World Hunger: ¿What happen in Colombia? (El hambre en el Mundo: ¿Qué pasa en Colombia?

The humanitarian crisis facing Colombia after more than 40 years of conflict makes it one of the countries with the highest rates of internally displaced people (IDP) in the world. It is estimated that, to date, the accumulated number of Colombians who have been forced to abandon their areas to relocate in the marginal areas of many towns and cities may top three million.

An evaluation carried out jointly by the International Committee of the Red Cross and WFP shows that the average monthly income of an internally displaced family represents a little over 41 percent of the official minimum wage, equivalent to US$63 dollars. Of this amount, displaced people spend 58 percent on food, 6 percent on health, and just three percent on education.

The dynamics of displacements generally compel family groups to drastically change their daily routines. Once unable to generate sufficient income, the IDPs are forced to withdraw their children from school, reduce their consumption of the various products on the food basket and, eventually, reduce the number of times they eat every day.

Activities

Identifying displaced persons in Colombia is challenging, as displacement is constantly occurring throughout the country. WFP has strengthened its presence in the southern, northeast and eastern areas of the country where the number of IDPs is rising through the opening of sub-offices in Cali, Pasto and Neiva in 2006 and the inclusion of a new department, Arauca, as part of the Cucuta Sub-office geographical coverage, in 2008.

Together with the Colombian government and in response to the country’s difficult humanitarian situation, WFP carries out a Protracted Relief and Recovery Operation aimed at finding suitable and lasting solutions to the food problems of displaced populations, the prevention of future displacements, and the continuation of the basic education of pre-school and school-aged boys and girls.

This operation will assist, per year, 530,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs), vulnerable host communities and other groups affected by the internal conflict (women heads of household, pre-school and school-aged children, and Afro-Colombian and indigenous populations) and will require 90,086 metric tonnes of food at a cost of US$107.25 million.

World Hunger (El hambre en el mundo)

There are 1.02 billion undernourished people in the world today, that means one in nearly six people do not get enough food to be healthy and lead an active life. Hunger and malnutrition are in fact the number one risk to the health worldwide — greater than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.

Among the key causes of hunger are natural disasters, conflict, poverty, poor agricultural infrastructure and over-exploitation of the environment. Recently, financial and economic crises have pushed more people into hunger.

As well as the obvious sort of hunger resulting from an empty stomach, there is also the hidden hunger of micronutrient deficiencies which make people susceptible to infectious diseases, impair physical and mental development, reduce their labour productivity and increase the risk of premature death.

Hunger does not only weigh on the individual. It also imposes a crushing economic burden on the developing world. Economists estimate that every child whose physical and mental development isstunted by hunger and malnutrition stands to lose 5-10 percent in lifetime earnings.

Among the Millennium Development Goals which the United Nations has set for the 21st century, halving the proportion of hunger people in the world is top of the list. Whereas good progress was made in reducing chronic hunger in the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, hunger has been slowly but steadily rising for the past decade.

For a 10-minute briefing on Hunger, explore our Hunger Map, Hunger Stats and Hunger FAQs.

http://www.wfp.org/hunger

Resúmenes: Análisis de las Redes Sociales como método de evaluación de la Cultura Institucional

Purpose: To describe the basic concepts of social network analysis (SNA), which assesses the unique structure of interrelationships among individuals and programs, and introduce some applications of this technique in assessing aspects of institutional culture at a medical center.

Method: The authors applied SNA to three settings at their institution: team function in the intensive care unit, interdisciplinary composition of advisory committees for 53 federal career development awardees, and relationships between key function directors at an institution-wide Clinical Translational Sciences Institute (CTSI). (Key functions are the major administrative units of the CTSI.)

Results: In the ICU setting, SNA provides interpretable summaries of aspects of clinical team functioning. When applied to membership on mentorship committees, it allows for summary descriptions of the degree of interdisciplinarity of various clinical departments. Finally, when applied to relationships among leaders of an institution-wide research enterprise, it highlights potential problem areas in relationships among academic departments. In all cases, data collection is relatively rapid and simple, thereby allowing for the possibility of frequent repeated analyses over time.

Conclusions: SNA provides a useful and standardized set of tools for measuring important aspects of team function, interdisciplinarity, and organizational culture that may otherwise be difficult to measure in an objective way.

VI Congreso Virtual de Cardiología

A partir del próximo 1 de septiembre, se podrá acceder al VI Congreso Virtual de Cardiología, organizado por la Federación Argentina de Cardiología. La inscripción al evento es gratuita y los contenidos abarcan interesantes temáticas relacionadas con el área en los campos de atención primaria, diagnóstico, tratamiento y rehabilitación.

Mayores informes e inscripciones:

http://www.fac.org.ar/6cvc

Vacaciones Médicas

La construcción del carácter: Un modelo para la Práctica Reflexiva de la Medicina

In 1950, Harrison and colleagues proposed that the physician's ultimate and sufficient destiny should be to "build an enduring edifice of character." Recent work in philosophy underscores the importance of character ethics (virtue ethics) as a complement to ethical systems based on duty (deontology) or results (consequentialism).

Recent work in psychology suggests that virtues and character strengths can, to at least some extent, be analyzed and taught. Building character might be enhanced by promoting among students, residents, and faculty a four-step method of reflective practice that includes (1) the details of a situation, (2) the relevant virtues, (3) the relevant principles, values, and ethical frameworks, and (4) the range of acceptable courses of action. Exercises using such a model bring together the major goals of ethics education in U.S. medical schools-teaching the set of skills needed for resolving ethical dilemmas and promoting virtue and professionalism among physicians.

Reference

Building Character: A Model for Reflective Practice. Academic Medicine. 2009; 84(9):1283-1288.

Resúmenes: Medical Student Perceptions of Education in Health Care Systems

Purpose: Undergraduate medical education has been criticized for not keeping pace with the increasing complexity of the U.S. health care system. The authors assessed medical students' perceptions of training in clinical decision making, clinical care, and the practice of medicine, and the degree to which the intensity of education in health care systems can affect perceptions.

Method: The authors studied data from 58,294 U.S. medical graduates who completed the Association of American Medical Colleges annual Medical School Graduation Questionnaire (2003-2007). In a second analysis, they compared responses of 1,045 medical school graduates (2003-2007) from two similar medical schools with curricula of different intensity in health care systems.

Results: The percentage of students reporting "appropriate" training was 90% to 92% for clinical decision making, 80% to 82% for clinical care, and 40% to 50% for the practice of medicine. Students from the school with a higher-intensity curriculum in health care systems reported higher satisfaction than students from the school with a lower-intensity curriculum for training in four of five practice of medicine components: medical economics, health care systems, managed care, and practice management. Importantly, the high commitment to education in health care systems in the higher-intensity curriculum did not lead to lower perceived levels of adequate training in other domains of instruction.

Conclusions: Nationally, students consistently reported that inadequate instructional time was devoted to the practice of medicine, specifically medical economics. A higher-intensity curriculum in health care systems may hold substantial potential to overcome these perceptions of training inadequacy.

Reference

Medical Student Perceptions of Education in Health Care Systems. Academic Medicine. 2009; 84(9):1301-1306.