Institutions and governance: public staff management in Tanzania

The importance of institutions is one of the distinctive features of the new governance model. This article is an empirical study of how the institutional framework affects the way public servants are managed in Tanzania. In the ‘Ujamaa’ period, staffing institutions were placed under the control of the ruling party so that they would serve national development objectives, but the effect was to contaminate the efficiency and integrity of government. The legal framework conferred excessive powers on the President, and centralised staffing authority in agencies which were largely rubber‐stamping bodies, and it allowed duplication of functions between central and line agencies. Recent reforms have not altered this situation. In a climate of corruption and favouritism, there was little confidence in the integrity of civil service staffing. There was a need to strengthen its independence, to devolve and to align the institution governing it with current political and development objectives while controlling corruption at lower levels. Our findings may have an application to the institutions of government as a whole. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sudden infant death due to neurofibromatosis type I

Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is the unexpected death of an infant under the age of 1 year, where a complete autopsy, including scene investigation, fails to reveal a cause of death. Although the frequency of SIDS has decreased almost 50% over the past 10 years, it remains the leading cause of death in infants aged 1 to 6 months. SIDS is a diagnosis of exclusion and requires the elimination of a wide range of possible causes, including asphyxia, poisoning, abuse, occult heart disease, and other natural disease processes. In this report, we describe the case of an infant death initially suspected to be a SIDS death in which autopsy revealed an optic pathway glioma (optic glioma or hypothalamic glioma) and other stigmata of neurofibromatosis type I.     

Health news and the American public, 1996-2002

The Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard School of Public Health Health News Index, a series of 39 surveys with a total of over 42,000 respondents from 1996 through 2002, measures how closely Americans follow major health stories in the news and what they understand about the issues covered in those stories. On average, four in ten adults reported following health news stories closely. The public reports paying the most attention to stories about public health, followed by health policy and disease-related stories. While knowledge about health news varies, individuals who follow health news stories closely are significantly more likely to give the correct answer to knowledge questions about those stories.     

The ethics of immigration controls: Issues for development NGOs

It can be argued that immigration restrictions constitute a form of ‘global apartheid?s, ensuring that poorer sections of world society are prevented, by legal and physical force, from sharing in the world's sum of riches. This article seeks to develop this theme, by arguing that immigration controls are based on dubious ethical and practical foundations, and that development NGOs should be willing, in their educational and advocacy work, to challenge their validity.     

A clarion call for Canadian leadership

“If a world without borders is going to bring people, cultures and societies into closer and deeper contact, whether by benign intent or malevolent design, our world needs some assurance that all humans can indeed live together and flourish. If not our example, whose?”     

Early Care and Education for Children in the Child Welfare System: Evaluations of Two Training Programs

Despite evidence that early care and education services benefit at-risk children, they remain underutilized by families in the child welfare system. This article describes two training programs developed to educate child welfare and childcare/preschool staff about the importance of early care and education for maltreated children and how to access these services. A combined total of 274 trainees completed knowledge tests about this topic and significant pre- to post-training improvements indicate that both training programs effectively increased participants' knowledge about this important topic. In addition, improvement in self-assessed competency was observed for participants in one program, and positive changes in attitudes and anticipated practice behavior regarding childcare for foster children were observed among participants in the other.