$1 a day.

Artigos Maio

2009-05-27T14:09:00.012+01:00

Aqui vão mais uma série de artigos e livros que poderão ser interessantes, saúde mental, stress, coping e outros.

“Zapping” the brain: Electroconvulsive therapy and beyond.Colotla, Victor A.

PsycCRITIQUES. Vol 54(19), 2009, No Pagination Specified.

Reviews the book, Brain stimulation therapies for clinicians by Edmund S. Higgins and Mark S. George (see record 2008-17189-000). In this book the authors attempt to provide an overview of brain stimulation therapies for anyone seeking a broad grasp of the field.

The authors state that the book is addressed to clinicians and researchers, but they hope that patients will benefit from the overview as well. As it is a book addressed to both clinicians and nonclinicians, the authors include a brief introduction to basic concepts on electricity and neuroanatomy before describing the brain stimulation therapies. They also include summaries of the literature for the readers to assess for themselves the utility of each technique. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

A case control study of suicides in China with and without mental disorder. By Zhang, Jie; Zhou, Liang

Crisis: The Journal of Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention. Vol 30(2), 2009, 68-72.

Abstract

Background: Chinese suicide samples have provided opportunities to study the differences between suicides with and without psychiatric diagnoses.

Aims: To examine the differences between suicides with and without mental disorders.

Methods: Sixty-six suicides and 66 living controls were studied with psychological autopsy interviews in rural China. Those who died by suicide with (n = 45) and without (n = 21) mental disorders were compared on demographic characteristics, suicidal behavior, social support, life events, and depressive symptoms (as measured by the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, HAMD).

Results: Suicides with and without psychiatric diagnoses had significant differences in many demographic and social factors. In comparison with suicides with psychiatric diagnoses, suicides without psychiatric diagnoses were younger, were better educated, had higher income, were more likely to kill themselves using pesticides or other poisons, were less likely to have a history of prior suicide attempt, had less long-term life events and more recent life events, and scored lower on HAMD.

Conclusions: These two groups might be from two different populations. This finding has important implications for more effective and targeted suicide prevention strategies in China. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Factors associated with repeated suicide attempts: Preliminary results of the WHO Multisite Intervention Study on Suicidal Behavior (SUPRE-MISS) from Campinas, Brazil. By da Silva Cais, Carlos Filinto; Stefanello, Sabrina; Fabrício Mauro, Marisa Lúcia; Vaz Scavacini de Freitas, Gisleine; Botega, Neury José

Crisis: The Journal of Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention. Vol 30(2), 2009, 73-78.

Abstract

Background: This study compares sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of 102 first-time hospital-treated suicide attempters (first-evers) with a group of 101 repeat suicide attempters (repeaters) consecutively admitted to a general hospital in Brazil, during the intake phase of the WHO Multisite Intervention Study on Suicidal Behaviors (SUPRE-MISS).

Aims: To compare sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of first-time hospital-treated suicide attempters (first-evers) with a group of repeat suicide attempters (repeaters).

Methods: A standardized interview and psychometric scales were administered to all patients. Results: Repetition was associated with being of female sex (OR = 2.7; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.2–6.2), a housewife (OR = 3.8; 95% CI = 1.2–11.8), and having a score above median on the Beck Depression Inventory (OR = 5.2; 95% CI = 1.7–15.6).

Conclusions: The findings suggest that repeaters, namely, depressed housewives who have attempted suicide previously, need specific treatment strategies in order to avoid future suicide attempts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Suicides by jumping from iconic bridges in Hong Kong. By Wong, P. W. C.; Chan, W. S. C.; Lau, T. K.; Morgan, P. R.; Yip, P. S. F.

Crisis: The Journal of Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention. Vol 30(2), 2009, 79-84.

Abstract

Background: Three bridges in Hong Kong have become iconic sites for suicide since their openings 11 years ago.

Aims: This retrospective record-based study aimed to examine suicides by jumping from a group of three iconic bridges in Hong Kong, and to explore potential preventive strategies on these bridges to prevent future suicide.

Methods: We examined the Coroner’s files of 12 people who killed themselves by jumping from the bridges between 1997 and 2007. We also examined the Coroner’s files of other suicides in 2003, and compared them with the bridge suicides.

Results: The majority of the suicides were male, middle-age (40–59 years), married or cohabiting, not living alone, employed or self-employed, and in financial difficulty. None of these cases had a reported psychiatric diagnosis or psychiatric care history, and only one case had a history of suicidal attempt. Compared with other suicides in Hong Kong, the bridge jumpers were more likely to be younger, holding a job, indebted, free from a psychiatric and attempt history, and to leave a suicide note (p < .05). The bridge suicide cases in Hong Kong also appeared to be different from the profiles of bridge jumpers in other countries. Conclusions: Erection of an effective safety barrier has been found to prevent bridge suicides in many countries. Given the different characteristics of bridge jumpers in Hong Kong and the technical difficulties, more innovative ways may be needed to prevent suicides by such means. Potential prevention measures are discussed and, hopefully, will better inform the future design and development of bridges of significance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Deliberate self-harm in the emergency department: Experience from Karachi, Pakistan.

By Shahid, Muhammad; Khan, Murad M.; Saleem Khan, Muhammad; Jamal, Yasir; Badshah, Aaref; Rehmani, Rifat

Crisis: The Journal of Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention. Vol 30(2), 2009, 85-89.

Abstract

Background: Suicidal behavior is an understudied subject in Pakistan, a South-Asian developing country with a predominantly Muslim population.

Aims: This study examined the characteristics and management of patients presenting with Deliberate Self-Harm (DSH) to the Emergency Department (ED) of a tertiary care teaching hospital in Karachi, Pakistan.

Methods: A retrospective chart review of all patients (n = 98), over a period of 12 months was carried out. The demographic details of patients; method of DSH and, if drugs were used, their type, route, and quantity; reason for DSH; past psychiatric history; and outcome were recorded.

Results: The mean age of subjects was 23.5 years. The majority of patients were female; most had used drugs for DSH. After initial treatment in the ED, 34 patients were admitted to medical wards for further treatment, 12 were discharged from ED, while 52 patients left against medical advice. The main reasons for leaving against medical advice were financial constraints and fear of legal issues. Seven patients had at least one previous episode of DSH.

Conclusions: Patients who left the ED without psychosocial assessment are at increased risk for repetition of DSH as well as suicide. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Characteristics of suicidal behavior in a Turkish sample.

By Ozdel, Osman; Varma, Gulfizar; Atesci, Figen C.; Oguzhanoglu, Nalan K.; Karadag, Filiz; Amuk, Tarkan

Crisis: The Journal of Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention. Vol 30(2), 2009, 90-93.

Abstract

Background: Suicidal behavior is one of the most important problems in psychiatric clinics. Several sociodemographic and clinical characteristics may have different effects on suicidal behavior.

Aims: To examine the sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of a sample of 144 suicide attempters admitted to a Turkish emergency clinic for a suicide attempt.

Methods: All subjects were interviewed by a consultant psychiatrist. For all individuals, data on DSM-IV psychiatric diagnoses, sociodemographic data, Beck’s Hopelessness Scale (BHS), Becks’s Suicidal Ideation Scale (SIS), and Beck’s Suicidal Intention Scale (BSIS) were collected.

Results: The majority of suicide attempters were females characterized by low educational status and low religious orientation. Drug overdose was the most common method of suicide attempt and conflict within the family was the most fre uent psychological stress factor. Three- uarters of attempters (74.6%) met DSM-IV criteria for at least one psychiatric diagnosis. Of these, 28.5% met criteria for major depressive disorder. Suicide attempters with depression tended to be immigrant, urban dwellers with high scores on the suicide intent scale.

Conclusions: In the present study, the findings are useful in showing the risk factors related to suicidal behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Rethinking suicide bombing.

By Aggarwal, Neil

Crisis: The Journal of Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention. Vol 30(2), 2009, 94-97.

Abstract

Background: Current issues in the emerging psychiatric literature on suicide bombing tend to center around the pathologies of suicide bombers and the role of psychiatry as an adequate tool for analysis.

Aims: Attention to broader social science research may allow mental health professionals to develop more accurate models of behavior to explain and possibly prevent future attacks.

Methods: The psychiatric literature on suicide bombing was reviewed and compared to similar anthropological literature.

Results: A probe into the methodologies of researching suicide bombing, definitions of “war” and “terrorism”, and beliefs on life, death, homicide, and suicide demonstrate that most of the psychiatric literature reflects a particular perspective which aspires towards a certain universalism.

Conclusions: Anthropological approaches can disclose standpoints taken for granted since any interventions with respect to suicide bombing must eventually account for values which are ultimately culturally determined. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Suicidal behavior by burns in the province of Fars, Iran: A socioepidemiologic approach.

By Lari, Abdolaziz Rastegar; Alaghehbandan, Reza; Panjeshahin, Mohammad-Reza; Joghataei, Mohammad-Taghi

Crisis: The Journal of Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention. Vol 30(2), 2009, 98-101.

Abstract

Background: While suicide by burns is a relatively uncommon form of suicide in developed countries, it is one of the most common methods of suicide in the Middle East region including Iran.

Aims: To describe epidemiologic characteristics of suicidal behaviors by burns in the province of Fars, Iran.

Methods: A prospective population-based study of all suicidal behaviors by burns requiring hospitalization was conducted in the province of Fars, Iran, from March 21, 2005 to March 20, 2006. Data were obtained from patients, family members, and/or significant others through interviews during the course of hospitalization.

Results: A total of 125 patients with suicidal behavior by burns requiring hospitalization were identified during the study period, representing an overall incidence rate of 4.3 per 100,000 (95% Confidence Interval [CI]: 3.6–5.1). Females (6.2 per 100,000) had a higher rate of suicidal behavior by burns than males (2.4 per 100,000; p < .001). The age-specific rate of suicidal behavior by burns peaked at age 20–29 years (10.1 per 100,000). The rate of suicidal behavior by burns was higher among single (7.2 per 100,000) vs. married persons (4.2 per 100,000; p = 0.03). Single males aged 20–39 years and young married women aged 15–29 years were at greatest risk of suicidal behavior by burns. The most common precipitating factor (74.4%) for suicidal behavior was a quarrel with a family member, a relative, and/or a friend. Conclusions: The high rate of suicidal behavior by burns among young/married women in Fars is of concern. Social, cultural, and economic factors may contribute to suicidal behavior and need to be addressed through education, support, and commitment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Impulsive but fatal self-poisoning with pesticides among South Asians in Nickerie, Suriname: An exploratory autopsy study.

By van Spijker, B. A. J.; Graafsma, T.; Dullaart, H. I. A.; Kerkhof, A. J. F. M.

Crisis: The Journal of Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention. Vol 30(2), 2009, 102-105.

Abstract

Background: Intentional self-poisoning with pesticides is a serious problem in many developing countries. It is a commonly used method among South Asians all over the world.

Aims: To describe the circumstances and characteristics of suicides in Nickerie, Suriname, in order to gain insight into why South Asians commonly use self-poisoning.

Methods: An exploratory psychological autopsy study was conducted among 19 survivors of 13 suicides in the Nickerie district in Suriname.

Results: Impulsivity plays an important role in self-poisonings, as well as aggression and easy accessibility of pesticides.

Conclusions: Possible answers to the question why South Asians often use self-poisoning as a method for suicide may be found in culture, upbringing, styles of communication and genetics. However, more research is needed to further explore these hypotheses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Suicide bombings—A word of caution.

By Zafar, Abdul Mueed; Fatima, Aimon

Crisis: The Journal of Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention. Vol 30(2), 2009, 106-107.

Abstract

We read with interest the article by Kazim et al (see record 2008-08441-004) published recently in your prestigious journal. No doubt, suicide bombings have become a cause of progressive concern for the world in general and Pakistan in particular.

The authors’ contribution toward the understanding of this complex phenomenon is very commendable. Their efforts have potential application for designing strategies against these atrocities. We would like to bring some points to the consideration of your readers with regard to this article.

If we look into the making of a suicide bomber, misinterpretation of facts emerges as a persistent theme (Grimland et al., 2006; Haddad, 2004; Preti 2006). We strongly advocate the exercise of extreme caution to ensure that we are not guilty of the same sin. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Helping borderline patients to "get a life.".

By Buda, Béla

Crisis: The Journal of Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention. Vol 30(2), 2009, 108-109.

Abstract

Reviews the book, Treatment of borderline personality disorder. A guide to evidence-based practice by Joel Paris (see record 2008-10065-000). This book gives more to the reader than its title would suggest. It is not only a textbook on treatment of borderline personality disorder (BPD), it is also a synthesis of our knowledge concerning the syndrome, its nosology, epidemiology, etiology, outcome research, and so on.

This volume is an invaluable asset for anyone working in psychiatric care and suicide prevention. It reflects a sober criticism of present-day research and practices in the behavioral sciences and is therefore suitable to be recommended to a wider public. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Ambulatory assessment. By Ebner-Priemer, Ulrich W.; Kubiak, Thomas; Pawlik, Kurt

European Psychologist. Vol 14(2), 2009, 95-97.

Abstract

Current psychological research mainly focuses on questionnaires or laboratory studies. Both methods have their advantages and disadvantages. While questionnaires have proven criterion and conceptual validity for capturing salient personality trait and state variance, they fall short of such validity when variations of actual behavior in real-life settings are sought.

Recent criticism of such a questionnaire approach emphasized undue reliance on memory processes that are open to distortions or biases. On the other hand, behavior under a controlled laboratory setting may prove unrepresentative if this condition does not match real-life situation characteristics. Both methodologies appear to lack ecological validity. Ambulatory assessment methodology has the potential to resolve some of these problems, by investigating self-report, physiology, or behavior in (nearly) real-time in everyday life. Furthermore, ambulatory assessment can help to validate questionnaires and laboratory findings by examining their generalizability to actual behavior in everyday life. In this special section, experts in the field of ambulatory assessment review the progress in their specialized disciplines: in developmental psychology, clinical psychology, work and organizational psychology, and biological psychology.

An additional paper is dedicated to ambulatory activity monitoring, which is an approach to objectively assess actual behavior in everyday life; a widely neglected research topic in psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Ambulatory assessment in lifespan psychology: An overview of current status and new trends.

By Hoppmann, Christiane A.; Riediger, Michaela

European Psychologist. Vol 14(2), 2009, 98-108.

Abstract

Ambulatory assessment represents a powerful research tool in lifespan psychology because it allows assessing the within-person variability of developmental processes as it occurs within context-specific influences of people’s natural environments. Following a discussion of historical origins, we review four current research themes in developmentally relevant ambulatory assessment studies that use electronic devices as assessment instruments: (a) affective-motivational development, (b) social contexts of development, (c) age-related challenges and everyday functioning, and (d) cognitive development. Overall, the reviewed research demonstrates that ambulatory assessment complements traditional developmental study designs and laboratory assessments in important ways.

Acknowledging the strengths and limitations of ambulatory assessment approaches, we propose that ambulatory assessment will benefit lifespan psychology most if it becomes an integral part of multimethod investigations of developmental phenomena that balance the external and internal validity of findings. Future research should strengthen the lifespan perspective in ambulatory assessment approaches, combine multiple indicators (subjective and objective) of successful development, and attend to the fact that individual development often interacts with significant others. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Ambulatory assessment: An innovative and promising approach for clinical psychology.

By Ebner-Priemer, Ulrich W.; Trull, Timothy J.

European Psychologist. Vol 14(2), 2009, 109-119.

Abstract

Convergent experimental data, autobiographical studies, and investigations on daily life have all demonstrated that gathering information retrospectively is a highly dubious methodology. Retrospection is subject to multiple systematic distortions (i.e., affective valence effect, mood congruent memory effect, duration neglect; peak end rule) as it is based on (often biased) storage and recollection of memories of the original experience or the behavior that are of interest.

The method of choice to circumvent these biases is the use of electronic diaries to collect self-reported symptoms, behaviors, or physiological processes in real time. Different terms have been used for this kind of methodology: ambulatory assessment, ecological momentary assessment, experience sampling method, and real-time data capture. Even though the terms differ, they have in common the use of computer-assisted methodology to assess self-reported symptoms, behaviors, or physiological processes, while the participant undergoes normal daily activities.

In this review we discuss the main features and advantages of ambulatory assessment regarding clinical psychology and psychiatry: (a) the use of realtime assessment to circumvent biased recollection, (b) assessment in real life to enhance generalizability, (c) repeated assessment to investigate within person processes, (d) multimodal assessment, including psychological, physiological and behavioral data, (e) the opportunity to assess and investigate context-specific relationships, and (f) the possibility of giving feedback in real time. Using prototypic examples from the literature of clinical psychology and psychiatry, we demonstrate that ambulatory assessment can answer specific research questions better than laboratory or questionnaire studies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

The vicissitudes of conflict measurement: Stability and reliability in the frequency of disagreements.

By Burk, William J.; Denissen, Jaap; Van Doorn, Muriel D.; Branje, Susan J.T.; Laursen, Brett

European Psychologist. Vol 14(2), 2009, 153-159.

Abstract

This report examined the stability and reliability of self-reported conflict frequency in relationships with mothers, fathers, and best friends. Participants were drawn from three independent samples in the Netherlands (n = 72, M = 15.6 years), Germany (n = 242, M = 19.7 years), and the United States (n = 250, M = 19.8 years). Participants completed both topic-based surveys and interaction-based diary assessments of conflict frequency. Within samples, comparable levels of internal consistency and temporal stability emerged in each relationship for both assessment techniques.

Topic-based and interaction-based assessments of conflict frequency were moderately correlated in each relationship within samples. Daily topic-based assessments with short intervals between time points may provide the most advantageous assessment strategy for obtaining reliable measures of conflict frequency in adolescents’ close relationships. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Anxiety, processing efficiency, and cognitive performance: New developments from attentional control theory.

By Derakshan, Nazanin; Eysenck, Michael W.

European Psychologist. Vol 14(2), 2009, 168-176.

Abstract

There have been many attempts to account theoretically for the effects of anxiety on cognitive performance. This article focuses on two theories based on insights from cognitive psychology. The more recent is the attentional control theory (Eysenck, Derakshan, Santos, & Calvo, 2007), which developed from the earlier processing efficiency theory (Eysenck & Calvo, 1992). Both theories assume there is a fundamental distinction between performance effectiveness (quality of performance) and processing efficiency (the relationship between performance effectiveness and use of processing resources), and that anxiety impairs processing efficiency more than performance effectiveness.

Both theories also assume that anxiety impairs the efficiency of the central executive component of the working memory system. In addition, attentional control theory assumes that anxiety impairs the efficiency of two types of attentional control: (1) negative attentional control (involved in inhibiting attention to task-irrelevant stimuli); and (2) positive attentional control (involved in flexibly switching attention between and within tasks to maximize performance).

Recent (including unpublished) research relevant to theoretical predictions from attentional control theory is discussed. In addition, future directions for theory and research in the area of anxiety and performance are presented. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Unspoken cultural influence: Exposure to and influence of nonverbal bias.

By Weisbuch, Max; Ambady, Nalini

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol 96(6), Jun 2009, 1104-1119.

Abstract

The authors examined the extent to which nonverbal behavior contributes to culturally shared attitudes and beliefs. In Study 1, especially slim women elicited especially positive nonverbal behaviors in popular television shows. In Study 2, exposure to this nonverbal bias caused women to have especially slim cultural and personal ideals of female beauty and to have especially positive attitudes toward slim women.

In Study 3, individual differences in exposure to such nonverbal bias accounted for substantial variance in pro-slim attitudes, anti-fat attitudes, and personal ideals of beauty, even after controlling for several third variables. In Study 4, regional differences in exposure to nonverbal bias accounted for substantial variance in regional unhealthy dieting behaviors, even after controlling for several third variables. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Using the five-factor model to identify a new personality disorder domain: The case for experiential permeability.

