Addressing Women's Non-Maternal Healthcare Financing in Developing Countries: What Can We Learn from the Experiences of Rural Indian Women?

Background and Objectives

This paper focuses on the inadequate attention on women''s non-maternal healthcare in low- and middle-income countries. The study assessed the purchase of and financial access to non-maternal healthcare. It also scoped for mainstreaming household financial resources in this regard to suggest for alternatives.

Methods

A household survey through multi-stage stratified sampling in the state of Orissa interviewed rural women above 15 years who were neither pregnant nor had any pregnancy-related outcome six weeks preceding the survey. The questions explored on the processes, determinants and outcomes of health seeking for non-maternal ailments. The outcome measures were healthcare access, cost of care and financial access. The independent variables for bivariate and multivariate analyses were contextual factors, health seeking and financing pattern.

Results

The survey obtained a response rate of 98.64% and among 800 women, 43.8% had no schooling and 51% were above 60 years. Each woman reported at least one episode of non-maternal ailment; financial constraints prevented 68% from receiving timely and complete care. Distress coping measures (e.g. borrowings) dominated the financing source (67.9%) followed by community–based measures (32.1%). Only 6% had financial risk-protection; financial risk of not obtaining care doubled for women aged over 60 years (OR 2.00, 95% CI 0.84–4.80), seeking outpatient consultation (OR 2.01, 95% CI 0.89–4.81), facing unfavourable household response (OR 2.04, 95% CI 1.09–3.83), and lacking other financial alternatives (OR 2.13, 95% CI 1.11–4.07). When it comes to timely mobilization of funds and healthcare seeking, 90% (714) of the households preferred maternal care to non-maternal healthcare.

Conclusion

The existing financing options enable sub-optimal purchase of women''s non-maternal healthcare. Though dominant, household economy extends inadequate attention in this regard owing to its unfavourable approach towards non-maternal healthcare and limited financial capacity and support from other financial resources.     

Similarities and differences of the binding of estradiol and 4-hydroxytamoxifen (an antiestrogen) in the chick oviduct cytosol

The binding characteristics of [³H]estradiol and 4-[³H]hydroxytamoxifen (a powerful estradiol antagonist) in the chick oviduct cytosol was analyzed by sucrose gradient centrifugation and dissociation kinetics experiments at 28°C. Heating the cytoplasmic estradiol-estrogen receptor complexes led to the ‘transformation’ of the receptor; as with the estrogen receptor in other target tissues and species, the transformed receptor sedimented in the 5 S region of sucrose gradients containing 0.4 M KCI and had a slower rate of dissociation of bound estradiol. Upon heating, the cytoplasmic 4-hydroxytamoxifen complexes also appeared to undergo similar changes in their physical states as analyzed by sedimentation rates and dissociation kinetics, and we conclude that antiestrogen can transform the receptor. Sodium molybdate inhibited the temperature mediated changes with both estrogen and antiestrogen complexes. Slight but consistent differences in the sedimentation coefficient and rate of ligand dissociation were observed between the complexes formed by estradiol and 4-hydroxytamoxifen but the relevance to opposite biological activities remains unknown.     

Nexplorer: phylogeny-based exploration of sequence family data

SUMMARY: Nexplorer is a web-based program for interactive browsing and manipulation of character data in NEXUS format, well suited for use with alignments and trees representing families of homologous genes or proteins. Users may upload a sequence family dataset, or choose from one of several thousand already available. Nexplorer provides a flexible means to develop customized views that combine a tree and a data matrix or alignment, to create subsets of data, and to output data files or publication-quality graphics. AVAILABILITY: Web access is from http://www.molevol.org/nexplorer     

人乳头瘤病毒-6 L1蛋白B-细胞优势表位作为多肽疫苗的研究

本研究分析了人乳头瘤病毒-6型L1外壳蛋白之B-细胞优势表位,并拟以此为基础制作表位多肽疫苗。研究中采用Goldkey和PC／Gene软件系统综合分析HPV6之L1蛋白B-细胞优势表位后,Fmoc固相合成表位多肽,通过HPLC纯化和毛细管电泳分析其纯度。与佐剂完全乳化后,免疫小鼠,进行动物水平的免疫效果评价。取免疫小鼠血清,与HPV-6 DNA阳性的尖锐湿疣患者疣体组织上清液结合,以鉴定免疫小鼠所产生抗体的特异性。发现L1蛋白第425-439位和第486-500位具有较高的免疫原性,可明显诱导小鼠血清抗体滴度升高,且该抗体与人尖锐湿疣疣体组织上清液呈阳性反应。说明所选这两个肽段为HPV6之L1蛋白的B-细胞优势表位,但诱导产生的抗体是否具有功能特异性,正在做进一步研究。     

Involvement of a glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase in modulating the NADH/NAD+ ratio provides evidence of a mitochondrial glycerol-3-phosphate shuttle in Arabidopsis

A mitochondrial glycerol-3-phosphate (G-3-P) shuttle that channels cytosolic reducing equivalent to mitochondria for respiration through oxidoreduction of G-3-P has been extensively studied in yeast and animal systems. Here, we report evidence for the operation of such a shuttle in Arabidopsis thaliana. We studied Arabidopsis mutants defective in a cytosolic G-3-P dehydrogenase, GPDHc1, which, based on models described for other systems, functions as the cytosolic component of a G-3-P shuttle. We found that the gpdhc1 T-DNA insertional mutants exhibited increased NADH/NAD+ ratios compared with wild-type plants under standard growth conditions, as well as impaired adjustment of NADH/NAD+ ratios under stress simulated by abscisic acid treatment. The altered redox state of the NAD(H) pool was correlated with shifts in the profiles of metabolites concerning intracellular redox exchange. The impairment in maintaining cellular redox homeostasis was manifest by a higher steady state level of reactive oxygen species under standard growth conditions and by a significantly augmented hydrogen peroxide production under stress. Loss of GPDHc1 affected mitochondrial respiration, particularly through a diminished capacity of the alternative oxidase respiration pathway. We propose a model that outlines potential involvements of a mitochondrial G-3-P shuttle in plant cells for redox homeostasis.     

玉米根系分布空间和空间密度分布的数学模型

应用重积分研究了土壤层中散根型和直根型玉米根系的分布空间,同时研究了玉米根系的空间密度分布．