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In 2005, an applied theatre community outreach programme was launched to address low levels of HIV/AIDS awareness among farm workers in the Cape Winelands of South Africa. In cooperation with HIV testing organizations, the Lucky , the Hero mini-musical promoted regular HIV testing, condom use and acceptance of people living with HIV until being retired in 2017. Applying principles of the health belief model to interview data collected in 2015 from former Lucky, the Hero participants, this paper examines the effectiveness of the theatre production to achieve the behavioural outcomes of (i) encouraging regular HIV testing and ongoing awareness of HIV serostatus, and (ii) reducing AIDS-related social stigma. The findings suggest that the interventions were successful in persuading participants to know their HIV status immediately following the shows, as well as potentially contributing to a reduction of community-based external social stigma. However, the interventions were unable to maintain engagement with these behavioural outcomes in the years following the performances, resulting in low adherence to regular HIV testing and inconsistent condom use. Additionally, ongoing social and structural barriers to regular HIV testing and the potential for self-imposed HIV-related stigma were highlighted during the discussions. While applied theatre can be an effective avenue for HIV awareness and prevention, the paper demonstrates the importance of creating and maintaining strong community networks to support continued engagement with health-related behavioural outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Tobacco use is a leading but preventable cause of non-communicable diseases and premature death. The legislature has a key role in setting tobacco control policies. Smoking trends are decreasing thanks to the introduction of effective tobacco control policies in Turkey and these policies may have been shaped by how politicians' interpreted social problems that were prominent during the development and implementation of tobacco regulations. Aim This paper explores the long-term national relationship between tobacco consumption, tobacco control policies and the associated political discourse in Turkey, considering the varying influences through national leadership on this important public health agenda. This relationship is studied by comparing a time series analysis of tobacco consumption trends with a policy analysis of the minutes of deliberations at the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (GNAT). Methods This study uses Bayesian time series analysis in order investigate whether the tobacco control policies and related activities influenced the annual per adult cigarette consumption in Turkey. We used a novel method to identify change points in tobacco trends and whether they correspond with key policy changes intended to alter usage after adjusting for the effect of other non-policy related covariates, such as the purchasing power. The policy analysis included an examination of the minutes of deliberations at the GNAT—which is the Turkish parliament and unicameral Turkish legislature—1 year before and 1 year after the break years associated with an increase or decrease in tobacco consumption. Results and recommendations Tobacco consumption increased with the encouragement of tobacco production and the entrance of multinational companies in the country in 1976 and 1993, respectively. The National Tobacco Law of 1996 and comprehensive amendments in 2008, including smoke-free public places and tax increases, appear to have helped reduce tobacco consumption in Turkey. The focus of Parliamentary discussions throughout this period changed, becoming less supportive of tobacco over time. However, throughout the period there remained discussions focussing on concerns around the implications for the economy and the privatization agenda, national agriculture and the welfare of farmers. Effective control appears to require certain political ingredients to be implemented: politicians who are well informed on tobacco control measures and understand the range of issues surrounding the policies (not only those directly health-related); and supportive public health information in the community. Evidence-based public health policy should be introduced to the politicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Categories currently used to describe displaced people, such as ‘internally displaced person’, ‘refugee’ and ‘development-induced displaced person’, are increasingly recognized as problematic; more in-depth research is needed on the complexity of displacement experiences and responses. This paper, arising out of an anthropological study of internally displaced Zimbabwean farm workers, seeks to provide more empirical data on the everyday lives of internally displaced people. Displaced Zimbabwean farm workers offer a complex insight into the different kinds of representations that have been applied to them both before and after displacement and the ways in which they have managed these representations. The often simplistic representations of farm workers have been a significant causal factor in their displacement since February 2000. Farm workers are still viewed, especially in nationalistic discourses, as ‘foreigners’ who do not deserve the same rights and entitlements as other citizens of Zimbabwe. They have also been portrayed as supporting the interests of their white bosses and the opposition party in opposing the land invasions, have thus often been the main targets of violence and have largely been ignored as recipients of land. This paper shows how, through local responses to displacement, displaced workers are able to counter the discourses of the powerful by subverting global, national and local representations, using local agency to create their own practical discourse of displacement. It also shows the importance of anthropology in highlighting an alternative and locally grounded discourse, arising out of the interplay of agency and dependency on the part of the actors involved. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Task-based worker exposure assessments are used in regulatory product approval for pesticides. Some agricultural workers may be exposed to pesticide residues predominantly via transfer to the hands during plant tending or crop harvesting. They may use thin ‘splash-resistant single-use’ (SRSU) gloves or cotton gloves as good industry practice, for example, to protect a delicate crop from bruising, rather than specifically for chemical protection. These ‘non-personal protective equipment (PPE)' gloves may or may not have been tested for chemical resistance, but can nevertheless give limited protection from chemicals. This paper reports experiments to assess the protection factors (PFs) of ‘non-PPE’ gloves against chemicals, to better inform the regulatory exposure assessments. One type of lightweight cotton and three types of 0.1 mm SRSU gloves 25 cm long (latex, nitrile, and vinyl) that might be used as ‘non-PPE’ gloves and one type of 0.4 mm PPE nitrile gauntlet 33 cm long were worn by 36 volunteers in greenhouses at four nurseries, handling plants sprayed with transferable but non-permeating strontium acetate in four consecutive 1-h sessions, including one session in which no gloves were worn. Dislodgeable foliar residues were measured by rinsing leaves in bags. Each subject carried out their task such as weeding or trimming, for their four sessions on their set of plants. Handwashes followed each session, and the washings were sampled and analysed for strontium. Unprotected hand contamination was taken to be the within-subject ‘challenge’ in the absence of gloves. It ranged from 166 to 4091 μg equivalent of strontium acetate on the hands and increased with increasing foliar residues. Geometric mean PFs were 60 (95% CI 38-87, n = 22) for PPE gauntlets, 32 (25-41, n = 65) for SRSU gloves and 5.3 (3.5-8, n = 21) for lightweight cotton. The PFs offered by the waterproof gloves (gauntlets and SRSU) increased with challenge, but for the absorbent cotton gloves it decreased. The measurement of protection is restricted by the limit of quantification (LOQ) such that protection must apparently increase with challenge, nevertheless the above trends remained even after removal of data

This paper studied the sustainability of China's New Rural Cooperative Medical System (NCMS) by evaluating the satisfaction rate of its participants--the farmers. The study related the overall satisfaction of the farmers to their satisfaction with the four different aspects of the program. It also identified which personal and program attributes affect the farmers' satisfaction rate. Survey data of 1278 households from 66 counties in Shandong Province of China were collected in 2011 using a multi-stage stratified cluster-sampling method. To overcome the nepotistic barriers in rural China, field surveys in each township were conducted by university students from the same place. Data were analyzed using multiple regressions and structural equation modeling method. The results showed that 86% of the farmers were either satisfied or very satisfied with the NCMS and 82% indicated their intention to continue participating in the program. Aside from its financial benefits, both the publicity and reimbursement procedure of the program were found to be significant factors in influencing the satisfaction of the farmers. Majority of the participants held positive opinions toward the NCMS, contradicting the negative assessments made by many previous studies. Given the high proportion of farmers willing to continue with the program, it is likely to be sustainable in the near future. Greater publicity and education efforts should be made to make the farmers better informed about the program, and measures should be taken to improve its reimbursement procedure and the setting of the premium level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, a curious but little-known agricultural system based on imported African slaves thrived in the Northern and Central Arabian Peninsula. Born of a unique set of biological, environmental, cultural, and economic conditions, this slave system employed African labor mainly in the date palm plantations of the wadis, or floodwater channels, of the Hijaz and Najd regions of Arabia. This paper will seek to expand our knowledge of this neglected agricultural system by synthesizing traditional documentary sources employed by historians with new findings from the medical sciences, especially studies of genetic adaptations to malaria. Overall, this study will suggest that wadi slavery in Arabia, like slavery in the 16th-19th century Atlantic world, had a strong biological basis. As in the Atlantic world, African slaves, who frequently possessed genetic and acquired immunity to malaria, were used as proxy farmers to exploit landscapes that were unhealthy to the ruling elites. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]