By Piedmont, Ralph L.; Sherman, Martin F.; Sherman, Nancy C.; Dy-Liacco, Gabriel S.; Williams, Joseph E. G.

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol 96(6), Jun 2009, 1245-1258.

Abstract

Two studies were conducted to demonstrate that maladaptive aspects of high and low Openness to Experience were related to characterological impairment and that this aspect of personality may define a new domain of personality dysfunction.

The 55-item Experiential Permeability Inventory (EPI; containing 4 scales) was developed and demonstrated to have acceptable psychometric properties. Evidence of convergent, discriminant, and incremental validity was provided. These studies provide a methodological framework for identifying and developing aspects of personality dysfunction that can expand the comprehensiveness of the current set of Axis II disorders. Theoretical implications of the EPI are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Racial discrimination and the stress process.

By Ong, Anthony D.; Fuller-Rowell, Thomas; Burrow, Anthony L.

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol 96(6), Jun 2009, 1259-1271.

Abstract

The unique and combined effects of chronic and daily racial discrimination on psychological distress were examined in a sample of 174 African American doctoral students and graduates. Using a daily process design, 5 models of the stress process were tested. Multilevel random coefficient modeling analyses revealed that chronic exposure to racial discrimination predicted greater daily discrimination and psychological distress.

Further, results show that differences in daily discrimination and negative events accounted for meaningful variation in daily distress responses. Finally, findings indicate that daily discrimination and negative events mediated the relationship between chronic discrimination and psychological distress. The study provides support for the need to measure chronic strains as distinctive from daily stressors in the lives of African Americans. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Identifying at-risk, ethnically diverse stroke caregivers for counseling: A longitudinal study of mental health.

By Perrin, Paul B.; Heesacker, Martin; Hinojosa, Melanie Sberna; Uthe, Catherine E.; Rittman, Maude R.

Rehabilitation Psychology. Vol 54(2), May 2009, 138-149.

Abstract

Purpose: This study examined (1) causality in the relationship between stroke caregiver mental health and care-recipient functioning, and (2) the prediction from stroke caregiver and care-recipient variables 5 months and 11 months later.

Research Method: Questionnaire, interview, and observational data were collected from 124 ethnically diverse stroke caregiver/care-recipient dyads in the homes of care recipients at 1, 6, and 12 months after discharge.

Results: The magnitudes of the causal pathways between stroke caregiver mental health and care-recipient functioning were not significantly different. At 1 month after discharge, the best predictors of poor caregiver mental health 11 months later were care-recipient low daily functioning and caregiver low sense of coherence, high burden, and high depression.

Conclusions: Caregiver mental health and care-recipient functioning may have reciprocal causal influence on each other, so one of the first steps in stroke rehabilitation may be providing counseling to the primary caregiver. Caregivers with high burden, a low sense of coherence, and a low-functioning care recipient are those most at risk for poor mental health outcomes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

The working alliance and employment outcomes for people with severe mental illness enrolled in vocational programs.

By Kukla, Marina; Bond, Gary R.

Rehabilitation Psychology. Vol 54(2), May 2009, 157-163.

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between the working alliance and employment outcomes in persons with severe mental illness receiving vocational services. Another purpose of this study was to determine whether working alliance differences exist between clients receiving evidence-based supported employment services and those receiving traditional stepwise vocational services.

Design: This study was a secondary analysis of a 2-year randomized controlled trial comparing two employment programs providing services to people with severe mental illness.

Results: Contrary to expectations, no overall relationship was found between the working alliance and employment outcomes. As predicted, supported employment participants each assigned to a single vocational worker had more positive working alliances than participants served by a team of vocational workers in the traditional vocational program.

Conclusions/Implications: The lack of an association between the working alliance and employment outcomes is inconsistent with previous literature. Further research is needed using standardized working alliance measures and larger samples that include both working and nonworking clients. Evidence-based supported employment, which employs individual caseloads, seems to foster better relationships than a team-based vocational approach, although future research is needed to replicate this finding. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Effects of depressive symptoms on health behavior practices among older adults with vision loss.

By Jones, Gwyn C.; Rovner, Barry W.; Crews, John E.; Danielson, Melissa L.

Rehabilitation Psychology. Vol 54(2), May 2009, 164-172.

Abstract

Objective: The authors examined the interface between visual impairment and depressive symptoms on health behaviors, self-care, and social participation among adults ages 65 and older.

Method: The authors analyzed data from the 1997–2004 National Health Interview Survey on visual impairment and depressive symptoms for 49,278 adults ages 65 and older, comparing visually impaired adults (n = 8,787) with and without depressive symptoms with a reference group of adults with neither condition (n = 3,136) for outcome measures: physical health, health behaviors, and difficulties with self-care and social participation.

Results: Adults with visual impairment and severe depressive symptoms were more likely than adults with neither condition to smoke (14.9%, adjusted odds ratio [AOR] = 1.6), be obese (28.2%, AOR = 1.9), be physically inactive (80.5%, AOR = 3.0), have fair–poor health (76.0%, AOR = 26.5), and have difficulties with self-care (27.9%, AOR = 11.8) and social participation (52.1%, AOR = 10.9).

Discussion and Conclusions: Older visually impaired adults with depressive symptoms are vulnerable to health decline and further disablement without timely interventions that target smoking cessation, healthy eating, and increased physical activity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Quality of informal care is multidimensional.

By Christie, Juliette; Smith, G. Rush; Williamson, Gail M.; Lance, Charles E.; Shovali, Tamar E.; Silva, Luciana C.

Rehabilitation Psychology. Vol 54(2), May 2009, 173-181.

Abstract

Purpose: To demonstrate that assessing quality of informal care involves more than merely determining whether care recipient needs for assistance with activities of daily living (ADLs) are routinely satisfied. We investigated the extent to which potentially harmful behavior (PHB), adequate care, and exemplary care (EC) are empirically distinct dimensions of quality of care.

Design: 237 care recipients completed the quality of care measures, and their caregivers completed psychosocial measures of their own depression, life events, cognitive status, and perceptions of pre-illness relationship quality.

Results: Although PHB was moderately related to EC, adequate care was not associated with PHB and was only slightly related to EC. Psychosocial variables were not related to adequate care but were differentially associated with PHB and EC, providing additional evidence for the distinction between these measures of quality of care. Conclusions: ADL assistance can be adequate in the presence of PHB and/or the absence of EC. Declines in EC may signal increases in PHB, independent of adequacy of care. These findings produce a brief, portable, and more comprehensive instrument for assessing quality of informal care. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Development of an item bank for the assessment of depression in persons with mental illnesses and physical diseases using Rasch analysis.

By Forkmann, Thomas; Boecker, Maren; Norra, Christine; Eberle, Nicole; Kircher, Tilo; Schauerte, Patrick; Mischke, Karl; Westhofen, Martin; Gauggel, Siegfried; Wirtz, Markus

Rehabilitation Psychology. Vol 54(2), May 2009, 186-197.

Abstract

Objective: The calibration of item banks provides the basis for computerized adaptive testing that ensures high diagnostic precision and minimizes participants’ test burden. The present study aimed at developing a new item bank that allows for assessing depression in persons with mental and persons with somatic diseases.

Method: The sample consisted of 161 participants treated for a depressive syndrome, and 206 participants with somatic illnesses (103 cardiologic, 103 otorhinolaryngologic; overall mean age = 44.1 years, SD =14.0; 44.7% women) to allow for validation of the item bank in both groups. Persons answered a pool of 182 depression items on a 5-point Likert scale.

Results: Evaluation of Rasch model fit (infit <>2.0), and reliability (>.80) resulted in a bank of 79 items with good psychometric properties. Conclusions: The bank provides items with a wide range of content coverage and may serve as a sound basis for computerized adaptive testing applications. It might also be useful for researchers who wish to develop new fixed-length scales for the assessment of depression in specific rehabilitation settings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Improving measurement properties of the Patient Health Questionnaire–9 with rating scale analysis.

By Williams, Ryan T.; Heinemann, Allen W.; Bode, Rita K.; Wilson, Catherine S.; Fann, Jesse R.; Tate, Denise G.; PRISMS Investigators, University of Washington, US

Rehabilitation Psychology. Vol 54(2), May 2009, 198-203.

Abstract

Objective: The goal of this study was to explore the psychometric properties of the Patient Health Questionnaire–9 (PHQ-9; R. L. Spitzer, K. Kroenke, & J. B. W. Williams, 1999).

Method: Factor analysis and Rasch rating scale analysis were used to examine the psychometric properties of the PHQ-9. The sample consisted of 202 adults with spinal cord injury (SCI). Results: The PHQ-9 items appear to form a usefully unidimensional scale. One “double-barreled” item, “Moving or speaking so slowly that other people could have noticed or being so fidgety or restless that you’ve been moving around a lot more than usual,” misfit the Rasch model. Category probability curves indicate respondent difficulty in distinguishing between the 2 intermediate rating scale categories: several days and more than half the days. Combining these categories eliminated this problem and resulted in all items fitting the measurement model.

Conclusions: The measurement properties of the PHQ-9 can be improved by collapsing rating scale categories and by restructuring several double- and triple-barreled items. Adopting these changes may improve sensitivity in measuring depression after SCI. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Adapting health education material for deaf audiences.

By Pollard Jr., Robert Q; Dean, Robyn K.; O’Hearn, Amanda; Haynes, Sharon L.

Rehabilitation Psychology. Vol 54(2), May 2009, 232-238.

Abstract

Problem: The deaf population is an often-overlooked limited English proficiency (LEP) group at risk for health disparities associated with low health literacy. Lack of access to health information conveyed via radio, television, or ambient auditory sources such as public conversation further aggravates this population’s low health literacy. Methods of adapting health education material for hearing LEP populations do not reach deaf audiences with equal effectiveness.

Method: We adapt health education material for deaf audiences by first determining the “learning points” contained in vetted source material. A dialog-based film script covering those learning points is created. Supplemental content addressing common deaf population knowledge gaps and sociocultural experiences is added. Deaf actors are filmed following the adapted American Sign Language (ASL) script. Their ASL is back-translated into English to yield vocal track and subtitle scripts. The source material author(s) are consulted throughout the process to assure the film’s adherence to the learning point list.

Results: Users report that the adapted product is more relevant, engaging, and effective for deaf audiences. Conclusion: This adaptation approach may aid in reducing deaf population health disparities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

As time goes by.

By Elkind, David

PsycCRITIQUES. Vol 54(21), 2009, No Pagination Specified.

Abstract

Reviews the book, Human development from early childhood to early adulthood: Findings from a 20-year longitudinal study by Wolfgang Schneider and Merry Bullock (see record 2008-10321-000). The basic question that longitudinal studies seek to answer is this: Do the fundamental things of life truly remain the same from childhood to adolescence? The Longitudinal Study of Ontogenesis of Individual Competencies, the study reported in Human Development From Early Childhood to Early Adulthood: Findings From a 20-Year Longitudinal Study, was carried out in Munich, Germany, during the 1980s and 1990s under the auspices of the Max Planck Institute. The aims of the study were ambitious and covered the assessment of age changes in domains varying from intelligence and personality to motor ability and reading and spelling. This research serves to reminds us, while some of the fundamental things of life do change, others do remain the same as time goes by. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Explaining political behavior through situational and dispositional factors.

By Warner, Ruth

PsycCRITIQUES. Vol 54(21), 2009, No Pagination Specified.

Abstract

Reviews the book, Political psychology: Situations, individuals, and cases by David Patrick Houghton (see record 2008-10245-000). Political psychology aims to examine the application of psychological processes to the political field, which is also the aim of this book. Overall, the book is written in an engaging manner and would serve as a good introduction for students to political psychology. It uses an interesting framework for discussing political behavior and prompts critical thinking from students. The book will be most useful to instructors of undergraduate political psychology courses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

The development of violence and serious offending: Forging ahead.

By Viljoen, Jodi; Spice, Andrew

PsycCRITIQUES. Vol 54(21), 2009, No Pagination Specified.

Abstract

Reviews the book, Violence and serious theft: Development and prediction from childhood to adulthood by Rolf Loeber, David P. Farrington, Magda Stouthamer-Loeber, and Helene Raskin White (see record 2008-10359-000). Rather than reviewing what is already known, this book presents new findings from the Pittsburgh Youth Study (PYS).

The PYS is one of the most important and impressive studies on offending that have been conducted to date. Its merits are extensive and include a large and carefully selected sample, low attrition rates, lengthy and numerous follow-ups spanning from childhood into adulthood, comprehensive measurement strategies, and sophisticated data analytic methods. The book is organized into four sections: Introduction and Methods; The Epidemiology of Violence, Serious Theft, Substance Use, Drug Dealing, and Gang Membership; Prediction of Violence, Serious Theft, and Desistance; and the final section, Conclusions, which reviews the key contributions of the PYS and discusses how the findings are relevant to policy and interventions.

This is a remarkable book on a truly remarkable and unparalleled study. The authors are, without a doubt, among the most respected and important researchers in this field, and the PYS data are so rich that they seem to address an infinite number of research questions. This book offers something for everyone. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Envy: From religion to marketing, a multidisciplinary review.

By Donner, Michael B.

PsycCRITIQUES. Vol 54(21), 2009, No Pagination Specified.

Abstract

Reviews the book, Envy: Theory and research by Richard H. Smith (see record 2008-11222-000). This book is a fascinating and wide-ranging exploration of the subject of envy. When editor Richard Smith describes the problem of defining envy as inconvenient, he vastly understates the problem.

This book examines envy from multiple points of view. There are 16 chapters and at least that many different ways to define and explain the concept. Envy has so many different uses and is applied to such a wide array of situations that the authors are unable to find a common definition for the word, despite its widespread professional and colloquial usage. Nevertheless, the topic is provocative, and, by locating the discussion across disciplines and dimensions, the editor provides an opportunity for the reader. Envy seems to be a concept that people think they know when they see it and thus requires little elaboration, yet this book gives the lie to that belief. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Schoolwide prevention: Courage and wisdom to change children’s lives.

By Esquivel, Giselle B.

PsycCRITIQUES. Vol 54(21), 2009, No Pagination Specified.

Abstract

Reviews the book, Schoolwide prevention models: Lessons learned in elementary schools, edited by Charles R. Greenwood, Thomas R. Kratochwill, and Melissa Clements (see record 2008-12116-000). The timeliness of this book as a professional resource is made salient by the immediacy with which school psychology and education as disciplines are ready to validate and adopt evidence-based prevention methods that have a positive impact on children’s lives.

The authors provide a rationale for the need for early interventions that target social behavior and literacy as potential risk factors that influence long-term academic success and adjustment of students. Given the importance of school-based prevention, this book should be of interest and value to school psychologists, guidance counselors, educators, educational researchers, graduate students in education related fields, and other professionals involved in providing services to children in school settings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Accentuating the positive. By Alford, Joe

PsycCRITIQUES. Vol 54(21), 2009, No Pagination Specified.

Abstract

Reviews the book, Preventing suicide: The solution focused approach by John Henden (see record 2008-12948-000). This book is is a manual on the application of solution-focused therapy (SFT) to prevent suicide. Written by John Henden, a British counselor and psychotherapist, it is a dense how-to guide that is full of clinical vignettes and concrete tips on using SFT with suicidal persons.

SFT was developed in the United States in the 1970s by Steve de Shazer and his colleagues; it grew out of the strategic approaches to family psychotherapy developed by Watzlawick (1978), Haley (1973), and others. This book makes a strong contribution to the literature on working with persons who are suicidal. It is written by a clinician who has clearly devoted a great deal of effort and energy to learning how to help such people. I think that it would be of interest to both established clinicians and clinical trainees who are interested in practical approaches to helping persons with suicidal ideation or intent. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Daily negative mood affects fasting glucose in Type 2 diabetes.

By Skaff, Marilyn M.; Mullan, Joseph T.; Almeida, David M.; Hoffman, Lesa; Masharani, Umesh; Mohr, David; Fisher, Lawrence

Health Psychology. Vol 28(3), May 2009, 265-272.

Abstract

Objective: To examine the relationship between mood and blood glucose in a 21-day daily diary study.

Design: During a home visit, information was gathered from 206 persons with Type 2 diabetes regarding demographics, disease characteristics and treatment, and depressive symptoms. They had blood drawn at a laboratory, yielding HbA1C. The participants were then telephoned each evening for 21 days and were asked about their positive and negative mood during the past 24 hours. They also tested their blood glucose upon rising in the morning.

Main Outcome Measures: The main outcomes measures were positive and negative affect and fasting glucose.

Results: Multilevel analyses revealed a relationship between negative affect on one day and morning glucose on the next day. There was no such relationship between positive affect and glucose, nor was there a comparable effect of glucose on one day and either positive or negative affect on the next day.

Conclusion: The observed relationship between mood and blood glucose appears to be because of negative affect, not positive, with no evidence of a lagged effect of glucose on mood. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Relationship of early life stress and psychological functioning to blood pressure in the CARDIA study.

By Lehman, Barbara J.; Taylor, Shelley E.; Kiefe, Catarina I.; Seeman, Teresa E.

Health Psychology. Vol 28(3), May 2009, 338-346.

Abstract

Objective: Low childhood socioeconomic status (CSES) and a harsh early family environment have been linked with health disorders in adulthood. In this study, the authors present a model to help explain these links and relate the model to blood pressure change over a 10-year period in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults sample. Design: Participants (N = 2,738) completed measures of childhood family environment, parental education, health behavior, and adult negative emotionality.

Main Outcome Measures: These variables were used to predict initial systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP and DBP, respectively) and the rate of blood pressure change over 10 years.

Results: Structural equation modeling indicated that family environment was related to negative emotions, which in turn predicted baseline DBP and SBP and change in SBP. Parental education directly predicted change in SBP. Although African American participants had higher SBP and DBP and steeper increases over time, multiple group comparisons indicated that the strength of most pathways was similar across race and gender.

Conclusion: Low CSES and harsh family environments help to explain variability in cardiovascular risk. Low CSES predicted increased blood pressure over time directly and also indirectly through associations with childhood family environment, negative emotionality, and health behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Early manifestations of personality and adult health: A life course perspective.

By Kubzansky, Laura D.; Martin, Laurie T.; Buka, Stephen L.

Health Psychology. Vol 28(3), May 2009, 364-372.

Abstract

Objective: The aim of this study is to investigate whether individual personality or temperamental qualities that emerge early and persist over the life course, predict adult midlife health. Specific childhood personality attributes considered include distress proneness, behavioral inhibition, and ability to stay focused on a task.

Design: Prospective data are from 569 individuals followed from birth into adulthood.

Main Outcome Measures: Outcomes include two different measures of adult health: self-rated general health, and number of illnesses in adulthood.

Results: Childhood personality attributes related to attention and distress were significantly associated with adult health, with stronger effects evident among women. Children with high attention reported better self-rated health (b = 0.12, p < .05) and fewer illnesses (b = -0.09, p < .01) as adults; more distress-prone children reported worse self-rated health (b = -0.15, p < .05) and more illnesses (b = 0.07, p < .09) as adults. Conclusion: Associations between child personality attributes with both general self-rated health and number of illnesses in adulthood were maintained after taking account of childhood social environment and child health. Findings indicate that early emerging personality and related processes influence adult physical health, and suggest the potential value of interventions targeting early life development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Posttraumatic stress disorder in parents of children with chronic illnesses: A meta-analysis.

By Cabizuca, Mariana; Marques-Portella, Carla; Mendlowicz, Mauro V.; Coutinho, Evandro S. F.; Figueira, Ivan

Health Psychology. Vol 28(3), May 2009, 379-388.

Abstract

Objective: To estimate PTSD prevalence in parents of children with chronic illnesses or undergoing invasive procedures, and its association with higher risk of PTSD among parents.

Methods: Sixteen studies reporting prevalence of PTSD in parents of children with chronic illnesses were identified through a systematic review in Pubmed, Web of Science, Pilots and PsycINFO databases.

