Blood donation in Chile: Replacement and volunteer donors

In recent years, the Chilean Health Ministry has developed a strategy in order to improve the safety and opportunity of the blood supply through the creation of a nationally co-ordinated blood transfusion service, centralizing collection management, production and testing in three Blood Centers along the country and promoting voluntary, regular, blood donation.In 2007, a comprehensive study of the situation of Blood Transfusion Services in Chile concluded that several critical factors make it difficult to achieve a safe and adequate access to blood and blood components in the country. For example there is a low donation rate (14.3/1000 inhabitants), very low percentage of voluntary donors (10%), excessive amount of blood banks collecting, processing and testing blood revealing an atomized non-centralized system, lack of a national IT system and insufficient national standards. There are two regions in the country, Bio Bio and Valparaíso, where Regional Blood Centers are located, that have put in place several strategies in order to obtain better results.     

Description and evaluation of a canine volunteer blood donor program

Human volunteer blood donor programs are commonplace, but the concept of nonhuman animal blood banking is relatively new. Few studies exist regarding efficacy, donor screening, and safety for volunteer companion animals. This retrospective study evaluated a nonprofit, community-based canine volunteer donor program using community blood drives. Of 98 potential donors, 14 were ineligible to donate, including 4 who tested seropositive for blood-borne pathogens. Of 84 donors, 45 were Dog Erythrocyte Antigen (DEA) 1.1 positive and 39 were DEA1.1 negative. Donations totaling 143 included 29 repeat donors (35%). No serious adverse events occurred. Minor adverse events included acute donor reaction (2.8%), hematoma (4.2%), rebleeding (2.1%), and skin irritation (0.7%). Adverse event rates were comparable to data for human blood donations. A substantial fraction of donors donated multiple times, suggesting that volunteer donors and their guardians perceived the donation process to be safe and effective. This article discusses the issue of donor consent and use of the term volunteer. This study indicates that nonprofit, community-based canine volunteer donor programs for animal blood banks can be successful while maintaining high safety standards and ethical treatment of volunteers.     

Creating long-term benefits in cleft lip and palate volunteer missions

The authors present their experience with 15 years of organizing cleft lip and palate surgical volunteer missions in Latin America. The history, basic principles, and objectives of Operation San Jose, a volunteer goodwill program from Christus St.Joseph Hospital in Houston, Texas, are covered. This report addresses the different problems encountered and solutions found. Following the principles set by Operation San Jose, CIRPLAST is a Peruvian foundation for plastic surgery that travels to remote areas in Peru, operating on patients with cleft lip and palate deformities. This report highlights the importance of working with local plastic surgeons and their residents, and emphasizes that the program should be organized by and the operations performed by accredited plastic surgeons and with the auspices and support of the national plastic surgery society and the local medical board. Operation San Jose promotes the creation of long-term benefits by offering a program to teach local surgeons cleft lip and palate repair techniques and to set up guidelines to organize local surgeons so that they can continue this effort by treating their own patients in their own countries.     

抗除草剂转基因植物的杂草化类型与机理探讨

抗除草剂转基因植物(herbicide—resistant genetically-modified plant(HRGMP))己在全世界广为种植。由于种内、种间抗性基因的转移、互渗和某些转基因植物类型自身具有较强的杂草性,转基因植物的田间试验和商业化种植都存在着产生新的杂草类型,甚至超级杂草的风险。即形成：(1)逸生型杂草,(2)衰退型杂草,(3)超级杂草,对生物多样性构成威胁。     

The immunological response in volunteer donors immunized with a Pseudomonas vaccine]

The trial of experimental vaccine consisting of protective protein antigens of P. aeruginosa cell wall was carried out on 114 volunteers. The vaccine proved to be faintly reactogenic and induced the formation of specific humoral immunity in 98% of the volunteers who retained a high level of anti-P. aeruginosa antibodies in their blood for up to 5 months (the term of observation after the course of immunization was over.     

Delivering post-abortion care through a community-based reproductive health volunteer programme in pakistan

Summary This qualitative study was conducted in May-June 2010 with women using post-abortion care (PAC) services provided by the Marie Stopes Society in Pakistan during the six month period preceding the study, more than 70% of whom had been referred to the clinics by reproductive health volunteers (RHVs). The aim of the study was to establish the socio-demographic profile of clients, determine their preferred method of treatment, explore their perceptions of the barriers to accessing post-abortion services and to understand the challenges faced by RHVs. The sample women were selected from six randomly selected districts of Sindh and Punjab. Eight focus group discussions were conducted with PAC clients and fifteen in-depth interviews with RHVs. In addition, a quantitative exit interview questionnaire was administered to 76 clients. Medical, rather than surgical, treatment for incomplete and unsafe abortions was preferred because it was perceived to 'cause less pain', was 'easy to employ' and 'having fewer complications'. Household economics influence women's decision-making on seeking post-abortion care. Other restraining factors include objection by husbands and in-laws, restrictions on female mobility, the views of religious clerics and a lack of transport. The involvement of all stakeholders could secure social approval and acceptance of the provision of safe post-abortion care services in Pakistan, and improve the quality of family planning services to the women who want to space their pregnancies.     

