The aims of this study were (i) to evaluate the relationship between official data on invasive meningococcal disease cases in Sardinia and the reporting of the cases by a regional online newspaper and (ii) to identify indicators useful for understanding the community outrage related to health events. Cases of meningococcal disease, selected from articles published between 1999 and 2016 on a regional newspaper database, were compared to those reported to the Infectious Disease Information Service. In order to evaluate the equality of the two distribution records, the Kolgomorov Smirnov test for two samples was applied. A community outrage indicator was obtained by calculating the number of published articles for each case of meningococcal disease identified. The outrage indicator was evaluated in comparison with other phenomena: drinking water supply limitation and domestic accidents. Overall, 2724 articles on meningitis/sepsis referring to 89 cases related to meningococcal disease were considered. Significant differences between the distribution of cases officially reported and those found in the newspaper (combined K-S = 0.39; p = 0.08) were not observed. The meningococcal disease outrage indicator showed an average of seven items per case. Comparing the meningococcal disease outrage indicator with those regarding the limitation of drinking water supplies and domestic accidents, a different risk perception by the reference media was found, with the highest outrage for meningococcal disease. The present study supports the role played by emotional factors as behavioral determinants in emerging threats to public health. The analysis of the data allowed us to highlight that the proposed outrage indicator could be a feasible proxy of emotional epidemiology. Finally, data confirm that meningitis is perceived as a highly outrageous health threat.

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Eighteen chronic schizophrenic subjects treated with a uniform dosage (4-6 mg/day p.o.) of haloperidol were submitted to computed tomography (CT) and to pattern reversal visual evoked potentials (VEPs). Compared to age-matched controls, schizophrenic patients showed lateral and third ventricular enlargement, greatly delayed VEP latencies and reduced amplitudes. These abnormalities were not related to diagnostic subgroups. Schizophrenic patients with a positive family history for major psychiatric disorders showed normal CT scan measures and greatly abnormal VEP measures, whereas patients with a negative family history showed CT scan signs of atrophy and less pronounced VEP abnormalities.

and Peru (LAC-7) have made great efforts to strengthen their primary health care systems over the past decades. This contributed to some important health outcomes. Life expectancy at birth has increased in LAC-7 countries, reaching 77.9 years on average in 2020 (a gain of almost 3 years since 2000 compared to 3.6 years across other OECD countries). Infant mortality has been halved over the past two decades, going from 21 deaths per 1 000 live births in 2000 to 10.8 in 2020.However, the COVID-19 pandemic inflected a large blow as shown by high rates of excess mortality in LAC-7 countries, that is, many more people died in the 2020 and 2021 in comparison with the average number of deaths in the five years before the pandemic. In Peru and Mexico, excess mortality were higher than in any other country in the world, twice to three times higher than the OECD average. The pandemic brought additional stress to health systems that already experienced important structural challenges, including a growing burden of chronic diseases, population ageing, high levels of social health inequality, under-investment and strong budgetary restrictions, and systemic inefficiencies.Primary health care for resilient health systems in Latin America discusses how doubling down on primary health care is a cost-effective strategy to strengthening health systems, both to increase preparedness to future pandemics and to address the structural challenges in the region. A conceptual framework is used to analyse the performance of primary health care across LAC-7 and identify weaknesses along three core functions: health promotion and immunisation; providing regular exams and screening to identify diseases; and delivering routine care for underlying health conditions. For each of the three core functions, the report examines policies and actions that were implemented to absorb the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and to recover from it.The COVID-19 pandemic revealed challenges in these LAC-7 health systems in maintaining routine care. Disruptions in routine vaccination, cancer screening and treatment show how primary health care systems were not resilient enough during the COVID-19 pandemic. Across LAC-7, for example, coverage of three doses of childhood vaccination for diphtheria, tetanus toxoid and pertussis (DTP3) at age one fell by 8% in 2020 compared to 2015-19. In Peru, a 50% drop in registered cancer cases was observed in 2020 when compared with the previous 4-year average, while in Chile treatment for cervical cancer was reduced by more than half between 2019 and 2020. These care disruptions are likely to impose high human and financial costs, including possible exacerbation of health complications and a worsening of the population health conditions which could reverse much of the gains in well-being and health achieved during the last two decades. To get ready for the future, LAC-7 countries will need to continue to expand primary health care and invest in the health workforce and the health information infrastructure. This is key for pr...

The mountain ecosystems face significant damage from deforestation and environmental forest changes. We investigated the evolution of tree types of cover areas, deforested areas and total deforested areas from Curvature Carpathians using Gray-Level Co-occurrence Matrix and fractal analysis. The forest dynamics mapping was one of the main objectives of this study and it was carried out using multiple fractal and GLCM indices. We approached the analysis of satellite forest images by calculation of four fractal indices such as Pyramid dimension, Cube Counting Dimension, Fractal Fragmentation-Compaction Index and Tug-of-War lacunarity. We also calculated fractal dimension because it is an index of complexity comparing how the detail in a pattern changes with the scale at which it is measured. Fractal dimension is useful for estimation of irregularity or roughness of fractal and natural objects that do not conform to Euclidian geometry. While the fractal dimension quantifies how much space is occupied, the Tug-of-War lacunarity complements fractal dimension with its ability to quantify how space is occupied. Analysis was further supplemented by the Gray-Level Co-occurrence Matrix analysis because it quantifies spatial probability distributions of gray level values between pixel pairs within an image. The calculated Gray-Level Co-occurrence Matrix features included Angular Second Moment, Contrast, Correlation, Inverse Difference Moment and Entropy. Such comprehensive analysis has the advantage of combining fractal analysis that extracts quantitative information about the morphological complexity of the image with the spatial distribution of the gray pixel intensities as calculated by the co-occurrence features provided by Gray-Level Co-occurrence Matrix. Evolution of deforested areas, expansion of agricultural land and the increased demand for quality timber have affected the forests ecosystems and, the regional sustainable development of local communities.