Clubfoot is a congenital foot disorder that, left untreated, can limit a person's mobility by making it difficult and painful to walk. Although inexpensive and reliable treatment exists, clubfoot often goes untreated in the developing world, where 80% of cases occur. Many nonprofit and non-governmental organizations are partnering with hospitals and clinics in the developing world to provide treatment for patients with clubfoot, and to train medical personnel in the use of these treatment methods. As a component of these partnerships, clinics and hospitals are collecting patient records. Some of this patient information, such as photographs, requires expert quality assessment. Such assessment may occur at a later date by a staff member in the hospital, or it may occur in a completely different location through the web interface. Photographs capture the state of a patient at a specific point in time. If a photograph is not taken correctly, and as a result, has no clinical utility, the photograph cannot be recreated because that moment in time has passed. These observations have motivated the desire to perform real-time classification of clubfoot images as they are being captured in a possibly remote and challenging environment. In the short term, successful classification could provide immediate feedback to those taking patient photos, helping to ensure that the image is of good quality and the foot is oriented correctly at the time of image capture. In the long term, this classification could be the basis for automated image analysis that could reduce the workload of a busy staff, and enable broader provision of treatment.

This paper examines the fiscal impact of privatization revenues in 47 developing countries. There are many reasons that privatization is attractive for the central government of developing countries. If substantial, these revenues from the sale of state owned enterprises can present a potential solution to persistent deficits. On the other hand, the privatization revenues could be used to finance an even larger deficit. In this paper, I will discuss previous research on the fiscal impact of privatization revenues, the factors that contribute to persistent fiscal budget deficits and explain how empirical research on the fiscal impact of privatization in the developing world is a logical extension of this research. Using data from the World Bank’s Privatization Database on privatization revenues from the years 1988 to 2008 and panel data techniques, I find that an increase in privatization revenues is correlated with a worsening of the fiscal budget balance, lending support to the hypothesis that revenues from the sales of state owned enterprises are used to finance a larger deficit.

Anaerobic digestion is a biochemical process in which organic carbon is biodegraded in an oxygen free environment through a microbial consortium. Engineered biological systems used for resource recovery often utilize anaerobic digestion to treat anthropogenic organic wastes by reclaiming the carbon as energy (methane gas) and a soil amendment (biosolids). Small-scale, or household, semi-continuous anaerobic digesters have been used in developed and developing countries for many decades to produce biogas from human and livestock waste, which is used for heating, lighting, and cooking. This application has been shown to improve the quality of life of the user. Although there is great potential for small-scale semi-continuous anaerobic digestion to provide much needed resource recovery functions and quality of life improvements in future development, the manner in which these systems are operated could lead to unintended consequences on human health because human waste often contains resistant pathogens. This paradigm is best demonstrated by soil-transmitted helminths that are known to be highly resilient in mesophilic anaerobic digestion environments and endemic to many developing countries. The idea that soil-transmitted helminths survive mesophilic anaerobic digestion is exacerbated when the biosolids from the digesters are land applied as a soil-amendment because this process fits perfectly into the lifecycle of soil-transmitted helminths that need soil environments to develop into infective larva. This research was divided into three sections to investigate the fate of human pathogens during semi-continuous anaerobic digestion and investigate techniques to enhance their removal. The sections were: 1) an examination into the fate (embryonation, development, inactivation, destruction) of Ascaris suum ova during mesophilic semi-continuous anaerobic digestion, with an emphasis on increased inactivation, 2) an investigation into the performance (volatile solids (VS) removal, E. coli and Salmonella destruction, methane production) of semi-continuous mesophilic anaerobic digesters and the effect of variations to solids retention time (SRT) and feeding frequency, and 3) development and application of mathematical models for pathogen inactivation kinetics and typical semi-continuous reactor residence time distributions to predict the removal efficiency of Ascaris suum ova during semi-continuous anaerobic digestion under different operating conditions. Results of these studies showed that during semi-continuous mesophilic anaerobic digestion variations in feeding frequency did not impact the fate of Ascaris suum ova or Salmonella; however it was observed that better removal of E. coli and higher methane production was achieved at the longer feeding interval (weekly). Additional results indicated that embryonated ova were destroyed faster than unembryonated ova under the experimental conditions, which suggests a potential mechanism to enhance removal of this common pathogen. Since an increased feeding interval proved to be beneficial for digester performance our findings suggest that wastes containing Ascaris suum ova could be stored in an aerated environment, for a period of time that does not negatively impact resource recovery, to lengthen the time between feedings and promote ova embryonation and ensuing destruction during digestion. Modeling results indicate that under mesophilic conditions (35oC) the ova of Ascaris suum could survive for 22 days and will not be completely removed from the effluent under typical feeding frequencies and average SRT were examined. Therefore, the use of anaerobic digestion as a resource recovery technology where soil-transmitted helminths proliferate should be applied with extra operational safeguards or be included as one step of several in a small-scale treatment train.

