SSMJ May 2010
Editorials
Healthcare evolves. Take myocardial infarcts (MI) for example. Thirty years ago, the management was heparin and 'bed rest'. A trial in 1986 showed that intravenous(IV) streptokinase worked in the treatment of MI. In the mid to late 1990’s angioplasty and stenting was becoming commonplace...
News, Reports and Policy
The Southern Sudan Medical Journal is planning to publish the profiles of Non Governmental Organisations (both international and local) and other organisations working in health related fields in Southern Sudan. We hope this will help to publicise the valuable work these are doing, and allow people to make closer links with each other. In this issue we are pleased to present the profiles of the Malaria Consortium and the Population Services International Sudan.
Clinical Guidance
This is the second chart from ‘Pocket Book of Hospital Care for Children - Guidelines for the Management of Common Illnesses with Limited Resources’ (WHO 2005). This is ‘Chart 2. Triage of all sick children’ [page 4-5].
We plan to publish more charts from this book in future issues of the Journal. We hope you will find them useful.
The electrocardiogram (ECG) is one of the simplest and oldest cardiac investigations available, yet it can provide a wealth of useful information and remains an essential part of the assessment of cardiac patients.
With modern machines, surface ECGs are quick and easy to obtain at the bedside and are based on relatively simple electrophysiological concepts. However junior doctors often find them difficult to interpret.
This is the first in a short series of articles that aim to...
In the last issue I covered the use of PubMed to retrieve primary sources of evidence (individual research studies). However, if you need quick or more definite answers to your clinical questions you may prefer to start with secondary sources - where individual studies have already undergone analysis and have often been compared with others to provide a summarised, more definitive conclusion...
There are no recent international guidelines for the management of moderate malnutrition in spite of the fact that it: Increases the risk of death from common diseases and may result in severe acute malnutrition and/or severe stunting (both life-threatening conditions)...
Research
The basic hospital package of care service (BHPCS)1, commissioned by the Department of Curative Medicine in the Government of Southern Sudan (GOSS) and written by specialists of the St Mary’s Hospital–Juba Teaching Hospital Link in January 2010, identified a severe lack of doctors at specialist level. It recommends that the minimum requirements of specialists at each of the three main hospitals in South Sudan over the next five years are...
A nutrition survey of young children was carried out by Medair (see http://www.medair.org) and Save the Children in Southern Sudan (SCiSS) (see http://savethechildren.org.uk) in February 2010 (the mid-dry season) in Bilkey and Nyandit Payams, Akobo County. This was in response to a previous evaluation of the nutrition situation in Akobo town in January 2010. This had found that lack of rain had led to a high level of food insecurity, and increasing levels of malnutrition. The objectives of the survey were:
Case Reports
Answers to the Clinical Quiz in SSMJ Vol 3, issue 1. February 2010
Case history: This picture shows a twelve-day old girl who was born by Caesarean section to a healthy mother at Kajo Keji Hospital. The mother was primagravida. She had no history of recreational drug use and was not on any regular prescription drugs including corticosteroids...
Summaries
This section gives relevant clinical information from other journals and reports, and suggests materials that can be freely downloaded, and/or obtained in hard copy or on CD. Items are grouped under: Chronic diseases; HIV and other infections; Paediatrics/child health; Surgery; General resources.