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Hospitals continue to struggle with preventable healthcare-associated infections. Whereas the focus is generally on proactive prevention processes, performing retrospective case reviews of infections can identify opportunities for quality improvement and maximize learning from defects. This brief article provides practical information for structuring the case review process using readily available health system platforms. Using a structured approach for case reviews can help identify trends and opportunities for improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Gender equity in global health is a target of the Sustainable Development Goals and a requirement of just societies. Substantial progress has been made towards control and elimination of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) via mass drug administration (MDA). However, little is known about whether MDA coverage is equitable. This study assesses the availability of gender-disaggregated data and whether systematic gender differences in MDA coverage exist. Methods Coverage data were analyzed for 4784 district-years in 16 countries from 2012 through 2016. The percentage of districts reporting gender-disaggregated data was calculated and male–female coverage compared. Results Reporting of gender-disaggregated coverage data improved from 32% of districts in 2012 to 90% in 2016. In 2016, median female coverage was 85.5% compared with 79.3% for males. Female coverage was higher than male coverage for all diseases. However, within-country differences exist, with 64 (3.3%) districts reporting male coverage >10 percentage points higher than female coverage. Conclusions Reporting of gender-disaggregated data is feasible. And NTD programs consistently achieve at least equal levels of coverage for women. Understanding gendered barriers to MDA for men and women remains a priority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lymphatic filariasis (LF) and soil-transmitted helminths (STH) have been targeted since 2000 in Haiti, with a strong mass drug administration (MDA) program led by the Ministry of Public Health and Population and its collaborating international partners. By 2012, Haiti’s neglected tropical disease (NTD) program had reached full national scale, and with such consistently good epidemiological coverage that it is now able to stop treatment for LF throughout almost all of the country. Essential to this success have been in the detail of how MDAs were implemented. These key programmatic elements included ensuring strong community awareness through an evidence-based, multi-channel communication and education campaign facilitated by voluntary drug distributors; strengthening community trust of the drug distributors by ensuring that respected community members were recruited and received appropriate training, supervision, identification, and motivation; enforcing a “directly observed treatment” strategy; providing easy access to treatment though numerous distribution posts and a strong drug supply chain; and ensuring quality data collection that was used to guide and inform MDA strategies. The evidence that these strategies were effective lies in both the high treatment coverage obtained– 100% geographical coverage reached in 2012, with almost all districts consistently achieving well above the epidemiological coverage targets of 65% for LF and 75% for STH—and the significant reduction in burden of infection– 45 communes having reached the target threshold for stopping treatment for LF. By taking advantage of sustained international financial and technical support, especially during the past eight years, Haiti’s very successful MDA campaign resulted in steady progress toward LF elimination and development of a strong foundation for ongoing STH control. These efforts, as described, have not only helped establish the global portfolio of “best practices” for NTD control but also are poised to help solve two of the most important future NTD challenges—how to maintain control of STH infections after the community-based LF “treatment platform” ceases and how to ensure appropriate morbidity management for patients currently suffering from lymphatic filarial disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bisaldolization of aryl alkyl ketones as well as cyclic �ketones with paraformaldehyde in the presence of a catalytic amount of l-proline and low concentration of aqueous sodium �hydroxide has been developed in excellent yields. Further, these bisaldols are elaborated to the corresponding spirocyclic dioxanes and novel spirocyclic trioxocanes in the presence of p-toluene sulfonic acid. The structures and preferred conformations of these eight-membered spirocyclic 1,3,5-trioxocanes are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A series of urea and thiourea analogues of fluoxetine ( 5–17) were synthesized and evaluated for their anorexigenic and antidepressant activities. The related conformationally restrained analogues ( 20–23) were also prepared for structure–activity relationship (SAR) studies. Many of these derivatives ( 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 13, 16, and 23) exhibited significant anorexigenic activity and interestingly were devoid of antidepressant activity, thus emerging as a promising tool for further research work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Substituted aryloxypropanolamines (6-20) were synthesized and evaluated for their anorexigenic activity. Among them 4-cyanoaryloxy (7), 2-methylaryloxy (9), 2-methoxyl aryloxy (10), 4-acetamidoaryloxy (15), 4-bromoaryloxy (16) and 4-ethylaminoaryloxy (20) exhibited potent anorexigenic activity. According to QSAR studies, the electronic parameter 'σ' plays an important role in describing the variance in activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several 1-(substituted phenoxy)-3-{[4-(4-trifluoromethyl) phenoxy] piperidin-1-yl} propan-2-ols (str.II) were prepared in a six-step reaction sequence starting from methylamine and ethyl acrylate and evaluated for antidepressant activity. The compounds were fully characterized by spectral and elemental analyses, and were tested for their effect on gross behavior, antireserpine and anorexigenic activity. No effect was observed on gross behavior and some of them showed fluoxetine like antireserpine and anorexigenic activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]