Those working in Engineering for Global Development seek to improve the conditions in developing countries. A common metric for understanding the development state of a given country is the Human Development Index (HDI), which focuses on three dimensions: health, education, and income. An engineer’s expertise does not always align with any of those dimensions directly, while they still hope to perform impactful work for human development. To discover other areas of expertise that are highly associated with the HDI, correlations and variable selection were performed between all World Development Indicators and the HDI. The resultant associations are presented according to industry sector for a straightforward connection to engineering expertise. The associated areas of expertise can be used during opportunity development as surrogates for focusing on the HDI dimensions themselves. The data analysis shows that work related to "Trade, Transportation, and Utilities", such as electricity distribution, and exports or imports, "Natural Resources and Mining", such as energy resources, agriculture or access to clean water, and "Manufacturing", in general, are most commonly associated with improvements in the HDI in developing countries. Also, because the associations were discovered at country-level, they direct where geographically particular areas of expertise have been historically associated with improving HDI.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(工学) / 甲第21086号 / 工博第4450号 / 新制||工||1692(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院工学研究科都市社会工学専攻 / (主査)教授 藤井 聡, 准教授 SCHMOECKER Jan-Dirk, 教授 宇野 伸宏 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Philosophy (Engineering) / Kyoto University / DFAM

No description available.

This report seeks to describe the status of kidney disease and renal replacement therapy in lower-resource settings, particularly sub-Saharan Africa. Acute kidney injury and transplantation are included on a limited basis because it is impossible consider the renal replacement therapy landscape at the exclusion of either. As in the rest of the developing world, chronic kidney disease and end-stage renal disease place a sizable and rapidly growing burden on sub-Saharan Africa, and Africans face a double-burden of disease from communicable and non-communicable diseases. Meanwhile, renal replacement therapy and the subspecialty of nephrology are expanding in sub-Saharan Africa, from non-existence in many countries to a limited, tentative subsistence, largely with the support of international organizations and the dedication of local nephrologists. Hemodialysis is the most common form of renal replacement therapy in sub-Saharan Africa, but peritoneal dialysis services, particularly for acute kidney injury, are growing and renal transplants are performed in a few sub-Saharan countries. Nonetheless, in the majority of sub-Saharan Africa, maintenance dialysis is still only available to the wealthy urban few. Although peritoneal dialysis may seem more feasible in the developing world than hemodialysis for multiple reasons, it is still fraught with challenges that make widespread implementation presently unadvisable. As renal replacement therapy is costly and currently unaffordable on a large scale for most of these countries, emphasis must be on identifying at-risk populations through screening and low-cost treatment or management of risk factors to mitigate chronic kidney disease.

<p>The purpose of the study was to learn how donor-dependent NGOs in Tanzania, working with the issue of girls’ education, obtain and maintain legitimacy in the eyes of financial donors as well as in their local society. The investigation also aimed to explore which present and future organizational challenges they manage at the same time as they deal with the issue of legitimacy. A field study in Tanzania was conducted during ten weeks and three different NGOs concerned with legitimacy, were studied to see how they manage this issue and handle the demands from donors, government and society. Interviews and participant observation were made at each organization and a complementary study of SIDA and the National Ministry of Education was made in order to do a comparison of the situation and views. All organizations stressed the importance of well-working institutions in society, predictability in the financial support from the donors and most important: the societal support that leads to legitimacy. In order to gain legitimacy, the greatest need is transparency of the documents and records, keeping promises and being able to confirm the positive outcome of the work. The plan for future independence was not well developed at any of the organizations, even though they were at different phases. The major concern with being a donor-dependent NGO in the developing world is to manage the relationship with the government at the same time as you are accountable to society and tackle demands from the donors. The greatest fear of all organizations was that the financial support would be terminated.</p>

The purpose of the study was to learn how donor-dependent NGOs in Tanzania, working with the issue of girls’ education, obtain and maintain legitimacy in the eyes of financial donors as well as in their local society. The investigation also aimed to explore which present and future organizational challenges they manage at the same time as they deal with the issue of legitimacy. A field study in Tanzania was conducted during ten weeks and three different NGOs concerned with legitimacy, were studied to see how they manage this issue and handle the demands from donors, government and society. Interviews and participant observation were made at each organization and a complementary study of SIDA and the National Ministry of Education was made in order to do a comparison of the situation and views. All organizations stressed the importance of well-working institutions in society, predictability in the financial support from the donors and most important: the societal support that leads to legitimacy. In order to gain legitimacy, the greatest need is transparency of the documents and records, keeping promises and being able to confirm the positive outcome of the work. The plan for future independence was not well developed at any of the organizations, even though they were at different phases. The major concern with being a donor-dependent NGO in the developing world is to manage the relationship with the government at the same time as you are accountable to society and tackle demands from the donors. The greatest fear of all organizations was that the financial support would be terminated.

Water availability and the cost of different water sources have been studied at great length. However, information is still needed to determine the policy directions to be undertaken by nations that have not yet achieved universal coverage of an improved water source. To further examine differences in water availability and pricing in the context of the developing world, three communities in Northern Mexico were surveyed to determine the differences in water distribution schemes and associated costs between rural and urban centers. It was observed that rural communities without a piped water supply paid 13 percent more for potable water supplies and 39 percent more for nonpotable water supplies than urban communities with a piped water source. A relationship between access to piped water and the probability of contracting diarrhea was also observed, with households with access to piped water having a lower probability of contracting diarrhea than those households without, and experiencing a lower number of days per month with diarrhea, on average. This leads to the observation that rural communities, who typically are less likely to be able to afford a piped distribution system, are paying more for their water supplies than nearby urban centers, both in terms of the money spent each month for water resources, and the costs associated with contracting and treating diarrhea. Steps should be taken by Mexico and other developing nations to ensure that water is distributed equally and priced fairly, so that the more impoverished subsets of their populations are not paying higher prices for their water.