Publications

A ‘disability classification’ for use in leprosy has been advocated by who since 1960. Two revisions of this grading system were subsequently published, a 4-point scale in 1970 and a 3-point scale in 1988.

Over the past several years the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa has been recognized as being more than simply a health issue. HIV/AIDS impacts every sector, including education. In the high HIV-prevalence countries of southern and eastern Africa, the education sector is currently being hit by massive teacher shortages due to death, absenteeism, and attrition as teachers fall ill, care for sick family members, or fill vacancies in other fields. At the same time, the needs of learners are changing as young people must learn at an earlier age how to protect themselves from HIV/AIDS and care for affected family members and friends.

Reactions in leprosy patients causing acute nerve function impairment (NFI) can often be treated successfully with corticosteriods. Treatment with corticosteriods in leprosy control programmes is increasingly being provided under field conditions, often by paramedical workers.

Mainstreaming a gender perspective in development was the overall strategy adopted at the Fourth UN Conference for Women, held in Beijing in 1995, to support the goal of gender equality. The rationale for this strategy is that it is important to bring the goal of gender equality to the centre of the development process. After three decades of gender and development activism, most in development institutions continue to need constant reminders of the need for gender analysis in their work. Why is it that policy makers still have to be lobbied to include the g word, and colleagues need to be convinced that integrating a gender analysis in their work makes a qualitative difference?

Nerve Function Impairment (NFI) in leprosy patients may lead to severe disabilities, such as muscle paralysis of face, hands and feet, and chronic plantar and palmar ulceration. For many years, the mainstay of treatment of NFI of less than 6 months duration, in particular in the presence of clinically manifest type 1 reaction, has been with corticosteriods. For NFI of longer than 6 months duration, however, this treatment is not recommended. Beyond 6 months of NFI, never fibres are considered to be damaged irreversibly, and are therefore unlikely to respond to treatment. Yet there are indications that some patients with long-standing NFI have responded favourably to treatment with corticosteriods.

This booklet reports on a study that began in 1995 as a collaborative effort between Palestinian, Israeli and Dutch researchers who shared the same hope regarding a peaceful solution to the dispute between Jews and Arabs living in the region. Their collaboration was centred on studying the opportunity to change the prevailing public attitude towards peace and cooperation in one of the issues that captures the essence of the conflict between groups competing for scarce resources – the water issue. Most of the data for this study was collected during 1997-1998. The Netherlands Israel Development Research Programme (NIRP) funded the project. NIRP aims to encourage development-related research focused on socio-economic and cultural change.

Agricultural research and extension in sub-Sahara Africa have been subject to repeated organisational and institutional reforms during the last few decades. Donors and central governments were the main drivers of reorganisation and re-structuring processes. Mostly “blueprints” based on “western” models were applied; although sometimes a perceived lack of impact was given as the rationale, the actual reasons for change were often of an ambiguous nature.

Over the past decades the number of new leprosy patients detected worldwide has been more or less stable (WHO, 2002). In 2001 more than 750,000 new patients were diagnosed (WHO, 2002). It is very likely that a significant number of new patients will continue to occur for many years. Hence, leprosy control activities should be sustained, and to guarantee sustainable leprosy services they should be integrated within the general health services (ILA, 2002).

Au cours des dernières décennies, la recherche et la vulgarisation agricole en Afrique subsaharienne ont connu d’importantes réformes institutionnelles et organisationnelles. Les bailleurs de fonds et les Gouvernements nationaux étaient les principales forces de réorganisation et de restructuration.

Every year, over half a million new leprosy are detected. Since there is no evidence that the transmission in high endemic countries has been substantially interrupted, it is expected that in the coming years considerable numbers of leprosy patients will continue to report to health facilities.

The conference ‘Governing for Equity’ was the outcome of a process in which many individuals and institutions have been involved over a period of three years beginning in 1999. In that year KIT Gender, at the Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam, initiated a three-year programme entitled ‘Gender, Citizenship and Governance’.

This study deals with problems of drought and drought-coping mechanisms among pastoralists living in arid zones in Kenya and the Negev (Israel). Its final objective is to provide input and formulate policy recommendations for the development of integrated drought contingency planning. The results are based on a cooperative effort by Kenyan, Israeli and Dutch researchers carried out under the NIRP programme between 1994 and 1999.

The International Leprosy Association (ILA) Technical Forum report, The Current Leprosy Situation, Epidemiology and Control and the Organization of Leprosy Services, gives a lot of attention to the goal for elimination of leprosy as a public health problem. In 1991, this was defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a prevalence smaller than one per 10,000 population. Underlying this elimination strategy was the hypothesis that because leprosy patients are assumed to be the sole source of infection, early detection and treatment with multidrug therapy (MDT) would reduce transmission of Mycobacterium leprae. It was expected that once the prevalence fell below this level, the chain of transmission would be broken, and leprosy would disappear naturally. In 1993, WHO made predictions regarding the expected trends of the prevalence, number of registered cases, incidence, and number of cases detected till the year 2000 (Fig. 1) (12). The expectation was that by the end of the year 2000, the prevalence and incidence would both be about 200,000. But, what was the actual situation by the end of 2000