Main Outcome Measures: Pooled current PTSD prevalence was calculated for parents from these studies. Pooled PTSD prevalence ratios were obtained by comparing parents of children with chronic diseases with parents of healthy children. Meta-regression was used to identify variables that could account for the lack of homogeneity.

Results: Pooled PTSD prevalence was 19.6% in mothers, 11.6% in fathers, and 22.8% in parents in general (p < .001). Pooled prevalence ratio for the four studies reporting on mothers and comparison healthy groups was 4.2 (p < .001). Conclusions: The high prevalence of PTSD found in this population highlights the importance of promptly assessing and treating post-traumatic symptoms in parents of children with chronic diseases as a key step to prevent the negative consequences of PTSD and preserve their competency as caregivers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Does it pay to be smart, attractive, or confident (or all three)? Relationships among general mental ability, physical attractiveness, core self-evaluations, and income.

By Judge, Timothy A.; Hurst, Charlice; Simon, Lauren S.

Journal of Applied Psychology. Vol 94(3), May 2009, 742-755.

Abstract

The authors investigated core self-evaluations and educational attainment as mediating mechanisms for the influence of appearance (physical attractiveness) and intelligence (general mental ability) on income and financial strain. The direct effects of core self-evaluations on financial strain, as well as the indirect effects through income, were also considered.

Longitudinal data were obtained as part of a national study, the Harvard Study of Health and Life Quality, and proposed models were evaluated with structural equation modeling. Results supported a partially mediated model, such that general mental ability and physical attractiveness exhibited both direct and indirect effects on income, as mediated by educational attainment and core self-evaluations.

Finally, income negatively predicted financial strain, whereas core self-evaluations had both a direct and an indirect (through income) negative effect on financial strain. Overall, the results suggest that looks (physical attractiveness), brains (intelligence), and personality (core self-evaluations) are all important to income and financial strain. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Compensatory strategies for reducing interpersonal discrimination: The effectiveness of acknowledgments, increased positivity, and individuating information.

By Singletary, Sarah L.; Hebl, Michelle R.

Journal of Applied Psychology. Vol 94(3), May 2009, 797-805.

Abstract

Previous research has revealed, across a number of contexts, that stigmatized individuals are the recipients of interpersonal discrimination (e.g., M. R. Hebl, J. B. Foster, L. M. Mannix, & J. F. Dovidio, 2002). Such discrimination has been linked to a number of negative outcomes in the workplace, both for stigmatized individuals and for organizations as a whole (see, e.g., E. B. King, J. L. Shapiro, M. R. Hebl, S. L. Singletary, & S. Turner, 2006; C. O. Word, M. P. Zanna, & J. Cooper, 1974).

The current research examines 3 individual-level compensatory strategies aimed at reducing interpersonal discrimination. Results reveal that compensatory strategies are successful in reducing interpersonal discrimination in job application contexts and that such strategies uniquely benefit stigmatized individuals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Can imagined interactions produce positive perceptions?: Reducing prejudice through simulated social contact.

By Crisp, Richard J.; Turner, Rhiannon N.

American Psychologist. Vol 64(4), May-Jun 2009, 231-240.

Abstract

The contact hypothesis states that, under the right conditions, contact between members of different groups leads to more positive intergroup relations. The authors track recent trends in contact theory to the emergence of extended, or indirect, forms of contact. These advances lead to an intriguing proposition: that simply imagining intergroup interactions can produce more positive perceptions of outgroups.

The authors discuss empirical research supporting the imagined contact proposition and find it to be an approach that is at once deceptively simple and remarkably effective. Encouraging people to mentally simulate a positive intergroup encounter leads to improved outgroup attitudes and reduced stereotyping. It curtails intergroup anxiety and extends the attribution of perceivers’ positive traits to others. The authors describe the advantages and disadvantages of imagined contact compared to conventional strategies, outline an agenda for future research, and discuss applications for policymakers and educators in their efforts to encourage more positive intergroup relations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Using qualitative research to develop culturally competent evidence-based practice.

By Silverstein, Louise Bordeaux; Auerbach, Carl F.

American Psychologist. Vol 64(4), May-Jun 2009, 274-275.

Abstract

Kazdin (see record 2008-03389-001) pointed out that the requirement for evidence-based practice (EBP) has made the long-standing gap between research and practice in clinical psychology even more salient. He offered several strategies for bridging this gap: investigating mechanisms and moderators of therapeutic change, and qualitative research. We agree that qualitative research can be useful in bridging the gap between research and clinical practice (Silverstein & Auerbach, 2007; Silverstein, Auerbach, & Levant, 2006). In this comment we discuss using qualitative research to develop EBP that is culturally competent. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Bridging science and practice to improve patient care.

By Kazdin, Alan E.

American Psychologist. Vol 64(4), May-Jun 2009, 276-279.

Abstract

Replies to the comments by Tyron (see record 2009-06923-008), Silverstein and Auerbach (see record 2009-06923-009), and Raps (see record 2009-06923-010) on the authors original article (see record 2008-03389-001). I was very pleased to read these comments about the priority of bridging research and clinical practice and to have the benefit of further perspectives on how this goal might be achieved.

The article to which these comments were addressed suggested changes in both clinical research and practice that might develop or strengthen such a bridge. Suggestions for clinical research included evaluating the mechanisms of change in psychotherapy so we know what is critical to include in practice, evaluating who responds to treatment in ways that can be integrated into practice, and increasing the use of qualitative research. Suggestions for practice included using systematic measures to evaluate patient progress, codifying the experiences of practitioners so they contribute to our accumulated knowledge base, and promoting direct collaborations of researchers and practitioners.

The above commentaries emphasized specific points about research on mechanisms, qualitative research methods, and the challenges of providing treatments given the nature and scope of the problems that clients present. These commentaries add to the discussion in novel ways and also illustrate the obstacles that may compete with bridging. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Sri lanka: Refugiados alvo de ataques

2009-05-16T21:45:00.000+01:00

Photo: Sri Lankan Army

Scores of civilians have suffered from shrapnel injuries, many of them children

COLOMBO, 15 May 2009 (IRIN) - Relief workers in Sri Lanka report hundreds of war wounds among people fleeing the last pocket of the long-running conflict.

"There are people with shrapnel injuries, others with limbs that need to be amputated," Sarasi Wijeratne, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), told IRIN.

Many of their wounds were either infected because bandages had not been changed or they had not been treated properly with antibiotics, she said.

Since February, the ICRC has evacuated more than 13,700 sick and wounded civilians from the rapidly shrinking combat zone along the northeastern coast, where Sri Lankan forces have surrounded the last remnants of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who have been fighting for an independent Tamil homeland for more than two decades.

However, on 15 May, the organisation announced the temporary suspension of further evacuations. Wijeratne told IRIN: "We hope to restart once security conditions allow."

The UN estimates there are about 50,000 civilians still trapped inside the 3 sqkm strip of land and has condemned the LTTE for its continued use of civilians as human shields.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), almost 196,000 Tamil civilians are being accommodated in 43 camps in four districts, including Vavuniya, Jaffna, Mannar and Trincomalee, as of 14 May.

"At least one-third of the people we have treated were injured by some kind of weapon," Eric Chevalier, a spokesman for the French Foreign Ministry, told IRIN, referring to a French field hospital in the northern town of Vavuniya where most of the displaced were now staying.

Since 28 April, the hospital has treated more than 1,000 patients and undertaken some 40 operations, Chevalier said.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) also reported many war-related injuries. "A lot of amputations; some patients have lost both their legs and arms," Paul McMaster, an MSF surgeon working in Vavuniya, said.

On 14 May, TEAR Fund, a Christian relief agency, reported it too had witnessed many children with amputated limbs inside the war zone after being hit by shells, with children as young as three suffering gunshot wounds.

"Grave concern"

The news comes a day after the 15-member UN Security Council expressed its "grave concern" over the humanitarian crisis, and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called upon both sides in the conflict to stop using heavy-calibre weaponry, including mortars, in areas with high civilian concentrations.

Photo: Contributor/IRIN

Two men being treated by MSF at a hospital in Vavuniya. Thousands have fled fighting in the north

Ban's spokesman said he was deeply concerned by the continued use of heavy weapons in this situation, adding that the "reckless disrespect" shown by the LTTE for the safety of civilians had led to thousands of people remaining trapped in the area.

"Although it is impossible to quantify the number of casualties accurately due to lack of access, it is clear that thousands have been killed since the beginning of the year, and that the civilian population is in urgent need of food, medicines and other basic relief supplies, while the evacuation of the sick and the wounded needs to be continued," Stephanie Bunker, a spokeswoman for OCHA, told IRIN from New York.

Fewer patients

Meanwhile, MSF said the number of patients arriving at hospitals in Vavuniya had decreased from the thousands witnessed in the week after 20 April when more than 110,000 fled the fighting, according to OCHA figures.

"The number of wounded arriving directly from the conflict zone at Vavuniya hospital has decreased to barely a trickle: for this last week, 16 wounded patients have come directly from the conflict zone to Vavuniya hospital," MSF said in its latest situation report released on 12 May.

"The reasons are that fewer people are able to leave the conflict zone and those who do are being transferred to other hospitals or straight to the camps," it said.

The agency said it was planning to set up a field hospital at Menik Farm outside Vavuniya, the largest camp housing more than 120,000 newly displaced.

Sri Lanka's Ministry of Health said medical facilities at the camps had been increased with more than 200 doctors and 500 nurses on standby. "We have begun conducting visits to the camps to meet the people and get an assessment of the situation," Palitha Mahipala, deputy director (public health) at the ministry, said from Vavuniya.

The establishment of field hospitals such as the one MSF is setting up will help IDPs to receive quick assistance, Mahipala said.

TIMOR-LESTE: IDP's voltam para casa mas não são aceites

2009-05-14T12:27:00.001+01:00

Photo: Matt Crook/IRIN

Many IDPs feel unwelcome in returning to their home communities

DILI, 11 May 2009 (IRIN) - Most of the people displaced in Timor-Leste by the violence of 2006 have returned home but for many, the biggest obstacle, apart from rebuilding their homes and lives, is making peace with the communities they left behind.

In April 2006, disaffected army troops clashed with pro-government soldiers in the capital Dili, triggering violence that forced up to 150,000 people to seek refuge in camps across the country.

Tensions between internally displaced persons (IDPs) and the communities they left behind are usually settled by village meetings.

But for one community on the outskirts of Dili, the return process has proved unusually tricky.

While disagreements in other communities have been laid to rest, residents of three aldeias (sub villages) in Camea still refuse to allow the IDPs who fled in 2006 to return home.

"If we let the IDPs back here there will be no guarantee for our safety. The conflict here predates the crisis of 2006. We still don't want them back," Antonio Ribeiro, the village chief of Camea, told IRIN.

If we let the IDPs back here there will be no guarantee for our safety. The conflict here predates the crisis of 2006. We still don't want them back.

About 500 people gathered to take part in the latest community meeting for villagers to discuss the reintegration of IDPs into the community in April.

The meeting was initiated by President José Ramos-Horta with the Ministry of Social Solidarity (MSS) and UN Development Programme (UNDP).

An MSS-UNDP dialogue team has held four meetings in the village, but the locals have so far stood their ground.

About 150 families have yet to be reintegrated into the Camea community and while the problem exists elsewhere, in other places it has been resolved.

Presidential input

"It was helpful to have the president there because at least people understand that this problem is being [addressed]," UNDP's project manager, Jose M Cabral Belo, said.

"The president was trying to open the people's minds about how beautiful living together can be," he said.

Ramos-Horta called on the community to resolve their differences with the IDPs before saying there would have to be further discussion between all the parties involved, including the IDPs, who were not at the meeting in Camea.

Belo added, "It was a good message delivered by the president to the community. He promised to have a separate dialogue with the parties. Hopefully the involvement of the president will help people to change their minds, sit together and try to compromise on the matter."

Belo thinks the conflict can be resolved, but will take time. Part of the problem is that the village is near a busy trading zone.

"They have specific problems related to land disputes and also the behaviour of the IDPs before the crisis. There were disputes between the IDPs and people who brought down vegetables and other local products from the hills to the market. Most of the IDPs are business people and so there were disagreements about prices," he explained.

Stuck in camps

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

A map of Timor-Leste and surrounding countries

Some of the IDPs are staying in transitional housing provided by the government while others are still living in the last remaining major IDP camp in Timor-Leste - Metinaro - which houses an estimated 9,000-plus people just outside Dili.

The camp has been a particular problem for the government, with the return operation constantly postponed after numerous delays in the process of verifying the state of IDPs' homes and therefore their entitlement to resettlement packages.

Amandio Freitas, director for social assistance at the MSS, told IRIN: "It's very difficult. Metinaro is the biggest camp in Timor-Leste. According to the registration list there are more than 1,000 families living there."

For now, the residents of Camea and the IDPs eager to return home must wait for yet another dialogue to be initiated.

Somália - same old story

2009-05-14T12:03:00.000+01:00

Photo: Abdimalik Yusuf/IRIN

Internally displaced people in Mogadishu: Some 27,500 people have fled their homes since 11 May following fighting between government troops and insurgents - file photo

NAIROBI, 12 May 2009 (IRIN) - Thousands of people have fled five days of fighting between government troops and insurgents in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, a human rights group told IRIN on 12 May.

At least 27,500 people fled their homes between 7 and 11 May, according to Ali Sheikh Yassin, deputy chairman of the Mogadishu-based Elman Human Rights Organisation (EHRO).

With no let-up in the fighting, more families were fleeing, he said.

"Last night [11 May] saw some of the heaviest shelling in both the north and south of the city," Yassin said, adding that he feared the city could soon be empty.

The displacement has been fuelled by indiscriminate shelling.

Yassin said Mogadishu had not witnessed "anything like this even when the Ethiopians were here; they are fighting right in the middle of the civilians".

Hassan Mahamud, a local journalist, told IRIN: "Today [12 May], there are families on every street looking for shelter, taking advantage of a lull in the fighting."

He said the districts of Hodan, Hawl-Wadag, Wardhigley [south Mogadishu], Huriwa, Yaqshid [north] and parts of Dayniile [southwest] had experienced the heaviest shelling and most displacement.

He said many of those fleeing had returned from camps in the past few months.

Awil Ali, a father of eight, who returned to his home in Huriwa from a camp for internally displaced persons (IDP) on the outskirts of Mogadishu, said: "I have had to flee again after only three months; what we witnessed last night was too much. They [the fighting groups] are shelling everywhere."

Photo: TS/IRIN

African Union peacekeepers in Mogadishu: Indiscriminate shelling in the past five days has fuelled the displacement of thousands of civilians from the city - file photo

Ali said some of his neighbours who had never left their homes before were now leaving.

"I honestly cannot say that we have witnessed anything like this before," he added.

Ali, like many of those displaced, was headed towards the Afgoye road, where there are camps for hundreds of thousands of displaced people.

Injured treated "under trees"

Medical sources told IRIN that hospitals in the city were overwhelmed by the number of people seeking treatment since fighting began.

"We are receiving more injured people than we handle; we have twice as many people as the hospital can accommodate," said a medical source. He said many people were being treated "in the corridors and under trees".

More than 100 people have been killed in the latest fighting and close to 300 reportedly wounded, according to sources.

Mogadishu was reported to be quiet on 12 May but the adversaries were reported to be preparing for another round. "This is just a lull," a source said.

Yassin of EHRO said both sides had turned a deaf ear to pleas from civil society groups, elders and religious leaders to stop the fighting.

"We have appealed to them to stop the carnage but no one seems to be listening," Yassin said.

Sudão: On the run again

2009-05-14T12:02:00.002+01:00

Photo: Tim McKulka/UNMIS

Internally displaced persons in Sudan: Inter-ethnic fighting in the Upper Nile State has displaced thousands of civilians - file photo

NAIROBI, 14 May 2009 (IRIN) - Thousands of civilians have fled inter-ethnic fighting in Southern Sudan's Upper Nile State, with at least 1,000 on the outskirts of Nasir town, the medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said.

The fighting in Torkech village, in Jikmir Payam, Nasir County, on 8 May involved the Lou-Nuer and Jikany-Nuer communities. According to the UN Office in Southern Sudan, 66 people died, including some who drowned as they fled across a river.

Sources in the Southern Sudanese capital of Juba said the clashes erupted after a group of Lou-Nuer, who were moving with a large number of cattle, came under attack, prompting retaliation against the Jikany-Nuer.

The UN warned of possible retaliatory attacks in neighbouring Ulang County, part of which is home to the same ethnic groups fighting in Torkech.

"We call upon community leaders, and all relevant authorities, to intervene and resolve the conflict through peaceful means and reconciliation," Lise Grande, UN Deputy Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Southern Sudan, said in a statement.

MSF, which runs a hospital in Nasir, 20km from Torkech, said 57 wounded people, mainly women and children, had been treated by 12 May. It was supported by a mobile surgical team from the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Southern Sudanese Vice-President Riek Machar told the UN Radio Miraya that forces from the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) had been sent to Upper Nile as well as Central Equatoria and Jonglei to quell rising inter-ethnic violence.

"This barbaric and vicious attack on innocent civilians deserves the condemnation of every community," Machar's office said in a statement.

A reconciliation meeting, he added, was being organised in Unity State this week to bring together about 1,000 chiefs from communities affected by recent violence.

Aid interrupted

In April, armed Murle fighters attacked Lou-Nuer villages in Akobo and according to county commissioner Doyak Chol, as many as 300 were feared killed. The fighting was the second incident between the two groups in a month, after about 750 were killed in Pibor County, farther south.

The violence, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) warned, slowed down the repatriation of displaced civilians and affected aid delivery.

Miraya reported that a reconciliation meeting held two weeks ago to resolve that conflict had calmed the situation in Akobo and Pibor counties of Jonglei State.

On 13 May, the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) said it would temporarily deploy about 120 civilian, military and police personnel to Akobo and Pibor. UNMIS would also assist local communities to restart dialogue to prevent further violence and address the underlying causes of conflict in Jonglei.

Clashes between rival communities in Southern Sudan break out frequently - some sparked by cattle rustling and disputes over natural resources, others in retaliation for previous attacks, aid workers say.

"Inter-ethnic clashes are a very common phenomenon in Southern Sudan," Jim Ocitti, spokesman in the office of the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Southern Sudan, told IRIN on 13 May.

According to UN estimates, 187,000 people were displaced by ethnic and armed conflict in Southern Sudan between January and November 2008. Attacks by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army in West and Central Equatoria also affected 100,000 people.

Globally, Sudan remains the country with most displaced people, at 4.9 million, despite the fact that the number of displaced fell in Africa in 2008 by 9 percent, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre.

Crise humanitária no Sri Lanka

2009-05-14T12:02:00.001+01:00

Photo: Sri Lankan Army

Thousands of civilians in the north have fled the conflict

COLOMBO, 14 May 2009 (IRIN) - The UN is calling on the Sri Lankan government to expedite the screening of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) now staying at dozens of government camps in the north.

Almost 200,000 Tamil civilians have fled the fighting between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who have been fighting for an independent Tamil homeland for more than two decades.

More than half have crossed into government-controlled areas since 20 April.

The government wants to screen all entrants in a bid to separate non-combatant civilians from former LTTE fighters - a process to which the UN has only partial access, at Omanthai, the final screening point before Vavuniya.

"Expediting the screening and separation of former combatants from non-combatant civilians would permit a more rapid release of IDPs from the camps and would allow them to enjoy freedom of movement, including an option of staying with host families outside the camps," Gordon Weiss, a spokesman for the UN, told IRIN in Colombo.

The separation of families continued to be a source of anxiety and distress for many people in the camps, Weiss said. "Reunification is a priority for families already split up, and every effort must be taken to avoid additional separations."

