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The goal of this paper is to detect helminth eggs in treated wastewater for sanitary control, using them as biological indicators of wastewater quality.

Samples were taken from the Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plant of the Metropolitan Area. To concentrate the samples, centrifugation‐flotation on 33 percent zinc sulphate was applied.

The study revealed the constant presence of helminth eggs as Ascaris sp., Enterobius sp., Hymenolepis sp., and Strongyloides sp.

The results indicate that helminth eggs can be used as bioindicators for sanitary control of treated wastewater to be reused in urban areas.

The purpose of this study was to elucidate the association between helminth infections, dietary parameters and cognitive performance, as well as the predictors of undernutrition among school-age children (SAC) living in helminth-endemic fishing and farming communities in Ghana.

This was a cross sectional study involving 164 (9 to 12 years old) SAC from fishing (n = 84) and farming (n = 80) communities of the Kwahu Afram Plains South District of the Eastern Region of Ghana, using structured questionnaires and anthropometric and biochemical assessments.

Overall, 51.2% of the children were males, with no significant gender difference between the communities (p = 0.88). Average age of the children was 10.5 ± 1.25 years, with no significant difference between the farming and fishing communities (p = 0.90). About 53.1% of all children were anemic, with no significant differences between farming versus fishing communities (p = 0.87). Helminth-infected children were significantly anemic (p = 0.03). Mean serum zinc level of all children was 13.1 ± 4.57 µmol/L, with zinc deficiency being significantly higher in children in the farming community (p < 0.0001). About 7.5% of all the children were underweight, whilst 13.8% were stunted with a higher proportion of stunting occurring among older children (p = 0.001) and girls (p = 0.117). There was no significant difference in the Raven’s Colored Progressive Matrices cognitive test scores between the two communities (p = 0.79). Predictors of anemia were helminthiasis and pica behavior.

These findings are relevant and have the prospect of guiding the development of intervention programs in addressing the persistent problem of nutritional and cognitive deficits among SAC.

This work evaluates the risk of wastewater in transmitting intestinal helminths to a population living near an urban effluent.

This study is a copro‐epidemiological evaluation of the school‐age children of Sidi Daoui, a neighbourhood in the discharge area of the main sewer of the city of El Jadida and a control group from Sidi Moussa, a district far from the discharge area.

Intestinal helminths are more prevalent among the children of the study group of Sidi Daoui by 43 percent, compared with 20 percent in the control group, mainly caused by ascariasis and hymenolepiasis. Enterobiasis is an intestinal vermin present with similar expansion in both zones. Polyparasitism, which cannot be found in the control group, is 6 percent in the discharge area. A total of 22 percent of helminthiasis cases among these children are attributed to wastewater, in particular ascariasis (17 percent) and hymenolepiasis (11 percent). It was found that boys are the most vulnerable, mostly between the ages of seven to nine.

Provides some useful information concerning the risk of wastewater transmitting intestinal helminths.

In a Northern city, which claims to have more than 12,000 Commonwealth immigrants, mostly of Asian origin—Pakistanis and Indians, an increasing number of whom have been joined by their wives and families, there was instituted in 1965 a routine examination of their children before school entry, later extended to children of immigrant origin already in the schools. This examination extended to haemoglobin estimation, tuberculin‐testing and, equally important, examination of the stools for pathogens and parasitic ova. 419 entrants were examined in the first half of 1965 and 898 pupils. Parental co‐operation must have been excellent, as parents all agreed, without exception, to the special examination, although to some extent, there might have been considered legal authority in the current School Health Service (Medical Inspection) Regulations made under the Education Act, 1944. We are not aware of any report of intestinal pathogens, but helminth infestations were reported (Archer D. M., Bamford F. N., and Lees E., Helminth Infestations in Immigrant Children, 1965, Brit. Med. J., 2, 1517), from which it appears 18·6% carried five types of worm, of which the commonest was hookworm. It would be fair to assume that helminth infestation, indicating as it does, exposure to food infections, water‐borne disease and environment generally, is an index of gastro‐intestinal infection and the presence of pathogens, including the carrier state.

This classification was published as a second edition in 1955 by H. K. Lewis & Co. Ltd. The first edition (1936) was based on the library of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; but, in preparation of the new edition, the author was aware that many other medical libraries were using the scheme and changes were introduced to accommodate the needs of other, more general, medical libraries (see below). A third edition is in preparation by the author of this paper; but this new edition will largely consist of additions and amendments and will not involve the extensive re‐location of subjects which was necessary for the second edition.

This chapter discusses guidelines that specify the ethical standards for medical research in very poor countries in order to show how a sociological explanation of illness causation and health care access can offer some additional insight into the refinement of those guidelines. There has been considerable discussion on the proper ethical standards to apply given the context of extreme poverty and inadequate health care infrastructure that characterizes poor countries. Our analysis is intended to suggest that a sociological explanation for illness causation provides a clear justification for including the social context when specifying ethical guidelines and also clarifies the issues that must be addressed. This perspective is particularly sensitive to inequalities in health and access to health resources among medical research subjects, and therefore addresses core issues of justice and beneficence.

The value of the reports of scientific conferences, congresses, and symposia, published as separate volumes, has been questioned on several grounds. It has been alleged that the papers are not adequately refereed, that some have been published before, that some do not report original work, and that many are not noted in abstracting journals and are, therefore, not easily traced in retrospective searches.

Urban population growth has increased pressure on natural resources, water in particular. It has resulted in serious water stresses, poor waste management and severe diffuse pollution. To achieve more favourable solutions, there is a need to look for technological alternatives based on the principles of closing cycles. Incorporation of the agricultural system to the sanitary system with nutrient recycling is one of the major ways of closing the loops in urban and peri‐urban areas. However, various partnerships with all actors of the civil society should be established. Development and implementation of successful reuse operations require more research work to define urban models in which material cycles are closed at affordable economic costs. This paper aims at discussing alternative water management approaches to ensure environmentally sound urban and peri‐urban water‐related relationships.

Why does bioethics need to be re-imagined? And what would a re-imagined bioethics look like and do? These questions are at the heart of this section. The bioethics enterprise in the United States has taken a very particular form, as many sociological commentators have pointed out. At the center of bioethics is autonomy as the dominant feature of the bioethics landscape. This emphasis on autonomy has its roots in American individualism, as well as the congruent history of bioethics and the civil rights movement in the United States. With autonomy at the center of the frame, many other features of the landscape loom large: attention to the individual as the epicenter of the bioethical dilemma, a concordant emphasis on rights, an enduring inattention to the social relationships in which individuals are embedded, the institutions that constrain individual action, and the social structures that channel individual lives, and, finally, the heavy weight accorded to the provision of information to enable patient-directed decision making as the ultimate ethical duty of the clinician. Relegated to the background – indeed more often than not barely visible on the far horizon – are welfare, care, justice, kin, culture, and society itself. While the sociological critique of bioethics for this peculiarly narrow and microscopic view is not new, the three chapters in this section prove that it remains as relevant as ever. More importantly, they demonstrate how expanding the borders of bioethics to encompass the social context actually affords us a stronger vantage point to assess the moral significance of our actions.