No abstract

It is estimated that by 2020 two-thirds of the global burden of disease will be attributable to chronic noncommunicable diseases, most of them strongly associated with diet. The nutrition transition towards refined foods, foods of animal origin, and increased fats plays a major role in the current global epidemics of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, among other noncommunicable conditions. Sedentary lifestyles and the use of tobacco are also significant risk factors. The epidemics cannot be ended simply by encouraging people to reduce their risk factors and adopt healthier lifestyles, although such encouragement is undoubtedly beneficial if the targeted people can respond. Unfortunately, increasingly obesogenic environments, reinforced by many of the cultural changes associated with globalization, make even the adoption of healthy lifestyles, especially by children and adolescents, more and more difficult. The present paper examines some possible mechanisms for, and WHO's role in, the development of a coordinated global strategy on diet, physical activity and health. The situation presents many countries with unmanageable costs. At the same time there are often continuing problems of undernutrition. A concerted multisectoral approach, involving the use of policy, education and trade mechanisms, is necessary to address these matters.

Objective: To describe perceptions and sociocultural practices by the mothers facing severe malnutrition in children: Marasm and Kwashiorkor. Methodology: Descriptive ethnography. Twenty semi-structured interviews and two tribal ones were carried. Homes and hospitalized children were observed. Analysis was manually performed. Results: Mother perceives severe malnutrition like “mal de ojo” consequence af.icting children under seven. Mal de ojo is classi.ed as “drying-eye” or as “street-eye”. Mothers think that “drying-eye” emaciates children meaning something like what we call marasm, whereas we cannot tell weather “street-eye” means kwashiorkor; but in any case kwashiorkor is deemed to be caused by mal de ojo. “Traditional” medics like rezanderos perform important tasks in the treatment of cultural linked illnesses. Conclusions: Malnourishment is considered a “state” and .nally it is reduced to statistical data hindering the integral treatment of children. The study reveals a world unknown by the biomedical system and a world of cultural practices facing malnourishment that adequately assessed could improve integral treatment and prevent infant mortality by severe malnourishment or by mal de ojo

Objective: To study the annual incidence or malaria in 2001-2003 among the Tules of Resguardo Caimán Nuevo. Methodology: a descriptive study: a) retrospective: with data search in hospital records of Turbo and Necocli Hospitals and the Local Health Center at the Resguardo; b) prospective: to measure malaria prevalence by thick smear. Results: A) Malaria incidence during 2001-2003 according to our patients records. The annual index, per 1000 exposed was 154,67 in 2001, 146,89 in 2002 y 601,17 in 2003. B) According to records at the Resguardo Local Health Center a mean number of a positive thick smear was found in 39,4%. C) Malaria prevalence after active search was 433 (7,16% positive). The mean P. falciparum parasitaemia was 993 parasites/ µL (SD= 678). A 13% had history of malaria during the past month and 31% during the past year. Of all adult women, 41% had history of malaria during a pregnancy, a 76% of the population uses traditional medicine to prevent malaria. Each malaria case resulted in a loss of 7 working days. Conclusions: Urabá has a mean PAI >10, however, this is higher among the Tules. The lack of identification of the ethnic group in the regions studied, allows malaria to go undetected for the health authorities, an intercultural intervention measure is urgent.

Objective. To describe and understand violence meaning for children with street living experience in the city of Medellin. Methodology. Ethnographic study performed between February 2005 and May 2008, 10 boys and 8 girls under 18 years old who accepted to participate were interviewed. Observations were made during day and night hours. From the analytical process emerged the categories of non violent aggressions and the violence that is to damage without reason. Results. Non violent aggressions in the street surge from the peer relationship as a defense mechanism this is why they are valid and legitimate, contrary to this violence is executed by people estranger to the logics of the street, seeking to cause damage; their actions are not justified and therefore are illegitimate. In the buildup that children make about violence and non violent aggressions, there is a background of survival and absence of institutions that guarantee their rights, such absence increases the feelings of suffering and pain already present for the previously experimented violence. These children go through the streets making history in adversity, creating laws and logics that allow them to survive. The laws established in the street anti law claim for inclusive, designed programs from their specific necessities so that they can part of the society as subjects with rights to be acknowledge all their human dignity. Conclusion. For homeless children violence is classified and seen as violence, in this sense they legitimate it.