Overcrowding

África: crise económica origina crise humanitária e de desenvolvimento

2009-05-14T11:55:00.000+01:00

Photo: Julius Mwelu/IRIN

An event to mark the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty in Kenya: The current global financial crisis will hit most poor people hard, according to a World Bank and International Monetary Fund report

NAIROBI, 7 May 2009 (IRIN) - The global financial crisis is rapidly turning into a human and development crisis, and could prevent many vulnerable countries from attaining the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), according to a World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) report.

"For poor countries, this is a crisis upon crisis. It comes on the heels of the food and fuel crises," states The Global Monitoring Report 2009: A Development Emergency.

"The triple jeopardy of the food, fuel, and financial crises is pushing many poor countries into a danger zone, imposing rising human costs and imperilling development prospects," it noted.

"Poor people typically are the hardest hit, and have the least cushion. For millions of them, the crisis puts at risk their very survival."

According to the two institutions, both middle- and low-income countries will be hit hard in 2009 by a second wave of effects reflecting the global recession and declining world trade. Poor countries will be affected via reduced export volumes, commodity prices, remittances, tourism, foreign direct investment, and possibly even foreign aid.

Regarding the MDGs, the report warns that risks abound, although the first goal of halving extreme poverty by 2015 from its 1990 level is still reachable, based on current projections.

"Sub-Saharan Africa will see a rise in the poverty count in 2009, with the more fragile and low-growth economies especially at risk," the report says.

"Globally, we estimate that because of the crisis there will be more than 50 million additional people living in extreme poverty in 2009 than expected before the crisis, compounding the impact from soaring food and fuel prices of recent years."

Toll on children

The World Bank and the IMF estimate that as a result of sharply lower economic growth rates, about 200,000 to 400,000 more babies may die each year.

"School enrolments will suffer, especially for girls," the report noted.

"We need strong and urgent actions to counter the impact of the crisis on developing countries by helping them to boost growth while protecting the poor," the two institutions said.

Poor people typically are the hardest hit, and have the least cushion

They identified priority areas for action as an adequate fiscal response in developing countries to protect the poor and vulnerable groups; support for the private sector and improvement in the climate for recovery and growth in private investment.

Others include redoubling efforts in human development in order to recover lost ground in progress toward the MDGs; strengthening key public programmes for health and education; donors delivering on their commitments to increase aid; and governments holding firm against rising protectionist pressures in efforts to maintain an open international trade and finance system.

"While the responsibility for restoring global growth lies largely with rich countries, emerging and developing countries have a key role to play in improving the growth outlook, maintaining macroeconomic stability, and strengthening the international financial system," the report notes.

Formação em Advanced Group Crisis Intervention

2009-05-09T17:03:00.009+01:00

Está disponível mais uma formação em Portugal reconhecida pelo ICISF e ministrada pela Psicóloga Clínica Ana Isabel Cambraia.

Quem pretender ter esta ou as outras formações poderá contactar-nos através do nosso mail psicmail@gmail.com.

As formações disponíveis são dadas em português, os ppt são em português também, os manuais são em inglês:
- Assisting individuals in crisis
- Group Crisis Interventions
e agora
- Advanced Group Crisis Interventions

Estas formações além de serem dadas na Faculdade de Ciências Médicas, podem, caso haja interesse, serem dadas noutros locais.

Segue descrição do curso:

Designed to provide participants with the latest information on critical incident stress management techniques and post-trauma syndromes, the advanced group crisis intervention builds on the knowledge base which was obtained through the Group Crisis Intervention programa and/or in publications. At the conclusion of this course, participants will have been exposed to specific, proven strategies to intervene with those suffering the ill efects of their exposure to trauma. Emphasis will be on advanced defusings and debriefings in complex situations.

This course is designed for EAP, human resources and public safety personnel, mental health professionals, chaplains, emergency medical services providers, fire-fighters, physicians, police officers, nurses, dispatchers, airline personnel and disaster workes who are already traine in the critical incident stress debriefing format. It will also be useful for those working extensively with traumatized victims for various walks of life.

This course requires previous training and experience.
ICISF's "Group Crisis Intervention" should be viewed as a prerequisite.

Program Highlights

relevant research findings
managing complex group oriented crisis interventions
Nature and importance of incident assessment strategic intervention planning
Comprehensive, integrates, systematic and multi-component CISM
Concepts of enhanced group processes
Significantly delayed interventions
"Multiple incident CISD"
Suicide of a colleague
Small group crisis support sessions after a disaster

Textos da APA - vários Jornais

2009-05-09T16:54:00.002+01:00

Aqui ficam mais uma vez, alguns artigos e livros saídos há pouco e revistos pela APA:

Putting positive psychology into play.Steger, Michael F.

PsycCRITIQUES. Vol 54(18), 2009, No Pagination Specified.

Reviews the four-volume set of books that comprise Positive psychology: Exploring the best in people, edited by Shane Lopez (2008).

Volume 1, Discovering Human Strengths (see record 2008-13953-000), covers topics such as positive traits, wisdom, courage, optimism, and personal agency.
Volume 2, Capitalizing on Emotional Experiences (see record 2008-13954-000), covers the Nun study (Danner, Snowden, & Friesen’s famous 2001 article showing that nuns who expressed more positive emotions as initiates lived longer 50-plus years later), gratitude, emotional intelligence, and positive emotions.
Volume 3, Growing in the Face of Adversity (see record 2008-13955-000), covers forgiveness and provides some much-needed links between positive psychology and negative experiences.
Volume 4, Pursuing Human Flourishing (see record 2008-13956-000), covers some familiar topics such as durable happiness, money and happiness, and positive therapy, and also provides some welcome surprises.

For the most part, the selections included in this series represent a reasonable balance between pointing out the familiar and expected landmarks and drawing attention to some surprising new avenues. Does this series make a new, important, science-based contribution to our study of human excellence? The reviewer believes it does. The compilation of chapters by big names and new names, ably assembled by the editor, provides some new perspectives for seasoned scholars of human excellence, as well as an excellent entry point for people new to positive psychology and for those looking for applications to help put positive psychology into play. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

When psychology meets Buddhism.Nocita, Andrew

PsycCRITIQUES. Vol 54(18), 2009, No Pagination Specified.

Reviews the book, Emotional awareness: Overcoming the obstacles to psychological balance and compassion: A conversation between the Dalai Lama and Paul Ekman, Ph.D by Paul Ekman (see record 2008-05333-000).

In this book, a series of dialogues between the Dalai Lama, one of the world's most revered spiritual leaders, and Paul Ekman, a psychologist who has made the study of emotion his life's work, we witness a sometimes fascinating dialectic on the topic of emotions. The discussions are based on meetings beginning in 2000 and continuing on through 2007. The format of the text is a two-way dialogue, with occasional "lecture" pieces to highlight various points of discussion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

The organization of autobiographical and nonautobiographical memory in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).Jelinek, Lena; Randjbar, Sarah; Seifert, Dragana; Kellner, Michael; Moritz, Steffen

Journal of Abnormal Psychology. Vol 118(2), May 2009, 288-298.

Disorganized trauma memory seems to play an important role in the pathogenesis of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, it is unclear whether memory organization of nonautobiographical material (i.e., sequence memory) is also impaired in PTSD.

A novel task designed to assess nonautobiographical memory for content and order information was administered to trauma survivors with (n = 26) and without PTSD (n = 55) as well as to nontraumatized healthy adults (n = 30). In addition, traumatized participants were asked to give a detailed narrative of the traumatic event and an unpleasant autobiographical event. Transcripts of both types of narratives were analyzed with regard to disorganization.

Results indicated that trauma memories were more disorganized than memories of an unpleasant event in the PTSD group in comparison with the non-PTSD group. However, no differences were found for memory organization of nonautobiographical material among trauma survivors with and without PTSD and nontraumatized controls. With regard to memory accuracy of nonautobiographical material, group differences were more strongly associated with trauma exposure than with PTSD. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Differential relations of depression and social anxiety symptoms to the facets of extraversion/positive emotionality.Naragon-Gainey, Kristin; Watson, David; Markon, Kristian E.

Journal of Abnormal Psychology. Vol 118(2), May 2009, 299-310.

Previous research has shown that both depression and social anxiety—2 facets of internalizing psychopathology—are characterized by low levels of extraversion/positive emotionality (E/PE). However, little is known about the relations of the facets of E/PE with the symptoms of depression and social anxiety.

This study utilized multiple measures of each facet of E/PE, as well as depression and social anxiety symptoms. Self-report data were collected from large samples of college students and psychiatric outpatients. Separate factor analyses in each sample revealed a 4-factor structure of E/PE consisting of Sociability, Positive Emotionality, Ascendance, and Fun-Seeking. Structural equation modeling revealed that, after controlling for the higher order internalizing factor and the overlap among the E/PE facets, social anxiety was broadly related to all 4 facets of E/PE, whereas depression was strongly related to only low positive emotionality.

Implications for hierarchical models of personality and psychopathology, assessment and treatment, and etiological models are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

False memory propensity in people reporting recovered memories of past lives. Meyersburg, Cynthia A.; Bogdan, Ryan; Gallo, David A.; McNally, Richard J.

Journal of Abnormal Psychology. Vol 118(2), May 2009, 399-404.

Are elevated rates of false recall and recognition in the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) paradigm associated with false autobiographical memories in everyday life?

To investigate this issue, the authors recruited participants who reported improbable memories of past lives and compared their DRM performance with that of control participants who reported having lived only one life (i.e., their current one).

Relative to control participants, those reporting memories of past lives exhibited significantly higher false recall and recognition rates in the DRM paradigm, and they scored higher on measures of magical ideation and absorption as well. The groups did not differ on correct recall, recognition, or intelligence.

False memory propensity in the DRM paradigm may tap proneness for developing false memories outside the laboratory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Predicting longitudinal patterns of functional deficits in children with traumatic brain injury.

Fay, Taryn B.; Yeates, Keith Owen; Wade, Shari L.; Drotar, Dennis; Stancin, Terry; Taylor, H. Gerry

Neuropsychology. Vol 23(3), May 2009, 271-282.

Longitudinal patterns of functional deficits were investigated in 37 children with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI), 40 children with moderate TBI, and 44 children with orthopedic injuries. They were from 6 to 12 years of age when injured. Their neuropsychological, behavioral, adaptive, and academic functioning were assessed at 6 months, 12 months, and 3–5 years postinjury.

Functional deficits (<10th percentile for age) were identified within each outcome domain at each occasion. Children were classified into 4 a priori longitudinal patterns of outcomes within domains (i.e., no deficits, improvement, deterioration, persistent deficits). In multinomial logistic regression analyses, severe TBI predicted an increased likelihood of persistent deficits in all outcome domains, as well as deterioration in behavioral functioning and improvement in neuropsychological, adaptive, and academic functioning.

Severe TBI also predicted a greater total number of functional deficits across domains at each occasion. However, many children with severe TBI showed no deficits from 6 months to 4 years postinjury in 1 or more outcome domains. The findings help clarify the course of recovery for individual children following TBI. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Activity inhibition: A predictor of lateralized brain function during stress?.

Schultheiss, Oliver C.; Riebel, Kathrin; Jones, Nicolette M.

Neuropsychology. Vol 23(3), May 2009, 392-404.

The authors tested the hypothesis that activity inhibition (AI), a measure of the frequency of the word “not” in written material, marks a propensity to engage functions of the right hemisphere (RH) and disengage functions of the left hemisphere (LH), particularly during stress. Study 1 and Study 2 showed that high AI predicts faster detection of stimuli presented to the RH, relative to the LH.

Study 2 provided evidence that the AI-laterality effect is specific to perceptual, but not motor, laterality and that it is particularly strong in individuals with low mood, but absent in individuals in a positive mood state.

Study 3 showed that negative affective stimuli prime the AI-laterality effect more strongly than positive affective stimuli. Findings from Study 4 suggest that situationally induced frustration (losing a contest), in conjunction with high AI, leads to increased attentional laterality.

The present findings substantially bolster the construct validity of AI and contribute to a better understanding of earlier findings linking AI to physiological stress responses, immune system functioning, alcohol abuse, and nonverbal behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

MGF ,um hospital para ajudar

2009-05-08T09:59:00.001+01:00

Photo: Bryna Hallam/IRIN

Three million girls every year in Africa are vulnerable to FGM/C, according to WHO estimates (file photo)

BOBO=DIOULASSO, 6 May 2009 (IRIN) - Construction has begun of West Africa's first clinic for reconstructing clitorises for victims of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C). Amid high demand, the US non-profit Clitoraid is funding the clinic, dubbed "Pleasure Hospital", in Bobo-Dioulasso, western Burkina Faso.

Financed through the non-profit's "Adopt a clitoris" campaign that sponsors women wishing to have clitoral reconstruction, Clitoraid raised more than US$50,000 to build the facility. Construction began in March and is expected to be completed by September.

Once opened, US-based gynaecological surgeons will offer free clitoral reconstruction surgeries to FGM/C victims from across West Africa. Currently too few surgeons are available to serve the number of women who want to reconstruct their mutilated clitorises and the price in private clinics remains unaffordable for most, according to the few surgeons trained on the procedure in Burkina Faso where the surgery was pioneered in 2006.

"Clitoraid decided to build the clinic in Bobo-Dioulasso because it is at the crossroads of several West African countries," said Mariam Banemanie, president of Clitoraid's local NGO partner, Voices of Women.

Cross-border FGM/C has been on the rise in West Africa in recent years, with cutters and girls evading one country's laws by participating in FGM/C in a neighbouring country.

Three million girls are at risk of FGM/C every year in Africa, according to World Health Organization (WHO), which defines FGM/C as any injury to female genital organs

When cuts do not heal

BURKINA FASO: Cutters turn razors on babies to evade FGM/C law

SUDAN: It takes more than a law to stop the cut

KENYA: Hiding from the cruellest cut

for non-medical reasons.

"The clinic will restore justice and give women the ability to feel sexual pleasure," Banemanie told IRIN. "Burkinabé women are b eginning to stand up for what they believe in - why should sexual pleasure not be a part of that?"

There has been such high demand for the reconstruction surgery that Clitoraid has placed a cap on the waiting list at 100, she said. Voices of Women receives daily calls from women - and sometimes husbands - expressing interest in the procedure, she added.

Prospective patients receive counselling from the NGO's psychologist who - on request - puts them in touch with women who have had clitoral reconstruction surgery in private clinics.

Abi Sanon, 36, said she was "lucky" to undergo clitoral reconstruction at a hospital in Ouagadougou in 2006. "I wanted to find my integrity and to know real pleasure. The procedure cost $320; my boyfriend contributed. It has really changed our lives. Before, I did not really know what pleasure felt like, and now it is not my boyfriend who calls the shots in our relationship - it is much more equal," said Sanon, who told IRIN she had her clitoris cut as a young girl.

Sanon told IRIN she was surprised at her family's positive reaction when she informed them she had wanted the surgery, since she said talking about sexual pleasure is still seen as taboo in her country.

Her 70-year-old mother has expressed interest in having the procedure once the hospital opens.

MALI: Fatoumata Dio, "I have delivered more than 500 babies"

2009-05-08T09:58:00.001+01:00

Photo: Sidiki Dembele

Traditional birthing attendant turned midwife Fatoumata Dio

KOULOGO, 6 May 2009 (IRIN) - The first child Fatoumata Dio delivered in 1981 when she was 19 years old was before she ever received midwife training - or even knew what the words meant. She went from serving as a traditional birthing attendant to working as a midwife in her rural northern Mali commune of Koulogo that includes 16 villages. Since 2004, she has received three weeks of midwifery training every year at the regional referral clinic 40km away. She is paid US$4 per month, while expectant mothers pay $3 to give birth at the clinic.

"I know if a child is already dead in the mother's stomach just by touching [the stomach].

"I have delivered more than 500 babies. From tears of desperation to tears of joy, I have heard and seen it all.

"The bad memories stay with me, especially when they surpass understanding. Last year I tended to a birth [that ended in] two stillborns. Two girls connected with four legs, two hands and two heads. This day, I was scared. The doctor was in training, the nurse was [out] vaccinating.

"I have delivered babies for two women who were in their 16th pregnancies. I told them about contraception pills we have here [at the clinic]. The doctor told them if they did not stop [having children] they would die.

"I have delivered babies for 16 girls between the ages of 12 and 16 who were not married.

"Two years ago, a woman in her 14th month of pregnancy woke me up at 3a.m. The entire family was crying. The woman did not stop screaming, 'I will die.' I said, 'No, God is great.' And after 30 minutes, she gave birth to a girl.

"You should have seen her laughing with the baby in her hands. I would not have ever dreamt of that scene.

"It is moral satisfaction that nourishes me in this job. The first girl I brought into this world is now 28 and has five children. When I see them, I am filled with honour and pride."

Expulsão de ONG's em DArfur afecta os cuidados de saúde

2009-05-08T09:56:00.000+01:00

Photo: Heba Aly/IRIN

Women displaced by fighting in North Darfur (file photo): The early March expulsion of 13 international NGOs has affected healthcare services in the 3 Darfur states

NAIROBI, 4 May 2009 (IRIN) - The expulsion of 13 international NGOs (INGOs) operating in the western Sudan region of Darfur has left gaps in health coverage, according to the UN World Health Organization (WHO) as 12 of them provided health and nutrition services to about 1.1 million people.

Through mobile clinics, hospitals and primary healthcare (PHC) facilities, the organisations had been providing essential services ranging from referrals for complicated and life-threatening cases to surveillance of epidemics, states the WHO March-April health bulletin.

In North Darfur, reproductive healthcare services have been interrupted after the closure of a PHC facility; the activities of other health facilities, serving at least 200,000 people, have also been curtailed.

In West Darfur, only 63 of 145 medical staff are providing services at 18 health facilities.

In South Darfur, one rural hospital in Muhajariya and some other health facilities are closed. Five of six therapeutic feeding centres are also shut.

In response, a joint UN and Sudan Government Action Plan for Darfur has recommended among other measures the redeployment of trained and qualified staff accepted by the community, supervision of clinics and provision of medical supplies to clinics, as well as the immunisation of children younger than five.

However, accessing children for routine immunisation programmes in hard-to-reach or insecure areas remains a challenge in Darfur. Meanwhile, vaccination against meningitis is ongoing in areas such as Kalma, Bilel and Al Salaam. Already this year, some 180 suspected cases of meningitis have been reported in the three Darfur states.

The expulsions affected at least 6,500 staff, or 40 percent of the humanitarian workforce in Darfur. The INGOs were expelled on 4 March, soon after the International Criminal Court indicted President Omar Al-Bashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the western region of Darfur.

The conflict in Darfur has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands and displaced about half a million people since 2003.

One of the expelled INGOs, Oxfam GB, on 15 April appealed against its expulsion, warning that the humanitarian situation in Darfur had deteriorated.

The effects of the expulsions have been felt beyond Darfur in eastern Sudan and the so-called Three Areas bordering on Southern Sudan, Abyei, Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile. Replacing lost expertise in Darfur will be very difficult, according to the UN.

Gripe Suína IV - APA guidelines

2009-04-30T00:08:00.000+01:00

Managing Your Anxiety about Swine Flu

The sudden and near-constant stream of news reports about swine flu can cause anyone to feel anxious and worried. These reactions are understandable because there are unknowns about the spread and severity of the illness. Even during this period of uncertainty, you can take several steps to manage your anxiety and have a positive outlook.

Keep things in perspective. Government officials need to prepare for worst-case scenarios in order to protect the public. The public, however, does not need to expect the worst. To date, the cases that have been identified in the United States are not severe. Americans who have contracted the illness have recovered.

Get the facts. Gather information that will help you accurately determine your risk so that you can take reasonable precautions. Find a credible source you can trust such as news from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (http://cdc.gov/swineflu/), a local or state public health agency, or local elected official such as a state governor. This is a rapidly evolving situation, so gather information at regular intervals in order to help you distinguish facts from rumors. Be wary of unsubstantiated rumors, which can be upsetting and may deter you from taking appropriate action.

