In this week's PLoS Medicine, Karen Edmond and Anita Zaidi emphasise the importance of finding new approaches to preventing, diagnosing, and treating neonatal sepsis, especially in the developing world where fatality rates are the highest. Whereas in high income countries the major concern is with premature babies at risk of infection from multi-resistant organisms in intensive care units, the most pressing issues in low income countries are the high proportion of home deliveries in unclean environments predisposing to sepsis, and ensuring that all neonates have access to effective interventions from health care providers in the first days of life.
Neonatal sepsis is caused by invasion of the bloodstream by bacteria in the first month of life. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 1 million deaths per year (10% of all under-five mortality) are due to neonatal sepsis and that 42% of these deaths occur in the first week of life. There are wide disparities in the care of neonatal sepsis across countries, say the authors.
Citation: Edmond K, Zaidi A (2010) New Approaches to Preventing, Diagnosing, and Treating Neonatal Sepsis. PLoS Med 7(3): e1000213. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000213
Funding: No specific funding was received to write this piece.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
IN YOUR COVERAGE PLEASE USE THIS URL TO PROVIDE ACCESS TO THE FREELY AVAILABLE PAPER: http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000213
PRESS-ONLY PREVIEW OF THE ARTICLE: www.plos.org/press/plme-07-03-edmond.pdf
CONTACT:Karen EdmondLondon School of Hygiene and Tropical MedicineInfectious Disease Epidemiology UnitKeppel StLondon, WC1E7HTUnited Kingdom44 20 79588124karen.edmond@lshtm.ac.uk
Healthcare providers need to screen adolescents for alcohol problems
Adolescent binge drinking is a worldwide public health problem, and yet few adolescents receive screening and treatment when visiting healthcare providers. In this week's PLoS Medicine, Duncan Clark from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Howard Moss from the US National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism argue for better management of alcohol problems. They identify obstacles to alcohol-related screening and treatment for adolescents and propose policy solutions so that health care practitioners can become more involved in providing screening, brief intervention, and referral for treatment for adolescent drinkers
Citation: Clark DB, Moss HB (2010) Providing Alcohol-Related Screening and Brief Interventions to Adolescents through Health Care Systems: Obstacles and Solutions. PLoS Med 7(3): e1000214. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000214
Funding: DBC was supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (U01AA016482) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (P50DA05605). The funders played no role in the decision to submit the article or in its preparation.
Competing Interests:The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
IN YOUR COVERAGE PLEASE USE THIS URL TO PROVIDE ACCESS TO THE FREELY AVAILABLE PAPER: http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000214
PRESS-ONLY PREVIEW OF THE ARTICLE: http://www.plos.org/press/plme-07-03-clark.pdf
CONTACT:Duncan ClarkUniversity of PittsburghWPIC3811 O'Hara StreetPittsburgh, PA 15213United States of America4122466919clarkdb@upmc.edu
Source: Public Library of Science