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Copyright of Salud Pública de México is the property of Instituto Nacional de Salud Publica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Objective: This paper presents the design and application in Cuba of a social construct to identify the social dimensions associated with discrimination attitudes towards people with positive diagnosis to HIV., Materials and Methods: A combination of qualitative and quantitative methodology was used for the measurement and validation of a construct, and also the K-mean procedure and factor analysis techniques. All these techniques were applied to "Survey on HIV prevention indicators" 2005, 2006 and 2009., Results: A tool for the identification of the most frequent discriminatory attitudes in a specific social context was validated. This instrument allows clustering the population into different typologies, by level of discrimination, and also, to distinguish some social dimensions of this phenomenon., Conclusions: The results allow distinguishing frequent discriminatory attitudes in any population, focusing the actions in the direction of gradually reducing them, and to evaluate the temporal behavior of this phenomenon.

Objective: To identify the relationship between emergency visits for acute respiratory illnesses, acute bronchial asthma crisis (ABAC) and acute respiratory infections (ARI), in children less than 14 years of age, and the daily changes of air pollutant levels, in two central hospitals of Havana City, between October 1st 1996 and March 16 1998., Material and Methods: An ecological time series study was conducted. We assessed the relationship between the presence of acute respiratory illnesses, ABAC, and IRA, and exposure to levels of particles less than 10 microg/m3 (PM10), smoke, and sulfur dioxide (SO2); negative binomial regression models were used to assess latency periods of one to five days as well as the cumulative effect of seven days before the emergency visit., Results: The levels of atmospheric pollutants were low, in general. The 24-hour mean values for PM10 levels, smoke, and SO2, were 59.2 microg/m3 (SD=29.2), 27.7 microg/m3 (SD=21.2), and 21.1 microg/m3 (SD=20.1), respectively. An increase of 20 microg/m3 in the daily average of black smoke was associated with a 2.2% increase (95% CI 0.9-3.6) in the number of emergency visits for ABAC. A 20 microg/m3 increase in the daily average of black smoke and SO was associated with an increase in ARI of 2.4% (95% CI 1.2-3.6), and 5% (95% CI 1.3-5.3), respectively, with a 5-day lag. We also observed a cumulative effect for all the contaminants studied., Conclusions: These results suggest that air pollution levels in Havana City affect children's respiratory health; therefore implementation of control measures is necessary, especially those aimed at decreasing motor vehicle exhaust fumes. The English version of this paper is available at: http://www.insp.mx/salud/index.html.

The year 2000 marked the centennial of the discovery of the mode of transmission of yellow fever. Informed consent was systematically used for the first time in research. This process was the result of a complex social phenomenon involving the American Public Health Association, the US and Spanish Governments, American and Cuban scientists, the media, and civilian and military volunteers. The public health and medical communities face the AIDS pandemic at the beginning of the 21st Century, as they faced the yellow fever epidemic at the beginning of the 20th Century. Current medical research dilemmas have fueled the debate about the ethical conduct of research in human subjects. The AIDS pandemic is imposing enormous new ethical challenges on the conduct of medical research, especially in the developing world. Reflecting on the yellow fever experiments of 1900, lessons can be learned and applied to the current ethical challenges faced by the international public health research community. The English version of this paper is available too at: http://www.insp.mx/salud/index.html.