Maintain a hopeful outlook. Public health agencies around the globe are working on identifying outbreaks of the illness and to ensure the availability of the best medical care to those who are sick. Throughout the centuries, people have survived difficult life circumstances and gone on to live fulfilling and productive lives. There is no reason why this situation cannot be similar. Limit worry and agitation by lessening the time you and your family spend watching or listening to upsetting media coverage.

Stay healthy. A healthy lifestyle—including proper diet and exercise—is your best defense against any disease threat. Adopting hygienic habits such as washing your hands regularly will also minimize your exposure to all types of germs and disease sources. A healthy body can have a positive impact on your thoughts and emotions, enabling you to make better decisions and deal with the flu’s uncertainties.

Build resilience. Resilience is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, threats or significant sources of stress. Draw on skills you have used in the past that have helped you to manage life’s adversities and use those skills to help you manage your emotions during this challenging time. See APA’s Road to Resilience brochure.

Have a plan. Think about how you might respond if swine flu were discovered in your area. You may want to stock up on non-perishable foods in case officials recommend staying home, explore options for working from home, and caring for sick family members, and establish an emergency family communication plan. Explore how you might spend your time if schools or businesses are closed. Working out some of these scenarios in advance can lessen your anxiety.

Communicate with your children. Discuss swine flu with honest and age- appropriate information. If your children have concerns, addressing those together may ease their anxiety and distress. Parents can also help allay distress by focusing children on routines and schedules that remain unchanged despite any changes due to swine flu preparations. Remember that children will observe adults behaviors and emotions for cues on how to manage their own emotions during this time.

Keep connected. Maintaining social networks can foster a sense of normality, and provide valuable outlets for sharing feelings and relieving stress. If officials have recommended limiting your social contact to contain an outbreak, you can stay connected via e-mail and telephone.

Seek additional help. If you have intense feelings of anxiety or hopelessness or are having trouble performing your job or other daily activities, a licensed mental health professional such as a psychologist can help you develop an appropriate strategy for moving forward. You can find psychologists near you by contacting your state psychological association or through APA’s psychologist locator.

A special thank you to: H. Katherine O'Neill, PhD; Ester Cole, PhD; and John R. Tassey, PhD for their assistance in preparing this document.

Gripe Suína III

2009-04-29T22:36:00.003+01:00

O nível de alerta da OMS subiu de quatro para cinco. Estamos em fase de pandemia, ou seja, no início do pico desta crise. Ainda não consegui foi perceber porque ainda só morreram pessoas mexicanas. Se alguém tiver tido acesso a uma explicação agradecia.

OMS:
Current level of influenza pandemic alert raised from phase 4 to 5
Based on assessment of all available information and following several expert consultations, Dr Margaret Chan, WHO's Director-General raised the current level of influenza pandemic alert from phase 4 to 5. She stated that all countries should immediately activate their pandemic preparedness plans. At this stage, effective and essential measures include heightened surveillance, early detection and treatment of cases, and infection control in all health facilities.

Entretanto, não sou a única a perguntar:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/04/28/swine.flu.mexico/

(CNN) -- It's a confounding question on the lips of disease detectives: Why have the only deaths from the swine flu outbreak happened in Mexico?

Mexican soldiers distributed 4 million masks on Sunday in Mexico City, which has 20 million residents.

Investigators also want to know why the disease has killed young adults, who should have the greatest resistance.

"They're good questions that we're asking, too," said Von Roebuck, spokesman for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "We're still young in this investigation and we're still trying to understand exposure in this country as well as exposure in Mexico."

Mexico has reported 152 fatalities in flu-like cases in recent days, seven of which have been confirmed as swine flu. Another 19 patients have been confirmed as having swine flu but surviving. About 2,000 people have been hospitalized with symptoms.

By contrast, the United States has had 64 confirmed cases, five hospitalizations and no deaths.

"The difference in seriousness between the known U.S. cases and the Mexican cases is the question that everyone wants to answer," said Maryn McKenna, author of "Beating Back the Devil," a 2004 book on the history of the CDC, and the forthcoming "Superbug," about drug-resistant staph.

There are no hard answers, but a consensus is emerging: The disease in Mexico has likely been around longer and infected more people than investigators can confirm.

"Do we really know all of the cases that existed in Mexico or is this just the tip of the iceberg?" asked Louis Sullivan, a physician and former head of Health and Human Services under President George H.W. Bush.

McKenna said it's possible "there is much more flu in Mexico than we know because it hasn't been counted. That would mean that there are mild cases there as well, but that you have to get to a certain number of cases before, statistically, you start to see the very serious ones, and the U.S. hasn't had that many cases yet."

It's a view shared on the streets of Mexico City, the hardest-hit area.

"My intuition is that as the medical community starts looking around and at what has happened they may find that swine flu was there and they just didn't catch it," said Ana Maria Salazar, a radio talk show host and political blogger who lives in Mexico City. "Nobody was looking for this. We were all looking for this in Asia."

The new virus has genes from North American swine influenza, avian influenza, human influenza and a form of swine influenza normally found in Asia and Europe, said Nancy Cox, chief of the CDC's Influenza Division.

Influenza is basically an extreme upper respiratory infection, and, by itself, is rarely fatal. But it can lead to deadly complications, such as pneumonia. About 36,000 Americans die from flu complications every year.

Swine flu is caused by a virus similar to the type of flu virus that, in various forms, infects people every year, but is a strain typically found only in pigs -- or in people who have direct contact with pigs.

A couple of factors could be causing the greater death toll in Mexico, said Howard Markel, a physician and director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan.

"They may have had cases for several months now and probably have a greater number of people who have the disease, probably tens of thousands," he said. "There may indeed be more cases in the United States. The snapshot we're seeing in the United States may be an incomplete snapshot."

Also, he said, the people who have died in Mexico could have had what he called "another co-factor," such as taking medicine or having pre-existing infections that would make them more vulnerable. It's also possible, he said, that those who died had an underlying genetic predisposition or condition.

Sullivan also pointed to possible "complicating factors," such as malnutrition, poor housing or crowded conditions.

Markel noted that "flu was classically called a crowding disease in the 19th century."

Disease investigators also are concerned by the fact that the outbreak has killed people in the prime of their lives, when they should have peak resistance.

"It is certainly a red flag," Markel said.

Health authorities have pointed out that this swine flu strain has never been seen. That may have a lot to do with the deaths, Markel said.

"It's a fairly novel strain," he said, "and the deaths could be from healthy people who have a healthy, robust immune system that overreacts." iReport.com: Share your concerns

That could result in a "cytokine storm" in which the body secretes too many chemicals as it tries to kill offending microorganisms.

The hyper-response can lead to accumulation of fluid in the lungs and a condition called "acute respiratory distress syndrome."

Julio Frenk, former health minister of Mexico and now dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, holds an opposing view: The disease could be killing people who are not healthy because of their living conditions.

"There could also be some elements in the host," he said. "These are poor people. Maybe their immune response is not as efficient. So we're going to have to just keep trying to understand why this difference and whether that continues as the epidemic unfolds."

He also noted that antiviral medications need to be taken within hours of the onset of symptoms, but people in Mexico may not have sought treatment immediately, if at all.

As the outbreak continues to unfold, so will the investigation.

"We're making every effort to truly understand this virus," said CDC's Roebuck. "But some of the reasons for what's happening we may never figure out."

Gripe Suína II - O que se pode fazer

2009-04-29T15:43:00.004+01:00

Enquanto pesquisava a net à procura do impacto psicológico da gripe suína encontrei este site:

Picture the little kid crying in front of Mom. She’s wagging a finger at him saying, “I’ll give you something to cry about!” Anyone else feeling that way or is it just me? Terrorism, recession, and now what? Swine flu? Oy! What’s next? A plague of locusts?

Once again the media pounces and every five minutes we are hounded by how we shouldn’t panic. So much of what’s in the news right now is about as helpful as someone yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater. “We don’t want you to panic, but there might be a three alarm blaze in the lobby.” Really, is that helpful?

So what can we do to address our anxiety over this crisis du jour? Treatment for situational anxiety doesn’t change much even if the trigger causing it does. Which is why the same advice I gave for Anxiety And The Plane Crash In Clarence, NY is basically applicable for Anxiety and Swine Flu.

Turn off the radio or television. Get off the news blogs. This is the best advice I can give you. Our brains and bodies are not made to assimilate repeated traumatic news force fed by 24 hour news networks. All we achieve is overloaded circuits and increased anxiety. Allow yourself to walk away from the news and come back to it occasionally for updates. When you must get information about the swine flu, exercise the control you have and get the best information you can, e.g. at the Centers for Disease Control’s website.

Breathe. Deep and slow. If you begin to feel the yellow flag signals of anxiety coming on (increased heart rate, shallow breathing, tense muscles, sweaty palms…) use your coping tools to keep the fear under control. Don’t run away from the feeling. Stop and breathe through it. Keep breathing; make yourself as comfortable as possible. Allow your everyday tasks at work and at home to distract you.

The best antidote to anxiety is action. What can you do besides washing your hands? Get outside and exercise, exercise, exercise! Process that adrenaline by working out. Our yards and gardens call for care, our kids want to play basketball. After an hour of play you will be able to focus again.

Be calm for your kids. If you have small children, they need you to be grounded and practical. Answer their questions as directly as you can without elaborating. If they ask: “Will I get sick and die?” or “Will you get sick and die?” Answer directly, “We all get sick sometimes but there’s absolutely no reason to think we will die from it. Now where’s your homework?”

Don’t give in to the anxious thoughts. Fight back. Practice mindfulness. Substitute visions of mayhem with prayer and meditation. Give your worry over to your higher power. Give yourself the oxygen of balanced thinking. If you have a history of anxiety disorder or OCD you may have a particularly hard time with this. Go to Swine Flu: A Special Warning To Those With OCD for guidance.

Inoculate yourself with humor. We humans love to laugh at our adversity. It’s a gift that separates us from the animals. A quick search on the Net supplied this:

“The only known cure for Swine Flu has been found to be the liberal application of oinkment.”

For more Swine Flu humor go to Funny Jokes and smile your anxiety away.

Elvira G. Aletta, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist, wife, mom to two teenagers and blogger, seeking the balance in upstate New York. To learn more about Dr. Aletta, check out explorewhatsnext.com.

Gripe Suína

2009-04-29T15:37:00.004+01:00

Últimos dados da WHO:

Swine influenza

The Emergency Committee, established in compliance with the International Health Regulations (2005), held its second meeting on 27 April 2009.

he Committee considered available data on confirmed outbreaks of A/H1N1 swine influenza in the United States of America, Mexico, and Canada. The Committee also considered reports of possible spread to additional countries.

On the advice of the Committee, the WHO Director-General decided on the following.

The Director-General has raised the level of influenza pandemic alert from the current phase 3 to phase 4.

The change to a higher phase of pandemic alert indicates that the likelihood of a pandemic has increased, but not that a pandemic is inevitable.

As further information becomes available, WHO may decide to either revert to phase 3 or raise the level of alert to another phase.

This decision was based primarily on epidemiological data demonstrating human-to-human transmission and the ability of the virus to cause community-level outbreaks.
Given the widespread presence of the virus, the Director-General considered that containment of the outbreak is not feasible. The current focus should be on mitigation measures.
The Director-General recommended not to close borders and not to restrict international travel. It was considered prudent for people who are ill to delay international travel and for people developing symptoms following international travel to seek medical attention.
The Director-General considered that production of seasonal influenza vaccine should continue at this time, subject to re-evaluation as the situation evolves. WHO will facilitate the process needed to develop a vaccine effective against A(H1N1) virus.
The Director-General stressed that all measures should conform with the purpose and scope of the International Health Regulations.

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Current WHO phase of pandemic alert

Current phase of alert in the WHO global influenza preparedness plan

Pandemic preparedness

In the 2009 revision of the phase descriptions, WHO has retained the use of a six-phased approach for easy incorporation of new recommendations and approaches into existing national preparedness and response plans. The grouping and description of pandemic phases have been revised to make them easier to understand, more precise, and based upon observable phenomena. Phases 1–3 correlate with preparedness, including capacity development and response planning activities, while Phases 4–6 clearly signal the need for response and mitigation efforts. Furthermore, periods after the first pandemic wave are elaborated to facilitate post pandemic recovery activities.

The current WHO phase of pandemic alert is 4.

In nature, influenza viruses circulate continuously among animals, especially birds. Even though such viruses might theoretically develop into pandemic viruses, in Phase 1 no viruses circulating among animals have been reported to cause infections in humans.

In Phase 2 an animal influenza virus circulating among domesticated or wild animals is known to have caused infection in humans, and is therefore considered a potential pandemic threat.

In Phase 3, an animal or human-animal influenza reassortant virus has caused sporadic cases or small clusters of disease in people, but has not resulted in human-to-human transmission sufficient to sustain community-level outbreaks. Limited human-to-human transmission may occur under some circumstances, for example, when there is close contact between an infected person and an unprotected caregiver. However, limited transmission under such restricted circumstances does not indicate that the virus has gained the level of transmissibility among humans necessary to cause a pandemic.

Phase 4 is characterized by verified human-to-human transmission of an animal or human-animal influenza reassortant virus able to cause “community-level outbreaks.” The ability to cause sustained disease outbreaks in a community marks a significant upwards shift in the risk for a pandemic. Any country that suspects or has verified such an event should urgently consult with WHO so that the situation can be jointly assessed and a decision made by the affected country if implementation of a rapid pandemic containment operation is warranted. Phase 4 indicates a significant increase in risk of a pandemic but does not necessarily mean that a pandemic is a forgone conclusion.

Phase 5 is characterized by human-to-human spread of the virus into at least two countries in one WHO region. While most countries will not be affected at this stage, the declaration of Phase 5 is a strong signal that a pandemic is imminent and that the time to finalize the organization, communication, and implementation of the planned mitigation measures is short.

Phase 6, the pandemic phase, is characterized by community level outbreaks in at least one other country in a different WHO region in addition to the criteria defined in Phase 5. Designation of this phase will indicate that a global pandemic is under way.

During the post-peak period, pandemic disease levels in most countries with adequate surveillance will have dropped below peak observed levels. The post-peak period signifies that pandemic activity appears to be decreasing; however, it is uncertain if additional waves will occur and countries will need to be prepared for a second wave.

Previous pandemics have been characterized by waves of activity spread over months. Once the level of disease activity drops, a critical communications task will be to balance this information with the possibility of another wave. Pandemic waves can be separated by months and an immediate “at-ease” signal may be premature.

In the post-pandemic period, influenza disease activity will have returned to levels normally seen for seasonal influenza. It is expected that the pandemic virus will behave as a seasonal influenza A virus. At this stage, it is important to maintain surveillance and update pandemic preparedness and response plans accordingly. An intensive phase of recovery and evaluation may be required.

Swine influenza frequently asked questions

What is swine influenza?

Swine influenza, or “swine flu”, is a highly contagious acute respiratory disease of pigs, caused by one of several swine influenza A viruses. Morbidity tends to be high and mortality low (1-4%). The virus is spread among pigs by aerosols, direct and indirect contact, and asymptomatic carrier pigs. Outbreaks in pigs occur year round, with an increased incidence in the fall and winter in temperate zones. Many countries routinely vaccinate swine populations against swine influenza.

Swine influenza viruses are most commonly of the H1N1 subtype, but other subtypes are also circulating in pigs (e.g., H1N2, H3N1, H3N2). Pigs can also be infected with avian influenza viruses and human seasonal influenza viruses as well as swine influenza viruses. The H3N2 swine virus was thought to have been originally introduced into pigs by humans. Sometimes pigs can be infected with more than one virus type at a time, which can allow the genes from these viruses to mix. This can result in an influenza virus containing genes from a number of sources, called a "reassortant" virus. Although swine influenza viruses are normally species specific and only infect pigs, they do sometimes cross the species barrier to cause disease in humans.

What are the implications for human health?

Outbreaks and sporadic human infection with swine influenza have been occasionally reported. Generally clinical symptoms are similar to seasonal influenza but reported clinical presentation ranges broadly from asymptomatic infection to severe pneumonia resulting in death.

Since typical clinical presentation of swine influenza infection in humans resembles seasonal influenza and other acute upper respiratory tract infections, most of the cases have been detected by chance through seasonal influenza surveillance. Mild or asymptomatic cases may have escaped from recognition; therefore the true extent of this disease among humans is unknown.

Where have human cases occurred?

Since the implementation of IHR(2005)¹ in 2007, WHO has been notified of swine influenza cases from the United States and Spain.

How do people become infected?

People usually get swine influenza from infected pigs, however, some human cases lack contact history with pigs or environments where pigs have been located. Human-to-human transmission has occurred in some instances but was limited to close contacts and closed groups of people.

Is it safe to eat pork and pork products?

Yes. Swine influenza has not been shown to be transmissible to people through eating properly handled and prepared pork (pig meat) or other products derived from pigs. The swine influenza virus is killed by cooking temperatures of 160°F/70°C, corresponding to the general guidance for the preparation of pork and other meat.

Which countries have been affected by outbreaks in pigs?

Swine influenza is not notifiable to international animal health authorities (OIE, www.oie.int), therefore its international distribution in animals is not well known. The disease is considered endemic in the United States. Outbreaks in pigs are also known to have occurred in North America, South America, Europe (including the UK, Sweden, and Italy), Africa (Kenya), and in parts of eastern Asia including China and Japan.

What about the pandemic risk?

It is likely that most of people, especially those who do not have regular contact with pigs, do not have immunity to swine influenza viruses that can prevent the virus infection. If a swine virus establishes efficient human-to human transmission, it can cause an influenza pandemic. The impact of a pandemic caused by such a virus is difficult to predict: it depends on virulence of the virus, existing immunity among people, cross protection by antibodies acquired from seasonal influenza infection and host factors.

Is there a human vaccine to protect from swine influenza?

There are no vaccines that contain the current swine influenza virus causing illness in humans. It is not known whether current human seasonal influenza vaccines can provide any protection. Influenza viruses change very quickly. It is important to develop a vaccine against the currently circulating virus strain for it to provide maximum protection to the vaccinated people. This is why WHO needs access to as many viruses as possible in order to select the most appropriate candidate vaccine virus.

What drugs are available for treatment?

There are two classes of such medicines, 1) adamantanes (amantadine and remantadine), and 2) inhibitors of influenza neuraminidase (oseltamivir and zanamivir).

Most of the previously reported swine influenza cases recovered fully from the disease without requiring medical attention and without antiviral medicines.

Some influenza viruses develop resistance to the antiviral medicines, limiting the effectiveness of treatment. The viruses obtained from the recent human cases with swine influenza in the United States are sensitive to oselatmivir and zanamivir but resistant to amantadine and remantadine.

Information is insufficient to make recommendation on the use of the antivirals in treatment of swine influenza virus infection. Clinicians have to make decisions based on the clinical and epidemiological assessment and harms and benefit of the treatment of the patient². For the ongoing outbreak of the swine influenza infection in the United States and Mexico, the national and the local authorities are recommending to use oseltamivir or zanamivir for treatment of the disease based on the virus’s susceptibility profile.

What should I do if I am in regular contact with pigs?

Even though there is no clear indication that the current human cases with swine influenza infection are related to recent or ongoing influenza-like disease events in pigs, it would be advisable to minimize contact with sick pigs and report such animals to relevant animal health authorities.

Most people are infected through prolonged, close contact with infected pigs. Good hygiene practices are essential in all contact with animals and are especially important during slaughter and post-slaughter handling to prevent exposure to disease agents. Sick animals or animals that died from disease should not be undergoing slaughtering procedures. Follow further advice from relevant national authorities.

Swine influenza has not been shown to be transmissible to people through eating properly handled and prepared pork (pig meat) or other products derived from pigs. The swine influenza virus is killed by cooking temperatures of 160°F/70°C corresponding to the general guidance for the preparation of pork and other meat.

How can I protect myself from getting swine influenza from infected people?