Bone-marrow transplantation for severe aplastic anaemia using histocompatible unrelated volunteer donors.

Two patients with severe aplastic anaemia received bone-marrow transplants from unrelated donors selected for HLA compatibility. Graft-versus-host disease occurred in both patients but responded to treatment. Both patients had stormy courses after grafting, but subsequently their conditions improved, and one was not receiving any treatment at follow-up after day 330 while the other had mild chronic graft-versus-host disease at day 150. These results show that unrelated, histocompatible volunteers may successfully donate marrow for the treatment of severe aplastic anaemia, though many problems remain to be solved.     

The Control of volunteer potatoes in the autumn in cereal stubbles.

Many of the volunteer potato plants present in two winter barley crops continued to grow after the cereal harvest. Aminotriazole applied to this regrowth resulted in 50–69% fewer potato plants emerging in the year following treatment. Glyphosate gave better control, averaging 72% in one experiment and 88% in the other. Few of the potato plants regrew after harvest of two spring barley crops and with the same two herbicides over 70% of the tubers survived. Herbicide response was not affected by dose (glyphosate 0.5-3.0 kg/ha and aminotriazole 1.5-4.0 kg/ha). With adequate time for the potatoes to start regrowing after harvest (3–4 wk), there was no improvement in performance from further delay. The potential use of these two herbicides in cereal stubbles for groundkeeper potato control is discussed     

Comparative trial of volunteer and professional treatments of dysphasia after stroke.

A study of the treatment of dysphasia after stroke compared the progress of two groups of disabled patients. One received conventional treatment from qualified speech therapists and the other from non-professional volunteers. Methods of assessing communication difficulties were also compared and the impact of aphasic illness on families examined. No important differences in the results of treatment were seen between the two groups. The volunteers, however, often had to assume some of the responsibilities of social workers, and transport to hospital created practical and economic problems. It is concluded that the two forms of treatment provide essentially the same benefit, although doubt must still remain because relatively few patients were studied.     

Patient-specific respiratory models using dynamic 3D MRI: Preliminary volunteer results

Organ and tumour motion has a significant impact on the planning and delivery of radiotherapy treatment. At present imaging modality such as four-dimensional computer tomography (4DCT) cannot be used to measure the variability of motion between different respiratory cycles. To create reliable motion models, one needs to acquire volumetric data sets of the lungs with sufficient sampling of the breathing cycle. In this paper we investigate the use of highly parallel MRI to acquire such data. A 32 channel coil in conjunction with a balanced SSFP sequence and a SENSE factor of 6 were used to acquire volumetric data sets in five healthy volunteers. The acquisition was repeated for seven series of different breathing patterns. The data acquired was of sufficient spatial resolution (5 × 5 × 5 mm³) and image quality to carry out automated non-rigid registration. The acquisition rate (c.a. 2 volumes per second) allowed for a meaningful sampling of the different respiratory curves that were automatically obtained from the skin surface motion. This acquisition technique should provide images of high enough quality to create statistical respiratory models.     

Representativeness of a roster of volunteer North American twins with chronic disease.

To identify large numbers of twins affected by chronic disease as potential subjects for studies of environmental and genetic chronic disease determinants, we advertised for affected twins over the period 1980-91 in newspapers across North America. Responses were received from 17 245 twin pairs in which cases of cancer or other chronic disease had occurred. To assess the representativeness of affected twins identified by advertising, we evaluated the pattern of reporting, compared the cases identified to the number of cases estimated to be prevalent among all North American twins, compared the cases to population-based singleton case series, compared the healthy co-twins to population-based samples of healthy persons, assessed the impact on ascertainment of opinions about disease causation, compared the pattern of prospective to retrospective ascertainment of disease in the originally unaffected co-twins of cases, and compared the results of the prospective ascertainment of disease in co-twins to comparable published estimates. Youth, gender, zygosity, education, and disease concordance were found to be overall determinants of ascertainment. Disease-discordant DZ twins appeared to be modestly underascertained. While somewhat better educated, both concordant and discordant pairs were judged to be reasonably representative of affected non-Hispanic white North American twin pairs of comparable status, ie of comparable age, sex, race, and zygosity. If interpreted with caution, the concordance patterns of such twins can be used to generate genetic hypotheses, but should not be the basis of definitive heritability analyses. We conclude that advertising offers a method of identifying pairs of twins that can serve as subjects for studies designed to identify disease determinants.