In the north of Caldas, Colombia, febrile syndromes with positive Weil-Felix reactions have been reported as Murine typhus to the national health authorities. We used indirect immunofluorescence assay (IFA) of serial paired samples to confirm the diagnosis of murine typhus in 14 of 120 patients with a compatible febrile syndrome.

Breast cancer is increasing in developing countries, and Colombia has a double burden from cervical and breast cancer. Suitable guidelines for breast cancer early detection are needed, and the Breast Health Global Initiative provides a favorable framework for breast cancer control in low resource nations. The Colombian National Cancer Institute developed evidence-based guidelines for breast cancer early detection in which coordinated early detection in symptomatic women and hospital-based screening in women aged 50–69 are recommended. A pilot project to evaluate programmatic approaches (opportunistic screening) was designed, and it is expected that organized hospital-based screening for breast cancer will represent a move towards population-based screening in the near future in accordance with country specific conditions.

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Background: In low-income countries, a child diagnosed with cancer has an 80% chance of dying, while in high-income countries more than 80% survive the disease. In Colombia, a middle-income country, the government issued new legislation that promotes the generation of comprehensive care units; nevertheless, seven years after its expedition, no institution has been recognized as such by the Ministry of Health. The objective of this study was to characterize the current offer of oncological services for cancer care in children and to identify the institutions that can be constituted in Units of Comprehensive Care of Childhood Cancer in Colombia.Methods: descriptive study of secondary source, the Special Register of Health Providers of the Ministry of Health and Social Protection was consulted, in order to identify the institutions that had enabled hospitalization services of medium or high complexity, chemotherapy, specialized consultation, emergencies, oncological surgery, and radiotherapy or nuclear medicine. The information is reported in absolute frequencies.Results: Seventy one institutions have hematology-oncology consultation, 39 institutions have chemotherapy and hospitalization services of medium or high complexity, and 18 have radiotherapy enabled. Only nine of the institutions include all the services that are necessary for comprehensive care.Conclusion: Colombia has a sufficient supply of services for the care of children with cancer. Only a minority are in institutions that have the capacity to guarantee the integrality of the attention.

A picture can express something instead of having a thousand words that cannot do it. This phrase, which symbolically connotes a whole scheme of a signs system, is known as Semiotics. This paper presents the process of an educational video game development based on semiotic analysis. We used Extreme Programing Agile Methodology combined with a proposal of the modified Elemental Tetrad Game Design Model to develop a video game known as "Tic-Tac-Toe". The mathematical model was implemented with Artificial Intelligence algorithms and a graphical user interface including Semiotics; this was optimized for producing an enjoyable and interactive environment. With the purpose of stimulating cognitive development of children, this research combines theories about stimulating cognitive development of children; game design model, Semiotic Analysis harnesses the Model of Aleferenko, and uses algorithms based on heuristics and numerical methods in client-server architecture. The concept was tested with a representative sample of seven to eleven years old children. The results demonstrated that educational video games with Semiotics stimulate the cognitive development of children.