In the past, human infection with swine influenza was generally mild but is known to have caused severe illness such as pneumonia For the current outbreaks in the United States and Mexico however, the clinical pictures have been different. None of the confirmed cases in the United States have had the severe form of the disease and the patients recovered from illness without requiring medical care. In Mexico, some patients reportedly had the severe form of the disease.

To protect yourself, practice general preventive measures for influenza:

Avoid close contact with people who appear unwell and who have fever and cough.
Wash your hands with soap and water frequently and thoroughly.
Practice good health habits including adequate sleep, eating nutritious food, and keeping physically active.

If there is an ill person at home:

Try to provide the ill person a separate section in the house. If this is not possible, keep the patient at least 1 meter in distance from others.
Cover mouth and nose when caring for the ill person. Masks can be bought commercially or made using the readily available materials as long as they are disposed of or cleaned properly.
Wash your hands with soap and water thoroughly after each contact with the ill person.
Try to improve the air flow in the area where the ill person stays. Use doors and windows to take advantage of breezes.
Keep the environment clean with readily available household cleaning agents.

If you are living in a country where swine influenza has caused disease in humans, follow additional advice from national and local health authorities.

What should I do if I think I have swine influenza?

If you feel unwell, have high fever, cough and/or sore throat:

Stay at home and keep away from work, school or crowds as much as possible.
Rest and take plenty of fluids.
Cover your mouth and nose with disposable tissues when coughing and sneezing and dispose of the used tissues properly.
Wash your hands with soap and water frequently and thoroughly, especially after coughing or sneezing.
Inform family and friends about your illness and seek help for household chores that require contact with other people such as shopping.

If you need medical attention:

Contact your doctor or healthcare provider before travelling to see them and report your symptoms. Explain why you think you have swine influenza (for example, if you have recently travelled to a country where there is a swine influenza outbreak in humans). Follow the advice given to you for care.
If it is not possible to contact your healthcare provider in advance, communicate your suspicion of having swine influenza immediately upon arrival at the healthcare facility.
Take care to cover your nose and mouth during travel.

P T QUAKE ’09 Novidades

2009-04-27T00:44:00.004+01:00

As novidades que estávamos à espera!!

O Exercício "PTQUAKE09" terá lugar nos dias 5 e 6 de Maio de 2009.

Trata-se do terceiro e último exercício da série planeada e conduzida pela ANPC no quadro da validação dos pressupostos do Plano Especial de Emergência de Risco Sísmico para a Área Metropolitana de Lisboa e Concelhos Limítrofes (PEERS-AML). Os primeiros exercícios desta série decorreram em 2008, respectivamente em Maio e Novembro.

O "PTQUAKE09" é ainda o primeiro exercício internacional de protecção civil a ter lugar em Portugal. Nesta medida, o exercício enquadra-se na iniciativa europeia FIRE 6 e fará mobilizar para Portugal equipas de protecção civil com valências nas áreas da Busca e Salvamento em ambiente urbano e da emergência médica oriundas de Espanha, França, Itália e Grécia. Participarão ainda neste exercício equipas das Regiões Autónomas dos Açores e da Madeira, também com valências nas áreas acima identificadas.

A principal finalidade deste exercício é treinar a estrutura operacional e restantes Unidades Orgânicas (UO) da ANPC e ainda as demais entidades com responsabilidade em matéria de protecção civil, à luz dos princípios do Sistema Integrado de Operações de Protecção e Socorro, do PEERS-AML e, concretamente, no quadro de uma intervenção em caso de ocorrência de um evento sísmico, conduzindo à intervenção de equipas regionais e europeias nas operações.

Neste sentido, o "PTQUAKE'09" apresenta cinco principais objectivos:

Operacionalizar a versão em análise do PEERS-AML, na componente dos mecanismos de direcção, comando e controlo, do reconhecimento avançado, da resposta imediata e de curto-prazo, da avaliação de estruturas, apoio social, apoio logístico da gestão de informação e dos mecanismos de assistência internacional;
Exercitar o planeamento e a condução de um exercício LIVEX de âmbito internacional por parte da ANPC;
Exercitar o acolhimento e a integração de equipas de intervenção europeias numa operação nacional;
Testar a articulação operacional com equipas das Regiões Autónomas dos Açores e da Madeira e;
Testar a interoperabilidade entre as equipas de intervenção nacionais e as europeias nas Áreas de Intervenção (AI) da Busca e Salvamento em Ambiente Urbano (USAR) e da Emergência Médica (EM).

Entidades Nacionais Participantes

Participam activamente no exercício "PTQUAKE09" as seguintes entidades nacionais:

Corpos de Bombeiros da AML
Serviços Municipais de Protecção Civil de Benavente, Lisboa, Vila Franca de Xira e Seixal
Polícia de Segurança Pública
Guarda Nacional Republicana
Direcção-Geral da Autoridade Marítima
Instituto Nacional de Emergência Médica
Instituto de Meteorologia
Forças Armadas: Marinha, Exército e Força Aérea
Cruz Vermelha Portuguesa
Ministério Público
Instituto Nacional de Medicina Legal
Polícia Judiciária
Agência Portuguesa do Ambiente
Direcção-Geral da Saúde
Empresa de Meios Aéreos
Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia Civil
Associações de Radioamadores

Equipas Nacionais

As Equipas Nacionais são constituídas por operacionais oriundos das diversas entidades participantes, com valências nas seguintes áreas:

Emergência Médica
Busca e Salvamento
Matérias Perigosas
Apoio Psicológico
Mortuária
Apoio Social
Incêndios Urbanos e Industriais
NRBQ

Equipas Internacionais

As equipas internacionais participantes no "PTQUAKE09" são oriundas de Espanha, França e Grécia.

No que respeita à participação internacional, foram solicitadas aos países participantes valências nas áreas da busca e salvamento em ambiente urbano (USAR – Urban Search and Rescue) e da Emergência Médica.

Cenários

O cenário do exercício "PTQUAKE09" é fictício e deverá permitir a condução das acções a tomar em caso de diversas ocorrências no âmbito da Protecção Civil, de acordo com as capacidades e possibilidades das entidades participantes.

Dos vários cenários possíveis no território da AML CL admite-se como hipótese de planeamento um cenário próximo de magnitude moderada a elevada (magnitude=6.6/6.7) com epicentro no Vale Inferior do Tejo. Deste cenário resulta uma área afectada com um raio superior a 40 km, cujos danos estimados deverão concentrar-se, em especial, em torno dos concelhos marginais ao rio Tejo.

Como hipótese de planeamento para o “PTQUAKE09” com probabilidade de gerar danos moderados a elevados, são de considerar os concelhos de Lisboa, Seixal, Vila Franca de Xira e Benavente.

O exercício será jogado, durante os dois dias seguidos, sem interrupção, nos três distritos acima mencionados e ainda na cidade de Lisboa.

Durante o exercício "PTQUAKE09" serão testadas apenas as seguintes valências: Avaliação e Reconhecimento (ERAS), Busca e Salvamento em Ambiente Urbano (USAR), Emergência Médica (EM), Incidentes com substâncias Nucleares, Radiológicas, Biológicas e Químicas (NRBQ) e com Matérias Perigosas (HAZMAT), Mortuária (MORT), Incêndios Urbanos e Industriais (IUI), Apoio Social (APSOC), Apoio Psicológico (APSIC), Avaliação de Estruturas (AVEST) e Perímetros e Áreas de Segurança (PASEG).

Mais informações em http://ptquake09.prociv.pt/

Sri lanka: Crise Humanitária!!

2009-04-27T00:41:00.000+01:00

Photo: Sri Lankan Ministry of Defence

Over 100,000 Sri Lankan civilians fled the combat areas in northern Sri Lanka since 20 April and humanitarian agencies are struggling to clothe, feed and shelter them

COLOMBO, 23 April 2009 (IRIN) - International and Sri Lankan relief agencies and government authorities are scrambling all available resources, and sending out appeals for more assistance, after over 100,000 Sri Lankan civilians fled combat areas in the north in the past few days.

The UN in Colombo said teams were working around the clock to clothe, feed and shelter crowds of weary and hungry people.

"I saw infants with dysentery, malnourished children and women, untended wounds, and people dressed in the ragged clothing they've been wearing for months," Neil Buhne, UN resident coordinator in Sri Lanka, said in a statement on 23 April after visiting the new escapees from the combat zone.

"We need funds for all the basics, like food, medicine, water, sanitation, nutrition, shelter, and clothing. And we want to try to get kids as soon as possible back into school in order to give them some semblance of normality."

Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama met diplomats on the morning of 23 April, and appealed for more help for the surge of civilians arriving in government controlled areas, after the Sri Lankan army pierced a massive earth bund constructed by the Tamil Tigers.

The combat zone of recent days has been a 12-km-long strip of territory on the eastern coast of Mulaithivu District, northeastern Sri Lanka, but the Sri Lankan army is now in control of a 3km stretch of the zone, according to Defence Ministry sources.

Reuters video short on Sri Lankan exodus

Watch larger version of video

Bogollagama said more civilians were expected to cross into government-controlled areas. He said the government expected at least 15,000 more civilians would flee in the coming days and that 15,000-20,000 civilians still remained trapped in the combat zone. Over 170,000 have fled the fighting since December 2008, according to Sri Lankan government figures.

Humanitarian emergency

"With the unprecedented influx of large numbers of people in such a short period of time, obviously we do face an emergency humanitarian situation," he told the diplomatic corps at the ministry, and appealed for urgent supplies for shelter, safe drinking water, sanitation and medicine.

Bogollagama said at a press conference that the US government had pledged to provide a field hospital, and India was sending 40,000 emergency family kits. The European Union had pledged US$22 million worth of assistance and other aid was in the pipeline. The Foreign Ministry had set up a task force to liaise with foreign donors and coordinate assistance.

The UN said it had released an appeal for $155 million appealed for $155 million to meet the anticipated increase in assistance in February but thus far had received less than one third of that amount.

"Many of these people were forced from their homes by fighting more than a year ago, and it is something of a miracle that they have survived such a terrible ordeal," Buhne said in his statement and warned of overcrowding in the existing "welfare sites".

"Mismatch"

Photo: Sri Lankan Ministry of Defence

With tens of thousands more civilians expected to flee the no-fire zones in the days ahead, humanitarian agencies and the Sri Lankan government are appealing for additional resources

Relief agencies working in the northern town of Vavuniya, where the bulk of the newly fled are arriving, said the situation on the ground had changed dramatically since the 20 April exodus.

"It appears that because of the sudden surge, there is a mismatch between the available resources and the massive needs," Menaca Calyaneratne, spokesperson for Save the Children Sri Lanka, told IRIN. "We need coordination at all levels to meet the needs of all these people."

Save the Children said it was prioritising by looking after the educational needs of displaced children and students who had their educations disrupted when their schools were taken over to house those fleeing the war. Calyaneratne said Save the Children would provide educational assistance to at least 37,000 students - a number that would surely rise with new arrivals.

Urgent need for medical aid

Doctors working in Vavuniya said in a website posting that there was also an urgent need for medical assistance.

"We've been seeing very severely wounded patients. The numbers of patients have increased rapidly over the last three or four days," Paul McMaster, a doctor with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), said. "We're seeing a stream of badly wounded people being brought in to us," he said in a web-post.

"Our hospital has got about 450 beds, and we've now got more than 1,700 patients in the hospital - on the floor, in the corridors, and even outside," he said.

Trauma e Apoio Psicossocial em Gaza

2009-04-26T13:16:00.001+01:00

Photo: Erica Silverman/IRIN

Psychological trauma was rated as a main concern by hundreds of respondents to the UN survey (file photo)

GAZA CITY, 26 April 2009 (IRIN) - The UN Inter-Agency Gender Task Force (IAGTF), a mechanism for integrating gender concerns into UN policies and programmes, on 23 April published the results of a household survey on the needs and perceptions of men and women in the aftermath of Israel's recent 23-day military offensive in Gaza.

The survey was conducted through face-to-face interviews with 1,100 adult men and women across the Gaza Strip in the first week of March 2009. IAGTF is led by the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Psychological trauma was consistently rated as a main concern by respondents regardless of gender, region, or social group, and psychosocial services were deemed to be a critical need, like food and water, according to the survey.

"We have to help ourselves recover from the images and memories of the war," said Iptihal, (she declined to giver her family name), aged 24, a public relations officer for a heritage organisation in Gaza City. "Counselling is not readily available; we only have one psychiatric hospital, and it is not socially acceptable to seek psychological treatment."

Iptihal said she was most affected by her inability to help others near her who had suffered and died.

With increased stress and limited access to psycho-social services, one emerging problem is self-medication with unsupervised pharmaceutical therapies, the survey said.

Medical professionals and pharmacists in Gaza reported an increase in self-medication with behaviour control substances during and post-conflict in Gaza.

Lack of consultation on humanitarian aid

Relief efforts in Gaza have intensified post-conflict, although 85 percent of men and 88 percent of women surveyed reported that they had not been involved in any consultation on the planning or design of humanitarian assistance in their community.

Women involved in planning relief overwhelmingly reported it was a male-dominated effort.

UNIFEM believes the survey could be used as a tool for implementing gender-responsive aid programmes.

Some 60 percent of respondents said they had received food aid since the end of the war, although about half of the recipients expressed dissatisfaction with the assistance, stating it was insufficient or inappropriate to their needs.

About 20 percent of households said boys' needs were prioritised when there was a food shortage, and elderly men and women were most at risk of not getting adequate food.

The Israeli offensive - ostensibly in retaliation for continued Hamas rocket-fire from Gaza into Israel - began on 27 December 2008 and ended on 18 January.

Sudão: ONG's acusam governo de extorsão

2009-04-24T16:30:00.001+01:00

Photo: UN DPI

An MSF worker with IDPs: Staff of some of the NGOs expelled from Sudan last month have accused the government of "extorting" large sums of money from them

CAIRO, 24 April 2009 (IRIN) - Staff of some of the NGOs expelled from Sudan last month have accused the government of "extorting" large sums of money from them. Khartoum has defended its demands, saying those who failed to pay what it called "compensation" might be jailed.

"They asked us to pay an exorbitant amount of money... [and said]: 'We have your passports. Once you agree to pay, you can leave the country'," said Jane Coyne, head of mission for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)-France, one of 13 aid agencies ordered to leave Sudan for their alleged provision of information to the International Criminal Court. On 4 March the ICC indicted Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

On 19 March, Sudan's Labour Ministry ordered all of the expelled agencies to pay their local staff members six months' severance pay, rather than the one month in lieu of notice that the law stipulates in most cases.

"They went beyond their mandates. So the government has to take action," Labour Minister Alison Monani Magaya said. "We have sufficient evidence they have done wrong."

The extra pay-outs amount to $11.5 million for the 13 organisations, in addition to US$10.6 in usual termination-without-notice payments and $20.3 million in seized assets, NGO sources said.

"The word I like to use is extortion.That's all money that at the end of the day has to come from donors that would have otherwise gone for programmes in Darfur," an aid source said on condition of anonymity.

"It's absolutely maddening that we would have to pay this and that the government is just going to get away with it. There's no recourse. There's no retribution. There's no penalty for the government. There's nothing."

Photo: IRIN

Aid workers at a past food distribution in Darfur: Some NGOs have accused the government of extortion

Passports confiscated

MSF International said in a statement that the Sudanese authorities had confiscated departing staff members' passports until just a few hours before they left. This "effectively put them in a hostage situation." Bank accounts were also frozen at times.

Most of the expelled NGOs have agreed to the government's demands so as to ensure their staff could leave Sudan and to avoid potential detention or physical attack by members of the public. Local media and government officials - as well as several speeches by the president - have repeatedly referred to NGO "spies" and "thieves".

"We felt like there wasn't a choice," said Reshma Adatia, country director for MSF-Holland. "The [other] concern was instead of taking it out on us, they might take it out on our [national] staff."

The government dismissed claims of harassment and scare tactics, saying the passports were being held for the purpose of making exit visas. "Nobody harassed them," Ahmed Adam, director-general of NGOs at the government's Humanitarian Aid Commission, said. "Some NGOs are saying that the government cancelled the registration without reason. If you want to defend yourself, you can take the case to court."

Mohamed Yousif Almustafa, state minister of Labour, warned that the remaining aid workers could be detained or put on trial if their organisations did not pay.

Almustafa, who owes his position to his membership of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, a former rebel group which joined the government after a 2005 peace deal, did agree the payments were "unfair".

"It was not their [the NGOs'] move. They didn't expel the people. The government did that."

Photo: IRIN

Displaced women at a camp in Nyala, west Darfur - file photo

Assets seized

MSF also expressed concern over the use of seized assets. Some aid workers alleged government officials were driving their vehicles, wearing their clothes and selling their laptop computers. One aid worker said even curtains from a residential compound were taken.

Agreements between Sudan and NGOs state that humanitarian assets brought into the country are Sudan's property once the aid agencies leave, but MSF worried about how items such as satellite phones and four-wheel-drive vehicles would be used.

"A lot of our assets are now in the possession of National Security, who I consider to be party to the conflict," MSF's Coyne said.

Dangerous precedent

Coyne said she was "gravely concerned" by the precedent the government was setting by demanding money from aid organisations.

"That was part of the rationale for why I would be willing to consider accepting the danger of being arrested in a country like Sudan. Somebody has to say that this isn't right and it's not acceptable."

"If this was another government, people would have spoken out long, long before," said Ed Schenkenberg, coordinator of the Geneva-based International Council of Voluntary Agencies, a coalition of humanitarian NGOs whose membership includes nine of the 13 expelled agencies.

Even before the payments were made, aid workers expressed concerns over a shrinking humanitarian space and said the threat of expulsion could deter them from speaking out or doing sensitive work.

"There is a climate of fear and I am concerned about what that means for all agencies to provide appropriate aid for populations in Sudan," Adatia of MSF-Holland said.

Schenkenberg said: "The issue of severance payments and, in general, the way this expulsion is taking place is not just the concern of the NGOs being expelled, but the whole humanitarian community."

DRC e os rapazes soldado

2009-04-24T16:27:00.000+01:00

Photo: Vincent Mayanja/IRIN

Radhika Coomaraswamy

NAIROBI, 22 April 2009 (IRIN) -

More child soldiers are to be demobilised in South Kivu Province, but concerns remain because some of those freed earlier have ended up in the national army, Radhika Coomaraswamy, special representative of the Secretary-General for children and armed conflict, has told a news conference in Kinshasa.

About 1,200 children have been released from various militias since January. However, any that have joined specially designated brigades within the national army will not be allowed to stay.

"The new Congolese army cannot afford to have children in its ranks and the integration process is a unique opportunity to identify and release them," she said.

At a transit centre in Masisi, she heard stories of grave human rights violations: "Sexual violence remains one of the most critical concerns in the DRC, devastating the lives of thousands of girls," she said.

Nova crise humanitária

2009-04-24T16:26:00.001+01:00

Photo: Sri Lankan Army

Some 39,000 civilians fled the no fire zone on 20 April, the largest number ever, although tens of thousands of civilians remain in the conflict zone and the no fire zone in harms way

COLOMBO, 21 April 2009 (IRIN) - The UN has called on the Sri Lankan government to exercise "maximum restraint" to protect the lives of tens of thousands of civilians still trapped in a tiny pocket of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)-controlled territory in northern Sri Lanka.

"While relieved at the numbers who have managed to escape from the fighting, there are still considerable numbers of civilians left inside," UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Sri Lanka Neil Buhne told IRIN.

"Our calculations and reports from government officials still in the area suggest there are at least some tens of thousands, and perhaps as many as 100,000 or more left. We hope it is less, but we must be prepared for more," said Buhne.

Over 100,000 people have fled the fighting between Sri Lankan government forces and the Tamil Tigers since December 2008, including over 39,000 that crossed the frontlines near Puthukkudiyiruppu on 20 April - the largest number of civilians to escape the fighting in a day in the last 15 months.

