This study demonstrates that the PIPP is a pain measure with good construct validity and excellent inter- and intrarater reliability for the assessment of procedural pain of preterm and term infants in clinical settings.

As COVID-19 began to spread around the world, so did reports of discrimination and violence against people from marginalized groups. We argue that in a global politics characterized by racialized inequality, pandemics such as COVID-19 exacerbate the marginalization of already oppressed groups. We review published research on previous pandemics to historicize pandemic othering and blame, and enumerate some of the consequences for politics, policy, and public health. Specifically, we draw on lessons from smallpox outbreaks, the third bubonic plague, the 1918 influenza pandemic, and more recent pandemics, such as HIV/AIDS, SARS, and Ebola. We also compile reports to document the discrimination and violence targeting marginalized groups early in the COVID-19 pandemic. This article lays bare the continuation of a long history of othering and blame during disease outbreaks and identifies needs for further inquiry to understand the persistence of these pandemic politics.

International organizations promote provider-initiated, 'routine' HIV testing of pregnant women seeking antenatal care as an effort to curb mother-to-child transmission. We offer an account of the perceptions of HIV testing at antenatal clinics in rural Malawi. Although it is both international and Government of Malawi policy that women must be explicitly informed of their right to refuse testing, analysis of in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and evidence from observational field journals show that rural Malawians do not perceive HIV testing as a choice, but rather as compulsory in order to receive antenatal care. This study illustrates dissonance between global expectations and local realities of the delivery of HIV-testing interventions.

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bThe Sensititre MycoTB plate (TREK Diagnostic Systems, Cleveland, OH) uses a microtiter plate MIC format for susceptibility testing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex isolates against first-and second-line antituberculosis agents. Categorical agreement versus the agar proportion method for 122 M. tuberculosis complex isolates was 94% to 100%. T he gold standard method for Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex susceptibility testing is the 1% indirect agar proportion method (APM), which is laborious and requires 2 to 3 weeks for results (4, 7). This two-site study evaluated a new system, the Sensititre MycoTB plate (MycoTB), for susceptibility testing of M. tuberculosis complex. The plate uses a 96-well microtiter broth format and contains 12 lyophilized first-and second-line antimycobacterial drugs. In contrast to other M. tuberculosis complex susceptibility methods, which test one or two critical concentrations of a drug, the MycoTB plate examines a range of drug concentrations and produces an MIC result. Recently, Abuali et al. evaluated the MycoTB plate using 37 M. tuberculosis complex isolates (1). Our study confirms and extends these results by testing a larger number of isolates, including singly and multiply resistant isolates, and provides precision data for the MycoTB plate. We also compared a manual, mirror plate-reading method with a commercially available, manual plate reader with data management software (Vizion System, TREK Diagnostics).(This study was presented in part at the 50th Annual Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy Boston, MA, 12 to 15 September 2010.)One hundred twenty-two M. tuberculosis complex isolates (59 from site 1 and 63 from site 2) were tested using the APM and the MycoTB plate. An additional 15 M. tuberculosis complex "challenge" strains with known susceptibility patterns were provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and tested using the MycoTB plate. Inoculum preparation and plating were performed using a biological safety cabinet (BSC) inside a biosafety level 3 (BSL3) laboratory as previously described (5). Several colonies were selected from Middlebrook 7H10 medium using a sterile loop and inoculated into a test tube containing saline-Tween and glass beads (TREK Diagnostics). After being vortexed for 30 to 60 s, the inoculum was allowed to settle for 15 min and adjusted to a 0.5 McFarland standard equivalent using a nephelometer. The numbers of CFU were determined for each isolate tested to verify that the inoculum was within a specific targeted amount (ϳ10 5 CFU/ml). One hundred microliters of the inoculum was transferred to 11 ml of Middlebrook 7H9 broth containing oleic acid-albumin-dextrose-catalase (TREK Diagnostics) and vortexed for 20 s. One hundred microliters was transferred to the MycoTB plate wells containing the lyophilized antibiotics. MycoTB plates were covered with plastic seals provided by the manufacturer, and the entire outer surface of the plate was disinfected with a tuberculocidal agent. Plates were in...