Introduction and aim: Air pollution, a major environmental threat to human health, contributes to the premature deaths of millions of people worldwide. Cooking with solid fuels, such as charcoal and wood, in low- and middle-income countries generates very high emissions of particulate matter within and near the household as a result of their inefficient combustion. Women are especially exposed, as they often perform the cooking. The purpose of this study was to assess the burden of disease attributable to household air pollution exposure from cooking among women in Adama, Ethiopia. Methods: AirQ+ software (WHO Regional Office for Europe, Copenhagen, Denmark) was used to assess the health impact of household air pollution by estimating the burden of disease (BoD) including Acute Lower Respiratory Infections (ALRI), Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), Ischemic Heart Disease (IHD), lung cancer, and stroke, among a cohort of women in Adama. Household air pollution exposure estimated by cooking fuel type was assessed through questionnaires. Results: Three-quarters (75%) of Adama’s population used solid fuel for cooking; with this, the household air pollution attributable mortality was estimated to be 50% (95% CI: 38–58%) due to ALRI, 50% (95% CI: 35–61%) due to COPD, 50% (95% CI: 27–58%) due to lung cancer, (95% CI: 23–48%) due to IHD, and (95% CI: 23–51%) due to stroke. The corresponding disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) per 100,000 women ranged between 6000 and 9000 per disease. Conclusions: This health impact assessment illustrates that household air pollution due to solid fuel use among women in Adama leads to premature death and a substantial quantity of DALYs. Therefore, decreasing or eliminating solid fuel use for cooking purposes could prevent deaths and improve quality of life.

While prenatal exposure to ambient air pollution has been shown to be associated with reduced birth weight, there is substantial heterogeneity across studies, and few epidemiological studies have utilized source-specific exposure data. The aim of the present study was, therefore, to investigate the associations between local, source-specific exposure to fine particulate matter (PM_2.5) during pregnancy and birth weight. An administrative cohort comprising 40,245 singleton births from 2000 to 2009 in Scania, Sweden, was combined with data on relevant covariates. Investigated sources of PM_2.5 included all local sources together as well as tailpipe exhaust, vehicle wear-and-tear, and small-scale residential heating separately. The relationships between these exposures, represented as interquartile range (IQR) increases, and birth weight (continuous) and low birth weight (LBW; <2500 g) were analyzed in crude and adjusted models. Each local PM_2.5 source investigated was associated with reduced birth weight; average decreases varied by source (12–34 g). Only small-scale residential heating was clearly associated with LBW (adjusted odds ratio: 1.14 (95% confidence interval: 1.04–1.26) per IQR increase). These results add to existing evidence that prenatal exposure to ambient air pollution disrupts fetal growth and suggest that PM_2.5 from both vehicles and small-scale residential heating may reduce birth weight.

Kosovo and the region have had a traditionally long history of problems with the health care system. The situation worsened since the ex-Yugoslav conflict in the nineties when Kosovo inherited a large, hierarchical, and centralized healthcare system from socialist Yugoslavia (UNDP, 2013). This paper focuses on the effects of globalization on health in Kosovo; more specifically the effect of Global Food Trade in Kosovo's health and the development of information technology and telemedicine in Kosovo. Further, this paper focuses on the opportunities for Kosovars to obtain healthcare outside of Kosovo as well as prospects for the medical personnel to practice their profession abroad.

Adverse drug events are common occurrences and consequences of adverse drug reactions and/or medication errors. Previous studies have shown that approximately 5-10% of the internal medicine patient admissions were cases of adverse drug reactions. In addition, another 5-10% of all the inpatients were likely and expected to suffer from severe and dangerous adverse drug reactions. Traditional methods of detecting ADEs in spontaneous reporting system databases rely on manual case reviews by pharmacological/clinical experts. But due to increasing inconvenience and large size of SRS databases, other methods were proposed consisting of quantitative and automated approaches that are referred to as DMAs (data mining algorithms) or signal detection algorithms. In the past few years, many other DMAs have been developed for screening potential ADEs (Hauben et al, 2005). In order to estimate incidence rates, data mining algorithms use reports in the SRS system as a figure for the true population. Most of the DMAs depend on the use of DR (disproportionality measures), like RR (reporting ratio) that quantify the degree of unexpectedness of certain Drug-Adverse Event association. Reporting ratio (RR) is used by both, WHO and FDA in order to monitor safety signals in SRSs (Evans et al., 1997 & Classens et al., 1997). Adverse drug reactions and adverse events spontaneous reporting is an extremely important phenomea and it is crucial that every health care professional practicing medicine is aware of his or her responsibilities when it comes to this type of reporting. This study thoroughly evaluates currently existing SRS systems worldwide and gives detailed suggestions on improving the existing systems of ADR and ADE reporting.