According to Sri Lankan military sources, the civilians escaped the fighting after government troops pierced an earth bund around the 20sqkm so-called No Fire Zone, just east of Puthukkudiyiruppu on 20 April morning.

Call for greater humanitarian access

If fighting continues and if the LTTE refuses to allow people to leave the conflict zone, then we face the intolerable inevitability of seeing many more children killed.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon deplored the continuing use of heavy weapons in the vicinity of civilians, and the LTTE tactic of preventing civilians from fleeing the conflict zone. He also called for wider access for UN agencies in the combat areas and the "welfare centres" accommodating escaped civilians.

"The UN must also be allowed to have full access to screening centres and any other reception points for those escaping the conflict zone. It is also important to ensure the sustainable resettlement of these internally displaced persons (IDPs) as soon as possible," his office said in a statement released on 20 April.

The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) warned that if civilians remained trapped within the combat zone, it could lead to "dreadful consequences".

"If fighting continues and if the LTTE refuses to allow people to leave the conflict zone, then we face the intolerable inevitability of seeing many more children killed," UNICEF's regional director for South Asia, Daniel Toole, said in a statement on 20 April.

Gearing up to respond

International and Sri Lankan relief agencies told IRIN they were committed to continuing their assistance.

"For the US government the assistance to the World Food Programme (WFP) is extremely important and we are committed to continue with it," Lona Middlebrough, spokesperson for the US Agency for International Development (USAID), told IRIN.

USAID is the single largest contributor to WFP assistance programmes in Sri Lanka, the spokesperson said. In 2008 it contributed essential supplies valued at US$29 million and recently made a $15 million commitment of supplies due to arrive on the island in June.

Middlebrough told IRIN funding by USAID would probably increase for WFP and other relief agencies.

Photo: Sri Lankan Army

Civilians fleeing the no fire zones to government controlled areas on 20 April

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) also told IRIN it was ramping up its aid as the numbers fleeing the fighting had dramatically increased.

"IOM plans to increase its assistance as the displaced numbers rise. It will continue its support in responding to the pressing needs of IDPs in shelter, water and sanitation facilities, transport, registration and logistic support," Passanna Gunasekera, a spokesperson for IOM, said.

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) is also gearing up to respond to the growing numbers of displaced people. "UNHCR has stepped up its emergency response in Sri Lanka's north, where displacement numbers are growing," it said on 17 April.

"UNHCR - together with the government and other partners - is responding with massive shelter support and regular distribution of non-food aid items while undertaking protection monitoring."

quando a crise chega às ONG's

2009-04-24T16:25:00.000+01:00

Photo: Kamila Hyat/IRIN

Many NGOs are looking for new ways to raise money

NEW YORK, 21 April 2009 (IRIN) - Non-profit organisations and NGOs are laying off staff and cutting back aid programmes as the global recession bites, and the prospects for 2010 also look bleak.

"Clearly the impact of the financial downturn on charities is widening and deepening," said Dame Suzi Leather, chair of the Charity Commission, the independent regulator for charitable activity in England and Wales. "Some charities still face that double whammy of a drop in income as well as an increased demand for services."

In its latest update the Commission reported that 64 percent of charities with an annual income of over £1 million (about US$1.48 million) said they were concerned their services or funding might be greatly affected.

"In 2009, we're estimating that giving from foundations will decline in the range of the high single digits to the low double digits," said Steven Lawrence, senior director of research at the Foundation Center, a leading US authority on philanthropy, noting that foundation assets declined double that amount, almost 22 percent, in 2008.

"Unquestionably 2010 is going to be another year of decreasing foundation giving, but based on past experience it will still be in a more modest range," he told IRIN. This is going to be felt right through the non-profit world for NGOs in Africa and elsewhere, he said.

The overall effect of the crisis on charitable giving both by foundations and individuals is wide-ranging.

"There have been cutbacks in budgets and programmes. Some members have instituted wage freezes, hiring freezes, travel restrictions, etc. There also have been functions eliminated and layoffs," James Bishop, vice-president of Humanitarian Policy and Practice at InterAction, the largest coalition of US-based international NGOs, told IRIN.

Reduced operations

One NGO that has resorted to most of these measures is Catholic Relief Services (CRS), which reaches more than 80 million people in over 100 countries, and is now facing a 13 percent shortfall in revenue from its private US donors for the first six months of the 2009 financial year.

"In a normal year our private revenue coming into the agency from mainly American Catholics would be $150 million - we expect that to be reduced by $16 million to $17 million and we've lost an equal amount in equities," Executive Vice-President of Charitable Giving Michael Wiest told IRIN.

Photo: Masoud Popalzai/IRIN

In Afghanistan, inadequate resources have affected efforts to improve the situation of women

CRS already had in place plans to reduce - over a three-year period - its operations in East Asia, Eastern Europe and South America in favour of increased growth in Africa, South Asia and the Middle East.

"But because of the financial situation we had to move in that direction very quickly," Wiest said. "We've reduced our programming in those three areas sharply over the past six months so as to maintain to the degree possible our efforts in Africa, Pakistan and Afghanistan."

Programmes cut include economic development in agriculture, micro-financing and maternal child health, while the programmes benefitting Africa range from anti-retroviral therapy and other AIDS projects such as care for orphans, to agriculture, microfinance and water development.

Cuts, cuts...

CRS has not laid off any international staff but has eliminated several hundred national personnel from its overall staff of 5,000-6,000, mainly in countries where projects were cut.

It has imposed a sliding pay cut on international staff, ranging from 1.5 per cent for the lowest salaries to 10 percent at the top. It has also suspended agency contributions to the US 403B retirement fund and abolished 15-day leave carryovers from one year to the next, this latter saving about $2.2 million.

"On the revenue side we've approached some of our very wealthy donors and asked them to make a special effort to help," Wiest said of renewed efforts to raise revenue. "We're looking to raise, hopefully from a handful, three or four or five or six of these people, maybe $10 million, and we will be making a special appeal through the American Catholic community through the mail to match that."

But CRS is fortunate in that it gets most of its funding from the US government and the mainly officially financed Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, which has so far not cut back donations, as well as from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which virtually alone among foundations has pledged to increase its grants this year.

Moreover, it has not been forced out of Sudan as have many other NGOs, and is hoping to receive increased funding from the US government and the UN World Food Programme for its work there.

"We were requested by the US, the UN and our sister agencies to ramp up our efforts because we were not thrown out of Sudan as were these other agencies, so we will see a dramatic upscale in the size of our Darfur programmes," Wiest said.

Photo: Anna Koblanck/IRIN

The overall effect of the crisis on charitable giving both by foundations and individuals is wide-ranging

Hiring freeze

Other NGOs which receive government funding are also in a less dire situation. The International Rescue Committee (IRC), which helps relocate refugees and rebuild lives in the wake of disaster in 42 countries, receives over 75 percent of its funding from European governments, the US government, the UN and the World Bank, and this funding has increased since October 2008.

So far it has not had to cut back programmes or lay off staff, but it has imposed a hiring freeze, only filling critical positions. "We have done what most organisations have done - we have reviewed all budgets and reduced or eliminated any expenses that were considered non-essential, such as travel," IRC Chief Financial Officer Patricia Long told IRIN.

Others have already projected lay-offs. The UK affiliate of Oxfam International is cutting about 50 posts in its 2009-2010 budget, beginning next month, with consequent job losses. "The figure is still somewhat fluid because we continue to make arrangements wherever possible for transfers within Oxfam for people in posts identified for cuts," Acting Head of Public Relations Magda Walter told IRIN.

Many NGOs are looking for new ways to raise money. "Some groups are looking to raise money from donors overseas in places like China and India, but obviously the recession has had an impact too on donors overseas," Caroline Preston, staff writer of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, a Washington-based fortnightly newspaper of the nonprofit world, told IRIN.

"The other big thing is government money; groups are continuing to pursue government grants."

CARE, one of the world's largest private international humanitarian organisations, is trimming its budget but not yet cutting entire programmes.

"Instead, we are reducing staff travel and other expenses that result in some streamlining in the programme arena," Public Relations Director Lurma Rackley told IRIN. "We have taken the measure of a pay-cut across the board in the hope of avoiding any lay-offs."

They might be thousands of miles from the earthquake on Wall St., but they will feel the tremors for years to come

Getting the word out

Seeking new sources of financing, CARE recently launched a project - A Powerful Noise Live - in 450 theatres across the USA, featuring three women making a positive difference in the lives of other women in Bosnia, Vietnam and Mali, thus introducing CARE to new audiences and raising money.

"We're also planning innovative efforts with corporate allies to generate funding for our mission," Rackley said.

Another of those looking for new financing is Save the Children UK. "For a start we are being cannier at sourcing funds, looking in new ponds for funding," Director of Fundraising Tanya Steele told IRIN, without being more specific, noting that Save the Children's shops are seeing more customers as people tighten their belts.

"The bitter irony of course is that this very context is making the lives of the people we work with unbearably hard," she said. "The work we are doing now feels all the more vital given the global economic situation. As the world continues to feel the effects of global gambling, our eyes are on the most vulnerable members of society. They might be thousands of miles from the earthquake on Wall St., but they'll feel the tremors for years to come."

III Simposio Internacional PTSD‏

2009-04-24T13:49:00.005+01:00

Centro de Estudos de Saude Mental da Escola Superior de Saúde de Portalegre, com o Apoio da Autoridade Nacional de Protecção Civil, vai realizar nos próximos dias 15 e 16 de Maio o III Simposio Internacional de Perturbação Pós Stress Traumático.

Os trabalhos vão decorrer no Pequeno Auditório do Centro de artes do Espectáculo de Portalegre, sendo as Inscrições limitadas.

Posters e Comunicações Livres, deverão ser propostos de acordo com o regulamento, até ao dia 8 de Maio de 2009.

Mais informações e Inscrições em http://www.essp.pt/III_Simposio.php ou http://saudementalessp.blogspot.com/

Programa:

15 de Maio 2009

8.30h Abertura do Secretariado

9.30h SESSÃO SOLENE DE ABERTURA

10.00h – CONFERÊNCIA
CISM – O modelo e a sua aplicabilidade
Isabel Cambraia – NAV Portugal
Comentador: Nuno Silva (CM Avis)

11.00h – Pausa para Café / Mostra de Posters

11.15h ‐ PAINEL

Medicina legal, emergência e catástrofe – Pedro Amorim
Stress e agentes da autoridade – Mário Guedelha
(Destacamento de Trânsito de Portalegre /GNR)
Stress e doença mental – João Albuquerque (CRM Assumar)
Moderador: Raul Cordeiro (IPP/ESSP)

13.00H – ALMOÇO LIVRE

14.00H – CONFERÊNCIA

Estado de arte da PTSD – Implicações e repercussões
Ângela Maia – Universidade do Minho
Comentador: João Claudino Junceiro (IPP/ESSP)

14.45h – PAINEL
Stress e protecção civil – Nuno Moura (BV Benavente)
Stress e emergência médica – Manolo Carrasco (Cruz Roja ‐ Cáceres – Espanha)
Stress e pré‐Hospitalar – Jorge Marques (ULSNA/VMER)
Moderador: Belo Costa (CDOS Portalegre)

15.30h – Pausa para Café/Mostra de Posters

15.45H – COMUNICAÇÕES LIVRES

Moderador:

17.30h ‐ ENCERRAMENTO

16 de Maio 2009

9.30h – CONFERÊNCIA
Intervenção Psicossocial: A realidade na Estónia
Imbi Jaetma – Head of Educational Department SKA Rescue College ‐ Estónia
Comentador: Miguel Arriaga – IPP/ESSP

10.15h – Pausa para Café /Mostra de Posters

10.30h – À CONVERSA COM…
Paulo Sargento /Rita Lourenço ‐ ULHT
Moderador: Hugo Alcântara – SIC

11.30h – COMUNICAÇÕES LIVRES
Moderador:

12.30H Entrega de Prémios de Posters e Comunicações Livres

SESSÃO DE ENCERRAMENTO

COMUNICAÇÕES LIVRES E POSTERS

Pedidos de Regras para Comunicações Livres e Posters para:

jclaudino@essp.pt
miguelarriaga@essp.pt
raulcordeiro@essp.pt
cesmessp@gmail.com
saudemental@essp.pt
www.saudementalessp.blogspot.com

Artigos Abril - Vários Jornais da APA e livros também

2009-04-23T17:34:00.005+01:00

L’inventaire d’anxiété situationnelle et de trait d’anxiété (IASTA-Y): Structure factorielle et biais linguistique. / The Inventory of situational anxiety and feature of anxiety (IASTA-Y): Factorial structure and oblique linguistic.

Vigneau, François; Cormier, Stéphanie

Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science/Revue canadienne des sciences du comportement. Vol 41(2), Apr 2009, 115-120.

The factor structure of the French Canadian version of State–Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI-Y; Spielberger et al., 1983), the Inventaire d’anxiété situationnelle et de trait d’anxiété (IASTA-Y; Gauthier & Bouchard, 1993), was explored. Both a two-factor (state, trait) structure predicted by the theory associated with the original scale and a four-factor structure (state anxiety present, state anxiety absent, trait anxiety present, trait anxiety absent) have been reported in the literature.

In the present study, 361 university students (147 male, 198 female; mean age of 21 years) were administered the IASTA-Y along with a vocabulary test (Mill Hill; Deltour, 1993). The factor structure of the IASTA-Y was examined using confirmatory factor analysis. Three models were tested: One factor, two factor (correlated), and four factor (correlated). Results showed that the fit of the four-factor model was better than that of the two simpler models.

However, correlational analyses taking into account vocabulary performance revealed that the size of the correlations between scores based on the four-factor model (state-anxiety present, state anxiety absent, trait anxiety present, trait anxiety absent) varied depending on verbal ability, thus indicating linguistic bias in the instrument. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Empirical support for psychodynamic interventions.

Curtis, Rebecca C.; Winarick, Daniel J.

PsycCRITIQUES. Vol 54(16), 2009, No Pagination Specified.

Reviews the book, Handbook of evidence-based psychodynamic psychotherapy: Bridging the gap between science and practice, edited by Raymond A. Levy and J. Stuart Ablon (see record 2008-14828-000).

This book is a compilation of peer-reviewed scholarly articles presenting the best available empirical support for psychodynamic psychotherapy to date. It makes a strong and convincing argument to mainstream academic psychology and psychiatry for psychodynamic psychotherapies to be included as empirically supported treatments.

In addition, it provides empirical support for such psychodynamic concepts as defense mechanisms changing during the course of psychotherapy. The book presents converging evidence from outcome research as well as from process research showing that psychodynamic psychotherapy reduces disorder-specific symptoms as well as improves general mental health and personality functioning in a wide range of psychopathology.

The volume provides chapters on research supporting the use of psychodynamic interventions in general and especially for panic disorder, eating disorders, borderline personality disorder, and defensive functioning. It also has chapters on empirical measures of psychotherapy process and a section on theory and technique that includes discussions of rupture resolution, affect-focused therapy, and factors leading to sustained gain for depression. Two chapters address the neurobiology of therapy, and five letters provide personal comments on psychodynamic treatment research. The book has two main intended audiences: (a) practicing clinicians who either seek support for psychodynamic theory and interventions or marginalize it and (b) academics.

The book could also be used in a graduate-level clinical psychology course. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Emergent effects of investigating the human brain.

Raz, Amir; Zigman, Philip

PsycCRITIQUES. Vol 54(16), 2009, No Pagination Specified.

Reviews the book, Cerebrum 2008: Emerging ideas in brain science by Cynthia A. Read (see record 2008-04790-000). This book features contributions spanning numerous facets of our lives that brain science either has or will likely transform: from medicine, education, and architecture, all the way to the creative arts. Compared with other compilations with a similar flavor, Cerebrum 2008 stands out in communicating a few key issues in contemporary neuroscience while gearing the presentation toward a wide, uninitiated readership.

Cerebrum 2008 successfully captures the promise and future prospects of brain science. Each contribution reports current developments in a major area of neuroscience while amply contextualizing the overarching implications. These readable essays appeal to a wide readership as they provide an accessible glimpse into current issues in brain science, including several that compel us all to reexamine our concept of self. Cerebrum 2008 reaffirms that we have much to look forward to from future research in brain science. Beyond striving for a better understanding of the organ of behavior, neuroscience offers us the potential to transform our brains, minds, and humanity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Mind = Computation.

Adams, William A.

PsycCRITIQUES. Vol 54(16), 2009, No Pagination Specified.

Reviews the book, Computing the mind: How the mind really works by Shimon Edelman (see record 2008-12207-000). This book is a unique blend of cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and philosophy. It will be well received in a survey course in cognitive psychology focusing on artificial intelligence, or the reverse.

Findings from neuroscience are brought in as examples to support arguments about the computational behavior of the brain, but the neurological coverage is not comprehensive or detailed enough to stand alone as an introduction to cognitive neuroscience.

This book has over 600 pages because a third of each page is a wide margin containing drawings, photos, jokes, curious facts, random quotations, diagrams, and so on. Most of this marginalia is interesting but redundant or tangential to the text proper, adding little more than visual variety. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Culture clashes between psychiatric tribes.

Collins, Pádraig

PsycCRITIQUES. Vol 54(16), 2009, No Pagination Specified.

Reviews the book, Cultural formulation: A reader for psychiatric diagnosis edited by Juan E. Mezzich and Giovanni Caracci (see record 2008-12113-000).

This book forms part of a body of work that questions certain fundamental tenets in psychiatric diagnosis, that is, that psychiatric disorders exist across cultures in universal, categorizable forms, deriving from shared biological commonalities, identifiable using a common list of symptoms, and treatable using the same "evidence-based" treatments. This essentially is an ahistorical, acultural understanding of mental health distress.

Mezzich and Caracci clearly are members of the tribe who believe that sociocultural factors are central to understanding the origin and expression of mental health distress. They will need some potent medicine, however, if they are to overcome the hostility of surrounding tribes. This book is one source of powerful juju in this regard. In its own way, it's a revolutionary book cloaked in establishmentarian language.

The reviewer hopes it becomes required reading both for students and consultants of psychiatry such that when DSM-V emerges, psychiatry's own cultural revolution will have rescued cultural formulation from the appendices and placed it in its rightful position at the center of the diagnostic framework. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Anxious about unexplained symptoms.

Leventhal, Howard

PsycCRITIQUES. Vol 54(16), 2009, No Pagination Specified.

Reviews the book, Psychological treatment of health anxiety and hypochondriasis: A biopsychosocial approach by Jonathan S. Abramowitz and Autumn E. Braddock (see record 2008-10831-000).

Abramowitz and Braddock open this interesting volume with the first of multiple vignettes of individuals experiencing and coping with medically unexplained symptoms. The case examples are designed to avoid what they and many clinicians regard as the “largely atheoretical, superficial approach” of the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders to “conditions characterized by highly idiosyncratic (i.e., patient specific) symptoms and controlling variables” that comprise health anxiety.

A central question is whether the case examples and the biopsychosocial approach adopted by the authors provide the theoretical framework for research that will advance the understanding and clinical practices needed to reduce the suffering of patients living with these disorders. Unfortunately, the list of disorders and of their presumed underlying factors does little more than resurrect the DSM labels the authors had previously discarded. Although the phenotypic properties of each condition are interesting, this book does not provide a convincing analysis of the cognitive and affective processes active in the initiation and maintenance of these differentiable forms of health anxiety.

Criticisms aside, Abramowitz and Braddock’s text will be welcomed at a prime location on my desk and recommended as a must read for my students. The reason is simple enough: It provides a clearly written, broad, and detailed view of a domain of human behavior that complements our work on self-management of diagnosed chronic illnesses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Multidimensional international influences on family dynamics, functioning, and structure.

Kaslow, Florence

PsycCRITIQUES. Vol 54(16), 2009, No Pagination Specified.

Reviews the book, Families in a global context, edited by Charles B. Hennon and Stephan M. Wilson (see record 2008-10719-000).

