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They also felt that the private radiologists needed training on interprofessional collaboration to understand the challenges facing health professionals at these rural sites. CONCLUSION SLA's should align with the clinical needs and practices of the district. This should guide the specific training needs of the end users practicing in rural areas, to support their extended roles in the teleradiology setting. Training should be in-house, ongoing and consistent to cater for the influx of health professionals entering the rural setting using teleradiology systems.In the context of addressing the pressing health needs for the global population, the World Health Organization has repeatedly called for universal health coverage (UHC) to be prioritised by its member countries. This is to be achieved through a high-quality primary health care (PHC) approach that provides comprehensive and integrated generalist care as close to where people live as well as links the clinical care to health promotion and disease prevention. In this paper, we argue for the introduction of family medicines as a critical player in the healthcare system of Tanzania to strengthen the strategies towards UHC. The paper reviews how PHC is understood, the context of family medicine in sub-Saharan Africa and makes a case for how family medicine can assist in addressing the current burden of disease in Tanzania.Diplodiosis is an important neuromycotoxicosis of ruminants in South Africa when grazing on harvested maize fields in winter. It is believed to be caused by mycotoxin(s) synthesised by Stenocarpella (Diplodia) maydis. find more Although several metabolites have been isolated from S. maydis culture material, none of these have been administered to ruminants to reproduce the disease. The objectives of this study were to isolate diplodiatoxin and to administer it to juvenile goats. Diplodiatoxin, considered as a major metabolite, was purified from S. maydis-infected maize cultures (Coligny 2007 isolate). Following intravenous administration of 2 mg and 4 mg diplodiatoxin/kg body weight for five consecutive days to two juvenile goats, no clinical signs reminiscent of diplodiosis were observed. Based on previous experimental results and if diplodiatoxin was the causative compound, the dosage regimen employed was seemingly appropriate to induce diplodiosis. In addition, intraruminal administration of 2 mg/kg diplodiatoxin to one goat for three consecutive days also did not induce clinical signs. It appears as if diplodiatoxin alone is not the causative compound. Other metabolites and/or mixtures of diplodiatoxin and other mycotoxins, when available in sufficient quantities, should also be evaluated.BACKGROUND Internationally, healthcare providers share a common goal of providing safe and high-quality care to every patient. In South Africa, the National Core Standards (NCS) tool was introduced to improve the quality of healthcare delivery. OBJECTIVES This article is aimed to determine the perceptions of nurses concerning the use of NCS as a tool to measure quality care delivery in tertiary hospitals in KwaZulu-Natal. METHOD This was a cross-sectional descriptive survey, where a purposive sampling technique was used to select hospitals. Six strata of departments were selected using simple stratified sampling. In each stratum, every second ward was selected from the provided list of wards using a systematic random sampling. The population of professional nurses in selected departments was 3050, from which 437 participants were selected by systematic random sampling. The collected data were analysed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS®) version 25. RESULTS The study indicated that 53.5% respondents believed that the NCS tool allows them to identify areas of weakness, pointing to risks in basic human rights. However, only 49.7% respondents believed that the NCS tool allows staff inputs to identify relevant innovations. The study recommends improvement in the organisational climate and adoption of strategies that add value to patient care. CONCLUSION Professional nurses perceived the NCS tool as a good tool for improving quality of healthcare delivery, but there is a need to improve environmental practice and involvement of all healthcare establishments to increase its effectiveness.BACKGROUND To prevent the spread of infection of tuberculosis (TB), sufficient knowledge and safe practices regarding occupational exposure are crucial for all employees working in TB hospitals. OBJECTIVES To explore and describe the knowledge and practices of employees working in three specialised TB hospitals in Nelson Mandela Bay, Eastern Cape, regarding occupational exposure to TB. METHODS A quantitative, descriptive and contextual study was conducted using convenience sampling to have 181 employees at the three hospitals elected to complete the self-administered questionnaire, which was distributed in December 2016. Three scores on a scale of 0-10 were calculated per participant knowledge, personal practice and institutional practice. Descriptive and inferential statistics were utilised. RESULTS Approximately, one-third (34%) of the participants were between the ages of 36 and 45 years. Most of the participants (63%) attended high school and less than one-third (28%) had a tertiary qualification. The majority of participants (62%) had not received any clinical training. Participants displayed high scores ( 6) for knowledge (75%; mean = 6.65), personal practice (68%; mean = 6.12) and institutional practice (51%; mean = 6.15). The correlation between knowledge and personal practice was found to be non-significant (r = 0.033). An analysis of variance revealed that Knowledge is significantly related to age and education level. CONCLUSION Employees' knowledge regarding occupational TB exposure was generally high, but they were not necessarily practicing what they knew. Further research is required regarding appropriate managerial interventions to ensure that employees' practices improve, which should reduce the risk of occupational TB exposure.Disorders of sexual development (DSD) in wild mammals are rarely described. A male South African giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis giraffa) was identified with bilateral cryptorchidism. The testes were intra-abdominal, smaller and less ovoid than in normal male giraffes. The right testis was situated more cranially than the left and connected to a longer deferent duct with normal ampullae. One distended vesicular gland filled with mucoid material was identified. A short penis, situated in the perineal area, was directed caudally and presented hypospadias. Histologically, testicular hypoplasia was present; the epididymis tubules contained no spermatozoa and the deferent duct and vesicular gland were inflamed. The blood testosterone concentration was 16.27 nmol/L and oestrone sulphate concentration was 0.03 ng/mL. The aetiology of the abnormalities is unknown.Seal biologists at Marion Island (Southern Ocean) are in frequent contact with seals. During research activities, biologists may be bitten by seals, yet no standardised protocol for treating such bites is in place. Information on 22 seal bite cases at Marion Island was collected. Treatment of these bites varied, reflecting a need for standardised protocols for the treatment of bites. Recommendations for the in-field treatment of bites are presented. Five of the 22 cases had some symptoms which resembled 'seal finger' - a zoonotic infection, usually of the hands, that is contracted after a person comes into contact with tissues of seals or is bitten by one. However, in four of these cases, symptoms subsided within 4 days without antibiotic treatment; in the fifth case antibiotics were administered and symptoms subsided in 4 days. There is little evidence of the occurrence of seal finger at Marion Island, but this deserves further investigation.Mercury (Hg) and lead (Pb) accumulation since the Industrial Revolution has been generally observed to increase concurrently in lake sedimentary records around the world. Located downwind during the monsoon season from the rapidly developing South Asia, the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau are expected to receive direct anthropogenic Hg and Pb loadings, yet the source, pathway, and effects of such transport remain poorly known due to logistic challenges in accessing this region. When studying the sediment record from Lake Gokyo (4750 m above sea level (a.s.l.)) in the Himalayas, we find remarkably different Hg and Pb accumulation trends over the past 260 years. Although Hg accumulation has continued to increase since the Industrial Revolution, Pb accumulation peaked during that time and has been decreasing since then. Stable isotope analysis reveals that the decoupling trends between these two elements are due to different sources and pathways of Hg and Pb in the region. Both δ202Hg and Δ199Hg have been increasing since the Industrial Revolution, suggesting that anthropogenic Hg emissions from South Asia have been continuously increasing and that the Indian monsoon-driven wet deposition of atmospheric Hg is the dominant pathway for Hg accumulation in the sediments. In contrast, analysis of 206Pb/207Pb and 208Pb/207Pb ratios suggests that Pb accumulation in the sediments originates primarily from natural sources and that the decreasing trend of Pb accumulation is most likely due to a weakening input of atmospheric mineral dust by the westerlies. These decoupling trends highlight the ongoing issue of transboundary Hg transport to the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau that are source waters for major freshwater systems in Asia and calls for regional and international collaborations on Hg emission controls in South Asia.Linear monohydroxy alcohols are strongly hydrogen-bonded liquids that are considered to be homologues of water. Here, we report ab initio molecular dynamics simulations of the liquid alcohols, methanol to pentanol, and from the combined radial-angular probability distribution of the intermolecular O···O distances and HO···O angles determine the geometrical parameters that define the hydrogen bonds in these systems. The key feature of hydrogen bonds in the liquid alcohols, irrespective of the size of the alkyl group, is the strong orientation dependence with the donor-acceptor HO···O angle being close to zero, similar to that observed in liquid water. Hydrogen bond formation is consequently considered to be the passage from a state where donor-acceptor pairs show no preferred orientation to one where they are almost linear. The potential of mean force, the reversible work associated with this process, is computed from the pair probability density distributions obtained from the simulations and that for a hypothetical state where donor-acceptor pairs are randomly oriented. We find that the magnitude of the free energy for hydrogen bond formation is maximum for ethanol and show that this arises from a larger electrostatic contribution to hydrogen bond formation in ethanol as compared to the other alcohols.Here, we report gold nanoparticle-coated starch magnetic beads (AuNP@SMBs) that were prepared by in situ synthesis of AuNPs on the surface of SMBs. Upon functionalization of the surface with a specific antibody, the immuno-AuNP@SMBs were found to be effective in separating and concentrating the target pathogenic bacteria, Escherichia coli O157H7, from an aqueous sample as well as providing a hotspot for surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS)-based detection. We employed a bifunctional linker protein, 4× gold-binding peptide-tagged Streptococcal protein G (4GS), to immobilize antibodies on AuNP@SMBs and AuNPs in an oriented form. The linker protein also served as a Raman reporter, exhibiting a strong and unique fingerprint signal during the SERS measurement. The amplitude of the SERS signal was shown to have a good correlation with the concentration of target bacteria ranging from 100 to 105 CFU/mL. The detection limit was determined to be as low as a single cell, and the background signals derived from nontarget bacteria were negligible due to the excellent specificity and colloidal stability of the immuno-AuNP@SMBs and SERS tags.