In this volume, Hennon and Wilson strive to offer a comparative analysis of families residing in 17 quite variegated countries to highlight the diversity of families around the globe. To facilitate this analysis, chapter authors were asked to address certain core family issues: couple formation and marital dynamics, families and children, gender, stress, aging, and other family situations.

The chapters are largely descriptive, even though many of the statements are based on research findings. The chapter authors provide excellent overviews of the dominant assumptions, the sociocultural heritage, and the family structures in the various countries included in this book.

Their overviews include typical customs, mores, traditions, role and behavior expectations, values, religious belief systems, the main and/or conflicting economic and political philosophies that families hold, and the type and kind of educational systems to which the children and adults are exposed. Although the book describes the myriad problems confronting families in the 17 countries discussed, it provides few solutions or recommendations for how families can better cope in a diverse, multicultural, and very large global world. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Ser criança em Gaza

2009-04-23T17:34:00.001+01:00

Photo: Erica Silverman/IRIN

A six-month-old underweight girl with her grandmother in Gaza City. Her father was a medic who was killed during the recent conflict. The child comes two times a week to local NGO Ard El-Insan for nutritional supplements

GAZA CITY, 21 April 2009 (IRIN) - Rising poverty, unemployment and food insecurity in Gaza, compounded by the recent 23-day Israeli offensive, have increased the threat of child malnutrition, say UN agencies, health ministry officials and healthcare NGOs in Gaza.

UN World Health Organization (WHO) officials are concerned by the warning signs, including rising malnutrition indicators - like increased cases of stunting, wasting and underweight children - and continuing high rates of anaemia among children and pregnant women.

A Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)/World Food Programme (WFP) qualitative food security assessment for Gaza in 2008 and early 2009 points to increasing food insecurity compared to 2007, said FAO food security adviser Erminio Saco based in Jerusalem; and according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) food acquisition and energy consumption in Gaza declined by 10 percent between 2005 and 2007.

Over the past 18 months the agricultural sector has been struggling to cope with an Israeli blockade on imports and exports, causing lower productivity and reducing access to affordable fresh food, according to FAO.

Stunting

The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) said in January that 10.3 percent of children under five are stunted (low height for age), a steadily increasing trend over recent years.

Stunting is usually attributed to a chronic lack of protein and micronutrients, including iron and essential vitamins, according to WHO. "More than 10 percent of children in Gaza are chronically malnourished," said WHO officer Mahmoud Daher in Gaza, reporting a slight increase over 2008.

Children's hygiene has also declined due to the lack of a consistent electricity supply since the blockade was instituted. Clothes washing and bathing has been limited, especially during the conflict, according to residents.

P T.QUAKE ’09

2009-04-20T23:09:00.001+01:00

E continuo sem vos poder dar muita mais informação sobre o exercício PT Quake 09, porque tal como vocês podem pesquisar na net, a informação é curta, ou escassa, ou rara, ou mesmo nenhuma, tirando a menção da ANPC no seu boletim e pouco mais.

Apoio Psicossocial continua em Aquila

2009-04-19T12:54:00.002+01:00

ABRUZZO EMERGENCY, ITALIAN RED CROSS ACTIVITIES

THE PLAYROOMS FOR CHILDREN ARE NOW 4
104 ITALIAN RED CROSS VOLUNTEER NURSES PROVIDING NURSING ASSISTANCE AND SOCIO –PSYCHOLOGICAL SUPPORT
6 ADVANCED MEDICAL POSTS, 5 RED CROSS CAMPS WITH 4500 BEDS
A VETERINARY UNIT AT THE CAMP OF CENTICOLELLA
850 VOLUNTEERS AND OPERATORS, ANOTHER 2500 VOLUNTEERS READY TO GO AND
22.000 MEALS PROVIDED

01 017

Ten days from the earthquake, the commitment of the Italian Red Cross increases in the areas of Abruzzo hit by the earthquake. In this phase during which the media attention tends to decrease, our presence continues to strengthen over time.
On the coast of Pesaro more than 104 It.R.C. volunteer nurses are active providing nursing assistance and socio-psychological support to all those housed in the hotels between Alba Adriatica and Vasto.
There are now 4 playrooms offered by the Ministry for Equal Opportunities, run by the Italian Red Cross, with a capacity for 200 children in L’Aquila in the Red Cross camp of Coppito. Inside tables, chairs, footballs, toys, blackboards, games, televisions, videogames and DVDs. The Italian Red Cross will be setting up more playrooms in the following days.

The Italian Red Cross is running a total of 5 camps in the areas hit by the earthquake; two in Assergi, one in San Gregorio, one in Collemaggio and a fifth in Centicolella. The beds available are now 4500. A sixth camp is used to accommodate ItRC staff active in the disaster zone. In all 5 Red Cross camps the shower modules are operational.
Six Advanced Medical Posts of the Red Cross are now operational with volunteer doctors, nurses and logistic staff; and 2 triage tents for primary First Aid screening.
There are 5 mobile kitchens run by the Italian Red Cross, providing a total of 22.000 meals a day.
More than 700 volunteers and operators of the Italian Red Cross are working in the areas hit by the earthquake. Another 150 members of staff are working in the National Emergency Centre and 2500 volunteers are on a waiting list ready to go.

In the camp of Centicolella a Veterinary Unit is operational and to date has had 39 visits. The children have been involved in pet-therapy activities based on animal-man interaction. This Red Cross service, guaranteed by 3 vets and 2 assistants, is the only one available in the camps and is also able to carry out surgery.
The SEP teams for psychological support are active and at present close to the families hit by the tragedy. To date, 10 volunteer psychologists and 10 volunteers are providing psychosocial support.
More than 30 ambulances are operational. 14.000 blankets have been distributed.
230 tents with a 1.150 bed capacity offered by the Swiss Red Cross have been set up.

The offers of solidarity continue to pour in both from Italy and abroad. The donation of money and material goods grows daily,highlighting the extraordinary generosity towards the population hit by the tragedy.

For information
Communications Department Italian Red Cross:
+39.06.47.59.209
+39.06.47.59.283
Spokesperson for Francesco Rocca, head of the Italian Red Cross:
Tommaso Della Longa +39.320.79.79.485

Porque os terramotos não estão a acontecer só em Itália

2009-04-19T12:49:00.001+01:00

Photo: Ayub Farhat/ IRIN

The 16 April earthquake killed at least 21 people and damaged hundreds of houses in Nangarhar Province

JALALABAD, 19 April 2009 (IRIN) - Hundreds of earthquake-affected people in Nangarhar Province, eastern Afghanistan, are in urgent need of shelter and drinking water, aid workers and local residents say. More food and better essential health services are also required.

"Shelter and safe drinking water are most needed," Abdul Matin Edrak, director of Afghanistan's National Disasters Management Authority (ANDMA), told IRIN on 19 April.

Emergency relief supplies, including tents, jerry cans and food items, have been distributed by various donors in Sherzad and Hisarak districts where two earthquakes measuring 5.5 and 5.1 on the Richter Scale occurred on 16 April, according to ANDMA.

ANDMA's latest figures show 21 people were killed, 59 wounded and some 500 families have been affected by the quake.

Provincial authorities said cash assistance was provided to most affected families though several local people said little or no meaningful assistance had reached them.

"Aid has only been nominal and in words," said one man in Sherzad District, about 60 km southwest of Jalalabad, Nangarhar's provincial capital.

"We have passed two nights in the cold weather in the open," said another resident.

Aid agencies have launched needs assessments in order to ensure a coordinated humanitarian response and the UN World Food Programme (WFP) conducted an oversight flight of the area to examine the extent of the damage.

"Initial reports indicate that there is sufficient civilian humanitarian assistance and response capability in-country," the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA) reported.

Food and non-food items have also been distributed by Afghan and international military forces in Nangarhar, NATO said in a statement.

Homes destroyed, livelihoods harmed

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

A map of the districts of Nangarhar province

No disruption in essential services - such as electricity, tap water, healthcare and telecommunications - in either of the remote districts has been reported though 290 homes were totally destroyed and hundreds more made uninhabitable, according to ANDMA's Edrak.

The livelihood of tens of thousands of people has been harmed because livestock have been lost and agricultural land has been damaged, aid workers said.

The government said it will compensate families 30,000 Afghanis (about US$600) for every death and about $200 for every house damaged in the quake, ANDMA said.

Parts of eastern, northeastern and central Afghanistan are prone to seismic waves and this natural vulnerability has been exacerbated by the prevalent illegal and substandard construction of houses, weak essential infrastructure and widespread lack of awareness on the risks of earthquakes and other natural disasters.

The most recent major earthquake the country suffered was on 4 February 1998 when a 6.1 magnitude quake killed some 3,650 people, destroyed thousands of houses and displaced tens of thousands of people in the northeastern province of Takhar, according to the Afghan Red Crescent Society.

Quando a violência nos chega à porta

2009-04-19T10:50:00.003+01:00

Já devem ter ouvido falar no assalto à bomba de gasolina de Barcarena.
Estava eu tranquilamente a jantar, eram por volta das 21 horas, quando ouvimos tiros. O meu companheiro apressou-se a dizer que eram rateres de uma mota, fiquei desconfiada mas lá acreditei. Mas os tiros continuaram, da varanda vi polícias à paisana a correr os jardins que temos em frente de casa.

Tinham assaltado a bomba de gasolina aqui ao lado, para roubarem 60 euros. Não conseguiram chegar ao cofre. Pelo que se diz na vizinhança (e geralmente nestas situações diz-se muito) a Brigada de Intervenção Rápida estava mesmo a passar por aqui. Ouvi também (virei jornalista) que um dos assaltantes se escondeu durante algum tempo dentro de um automóvel aqui parado, no porta bagagens (mesmo à filme americano).
O estranho disto tudo é que se passou aqui, não em Timor ou no Kosovo, mas no sítio onde temos a nossa segurança, a nossa tranquilidade. Ilusória diria, para mim, culpa das leis deste país terem mudado, tínhamos as prisões demasiado cheias parece.

O que importa aqui do ponto de vista psicológico e que quero partilhar com vocês, é o que se passa quando vamos em missão. A nossa segurança está sempre posta em causa. Não vamos trabalhar e voltamos à segurança do nosso lar e podemos apagar e esquecer o que aconteceu. Fazemos parte disso.
E este é o que se chama compassion fatigue, a fadiga psicológica que se pode dar no técnico por viver demasiado perto ou demasiado intensamente as situações que está a tentar ajudar.

Lembra-me também o que aconteceu em Espanha em 11 de Março. Quando do incidente, acorreram ao local muitos psicólogos. A maioria não treinada, preparada e habituada a este tipo de cenários. Fizeram a sua parte e tentaram dar o apoio necessário. O que se passou a seguir, por não estarem preparados em diversos aspectos para os acontecimentos, eles próprios passaram a ser vítimas e, precisaram eles mesmo de apoio psicológico.

Não posso deixar de pensar no que aconteceria em Portugal se tivéssemos uma situação de crise (natural, feita pelo homem, uma dessas). As primeiras horas é o caos normal de uma situação assim, demora cerca de 4 horas às forças no terreno para se organizarem. Penso logo que os meios de comunicação não têm estrutura para aguentar uma situação destas (lembro-me da expo 98 ficarmos sem rede de qualquer dos operadores). Como comunicamos com os nossos? Como sabemos se eles estão bem?

Sem ser alarmista, a verdade é que vivemos sobre algumas fendas, que todos já ouvimos que podemos ter outro terramoto, que aliás vamos fazer um simulacro que se chama PT Quake. E o que cada um de nós enquanto cidadão já fez para se preparar para este cenário? Provavelmente nada ou muito pouco.

Quando lá estive fora aprendi a viver sobre um fio, que a qualquer momento poderia ter de ser evacuada. É algo que nos trabalha os mecanismos de protecção e sobrevivência, podemos fazer curso, mas outra coisa é viver na pele.

Claro que há muito a fazer, que cada um de nós pode pensar. E para já, é isso que quero de vocês que lêm isto...que pensem.

Soluções tenho algumas mas falamos delas outro dia.

a morte de que ninguém fala...

2009-04-18T21:36:00.001+01:00

Photo: Elizabeth Dickinson/IRIN

Aid groups have poured in to Cameroon occasionally to help deal with refugee influxes, but aid officials say many local communities also face dire conditions (file photo)

DAKAR, 18 April 2009 (IRIN) - Each year in Cameroon at least 45,000 children die due to malnutrition.

The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) says it has been difficult giving voice to Cameroon's "silent emergency", unfolding as it is in a relatively stable country in sub-Saharan Africa, overshadowed by conflicts and refugee crises elsewhere in the region.

"It is a silent emergency because we have children in the north, extreme north and east who are severely malnourished," Ora Musu Clemens, UNICEF representative in Cameroon, told IRIN from the capital Yaoundé.

In northern Cameroon global acute malnutrition (GAM) - weight deficit for height - stands at 12.6 percent, striking 115,000 children, according to UNICEF. Nearly forty percent of children - some 350,000 - suffer chronic malnutrition. The World Health Organization classifies a GAM between 10 percent and 14.9 percent as "serious", warranting supplementary feeding; 15 percent and above constitutes an emergency.

UNICEF says new nutritional and health surveys in Cameroon are planned for later this year.

"Often when it comes to malnutrition in the region we think only of the 'purely' Sahel countries," UNICEF-Cameroon nutritionist Denis Garnier told IRIN. "But Cameroon has high levels of malnutrition in its northern part equal to those in the Sahel; unfortunately this does not get the same attention."

The population of the north and extreme north regions is about 4.9 million - more than the entire population of Liberia or Mauritania.

The causes of malnutrition in Cameroon are many and varied, and similar to those in many Sahel countries, according to Garnier: lack of basic healthcare, food insecurity, poor access to essential child-survival services and poor infant feeding practices. Isolation of these zones is also a contributing factor. Exacerbating difficult living conditions in eastern and northern Cameroon are influxes of refugees from Central African Republic and Chad.

"To its great credit Cameroon has opened its borders to refugees from Chad and Central African Republic," UNICEF's Clemens told IRIN. "But refugees are putting a great deal of pressure on already scarce resources. The host communities are not rich, yet are sharing what little is there."

Nutrition and health

Nutritionist Garnier said the government is taking encouraging steps to integrate nutrition and malnutrition treatment into health services, but much remains to be done by all concerned, and resources are lacking.

Augustin Ndongmo Nanfack, head of nutritional monitoring and evaluation with Cameroon's Health Promotion Department, told IRIN that for the first time the government is placing nutrition coordinators around the country. "We have had a deficit of nutritionists in the field," he told IRIN. "Cameroon has not been seen as a country that has a problem of under-nutrition, but it clearly does."

Photo: IRIN

He added: "We cannot possibly fight for the health of the population without paying attention to nutrition."

What is needed, UNICEF's Garnier said, is for government, UN agencies and NGOs to collaborate on reducing malnutrition. "Part of the challenge in the north and far north regions is a lack of NGO partners, particularly to monitor nutrition activities and quality of health care."

He said many NGOs have come in to deal with refugee influxes in Cameroon. "But they leave after those emergency operations. It is difficult to mobilise NGOs for these regions because the problems are structural and because they are not well-known - we do not hear of them."

Garnier said there is an "urgent" need to reinforce communities' capacity to deal with and prevent malnutrition. UNICEF and the government plan to scale up malnutrition treatment services in the north. A training on community-based management of malnutrition in three northern districts is planned for end of April, Garnier said.

In a recent paper UNICEF says large sectors of Cameroon's population lack access to basic health services, safe water, sanitation facilities and basic education.

But UNICEF has received no funding to date for its humanitarian operations in Cameroon for 2009, according to head of office Clemens. "This is very concerning to us. Donors are more focused on development issues here in Cameroon. But within that future-oriented, development context you have a humanitarian situation that must be addressed."

The agency is appealing for US$650,000 to prevent and combat nutrition in 2009 and $2.48 million for humanitarian operations in all.

Vá lá uma boa notícia

2009-04-16T23:21:00.001+01:00

LESOTO: Dinheiro para ajudar as crianças

Photo: Kristy Siegfried/IRIN

Existem 180 mil crianças órfãs no Lesoto

JOHANNESBURG, 16 Abril 2009 (PlusNews) - Este mês, cinco mil órfãos e crianças vulneráveis em três distritos do Lesoto irão começar a se beneficiar de um novo regime do governo para aliviar a pobreza que as impede de ir à escola, ter comida suficiente e de se manter saudáveis.

Cerca de 55 por cento das estimadas 180 mil crianças vulneráveis do pequeno reino montanhoso, que tem a terceira seroprevalência mais alta do mundo, perderam um ou ambos os pais para o HIV.

"É bem conhecido que quando as pessoas têm esta doença, a tendência é que fiquem em negação por um certo período e nesse meio tempo gastem muito dinheiro visitando um médico tradicional atrás do outro," disse Limakatso Chisepo, director do Departamento de Assistência Social. "Quando morrem, os recursos da família estão esgotados."

Agora, está disponível ajuda para as crianças mais necessitadas, à medida que o governo começa a implementar um Programa de Subvenções para Crianças, com financiamento da Comissão Europeia e assistência técnica do Fundo das Nações Unidas para Infância (UNICEF).

Como parte de uma fase piloto, 1,250 agregados familiares identificados e nomeados pelas suas comunidades receberão o seu primeiro pagamento trimestral de 360 maloti (US$ 38) em Abril. "Estamos convencidos que a quantia [da subvenção], embora muito pequena, faz a diferença na vida de uma criança," disse Chisepo.

Mohemmad Farooq, um especialista de protecção de crianças do UNICEF que ajudou a conceber o programa, disse que o objectivo da subvenção não é de prover 100 por cento das necessidades das crianças.

"Existe um receio que as pessoas possam ficar viciadas em subvenções sociais e abandonem a sua própria luta," disse ele. Como espera-se que o programa atinja eventualmente cerca de 60 mil crianças, a subvenção também tinha que ser uma quantia que o governo do Lesoto pudesse assumir e continuar a pagar.

Farooq disse que a decisão de dar dinheiro, em vez de comida ou outros tipos de apoio, foi baseada na experiência global que sugere que doações em dinheiro davam mais flexibilidade ao agregado familiar.

"A sua prioridade pode ser medicamentos ou roupa; quando são dadas às pessoas apoio em género, elas muitas vezes vendem-nos por muito menos do que aquilo que eles valem", disse.

Um regime piloto de transferência de dinheiro gerido pela organização de alívio cristão Visão Mundial em 2008 fez uma experiência dando a alguns agregados familiares comida, a outros a quantidade equivalente de dinheiro e a um último grupo uma mistura de comida e dinheiro. Jonathan Moyo, um oficial de mercadorias na Visão Mundial, disse que os agregados familiares que receberam a combinação foram os que beneficiaram mais.

"O problema de dar só dinheiro é que as pessoas o gastam noutras coisas, tais como propinas escolares e funerais, e acabam por passar fome," disse ele. "Também tem que se olhar para a disponibilidade de mercados na área e assegurar-se que eles não têm que gastar dinheiro em transportes para longas distâncias para comprar comida."

Chisepo admitiu que seria difícil ter a certeza que os agregados familiares realmente gastam o dinheiro nas crianças, mas comités comunitários serão criados para monitorar o bem-estar das crianças e tratar das queixas.

Os comités também irão determinar que agregados familiares se qualificam para receber as subvenções. "Neste país, mais de 60 por cento da população vive abaixo da linha da pobreza," disse Farooq, "mas só podemos chegar a 25 por cento dos que se qualificam, por isso tivemos que pensar num mecanismo."

Na vizinha África do Sul, onde as subvenções de apoio mensais a crianças foram introduzidas há mais de 10 anos, estudos mostraram que crianças em agregados familiares pobres que receberam subvenções tinham mais probabilidade de estarem matriculadas na escola e ter melhor acesso a comida e cuidados de saúde.

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Vá lá uma boa notícia

LESOTO: Dinheiro para ajudar as crianças