Urgent Help Research Articles

Navigating a world in conflict: The mental health implications of contemporary geopolitical crises

ABSTRACT Throughout history, armed conflicts have profoundly affected individuals and societies, with recent events in Ukraine, the Middle East, and beyond bringing into sharp focus the severe mental health and humanitarian consequences of geopolitical crises. Such situations often result in mass fatalities, destruction, displacement, forced migration, and other critical life events. Amid these scenarios, the adverse outcomes for mental health and well-being in both the short and long term must be emphasized. As a conceivable example of the latter, the proposed concept of intergenerational trauma could have far-reaching implications. In particular, in certain regions, civilians have repeatedly experienced instances of violence and may have continually been exposed to critical life events and traumatic stress. In this context, the consequences of these events for individual well-being and global mental health will likely be registered for years to come. Accordingly, urgent help and actions to address the mental health burdens within contemporary conflicts should be accentuated in humanitarian, political, and diplomatic interventions. Equally, health policies must adopt a long-term approach to support initiatives under the purview of global and public mental health objectives.

Leveraging home health aides to improve outcomes in heart failure: A pilot study protocol

Heart failure (HF) affects six million people in the U.S., is associated with high morbidity, mortality, and healthcare utilization.(1, 2) Despite a decade of innovation, the majority of interventions aimed at reducing hospitalization and readmissions in HF have not been successful.(3–7) One reason may be that most have overlooked the role of home health aides and attendants (HHAs), who are often highly involved in HF care.(8–13) Despite their contributions, studies have found that HHAs lack specific HF training and have difficulty reaching their nursing supervisors when they need urgent help with their patients. Here we describe the protocol for a pilot randomized control trial (pRCT) assessing a novel stakeholder-engaged intervention that provides HHAs with a) HF training (enhanced usual care arm) and b) HF training plus a mobile health application that allows them to chat with a nurse in real-time (intervention arm). In collaboration with the VNS Health of New York, NY, we will conduct a single-site parallel arm pRCT with 104 participants (HHAs) to evaluate the feasibility, acceptability, and effectiveness (primary outcomes: HF knowledge; HF caregiving self-efficacy) of the intervention among HHAs caring for HF patients. We hypothesize that educating and better integrating HHAs into the care team can improve their ability to provide support for patients and outcomes for HF patients as well (exploratory outcomes include hospitalization, emergency department visits, and readmission). This study offers a novel and potentially scalable way to leverage the HHA workforce and improve the outcomes of the patients for whom they care.Clinical trial.gov registration: NCT04239911

Clinical Spectrum and Fetomaternal Outcomes in Near Miss Patients Presenting to a Tertiary Care Hospital

Background and Objectives: Maternal near miss events are life threatening obstetric conditions which need urgent medical help in order to prevent maternal death. Audit of near miss events is a surveillance tool which is used to assess the quality of antenatal care in a setting and help in identifying causes to improve the maternal outcome. The objective was to find out the frequency, clinical spectrum and fetomaternal outcome in near miss patients presenting to a tertiary care hospital.Methods: This was case-series observational study, conducted in Lady Willingdon Hospital, Lahore from January 2022 to December 2022. Eighty women were included. Each case was analyzed regarding age, gestational age, parity, examination findings, laboratory diagnosis, management plan, feto-maternal outcome, level of post-operative care, number of blood transfusions and complications.Results: Most patient's were from age bracket 30-40 years, gestational age 28-36 weeks, parity P2-P4. The leading causes of near miss events were hemorrhage (48.75%), followed by hypertensive disorders (31.25%), viral hepatitis (8.75%), uterine rupture (6.25%), sepsis (5%) and ruptured ectopic pregnancy (3.75%). As maternal outcome, there were four deaths. Our fifty-eight patients (72.5%) required regular level-1 care, eighteen patients (22.5%) required high dependency unit level-2 care and four patients (5%) required intensive care unit level-3 care. Seventy-one babies were delivered. Sixty-one were born alive while ten were still born. Neonatal ICU admissions were twenty-seven, out of these twenty-two were discharged from nursery and early neonatal deaths were five.Conclusion: Near miss events, if treated timely at well-equipped facility may prevent progression to life threatening situations.Keyword: Near miss events, hemorrhage, hypertension, antenatal care

NextSTAT: A Low-Cost Lot Based Paging Solution to Request Urgent Help in the or Using Amazon AWS Cloud

NextSTAT: A Low-Cost Lot Based Paging Solution to Request Urgent Help in the or Using Amazon AWS Cloud

Comparison and positioning of NGOs aimed at children from the perspective of social marketing on Twitter

The role of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in disseminating and protecting children’s rights is fundamental by increasing society’s knowledge about the reality that children face, thus mobilizing citizen attention. In this paper, we present an original study on social media data, specifically Twitter, to analyze childhood NGOs, evaluating the success of their content (through the likes obtained by publications) from the perspective of social marketing and prospective theory. In addition, it examines the positioning of organizations concerning the types of messages identified. The methodological approach is based on data mining, content analysis, and simple correspondence analysis through which the typology of the messages and positioning map are determined. The results suggest that these organizations generate predictable communication by publishing on specific topics and only increasing the number of tweets in emergencies when they are requiring urgent help. Some tweets show an immediate risk to which children are exposed if they do not receive help, which aligns with one of the premises of the Prospect Theory. Furthermore, a more significant number of posts does not necessarily imply a greater number of likes. Three types of messages have been determined: informative tweets that point out risks (type 1), impartial dialogue tweets (type 2), and action tweets that highlight benefits (type 3), confirmed through the Kruskal-Wallis test to have a relationship with impact. The positioning map shows that type 3 messages, which World Vision Spain opts for, are the most popular, followed by type 1, which Educo leans towards. Finally, there are those of type 2, with which UNICEF Spain is associated. The main implication is that our analysis validates the use of social media such as Twitter to analyze NGOs and proposes these social media platforms to be an important tool in mobilizing the community. In addition, this study offers parameters when constructing the messages for use in social marketing campaigns according to decisions that involve risk or certainty.

ONDCP, White House call for more access to OD reversal drugs

Last week, the White House called for increasing access to, and affordability of, overdose reversal medications. “Overdose reversal medications save lives, and no one should lack access because of affordability or availability,” said Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) Director Dr. Rahul Gupta. “President Biden has set a clear directive: Increase access and affordability of these lifesaving medications. We are looking at every option to do so — and manufacturers have a critical role to play in this effort. At a time when we are losing more than 100,000 Americans a year to drug overdose and poisoning, we are asking all manufacturers who currently have FDA‐approved overdose reversal medications on the market to take urgent action and help end the nation's overdose crisis. The stakes could not be higher, and working together to solve this problem has never been more important.”

Актуальные вопросы подготовки медицинских сил и средств Службы медицины катастроф Алтайского края в рамках проведения командно-штабных и тактико-специальных учений

Summary. Investigation purposes – to make reasonable a usage of equipment report card of specialized medical-nurses teams (MNT) of Service of disaster medicine (SDM) of Altay region (Service), made for elimination of medical-sanitary consequences of emergency situations (ES), including cases of conducting antiterrorists operations; to teach specialists, according to crated situation exercises, from Service a skills of medical sorting conduction of victims and injured with gunshot and shrapnel wounds in the conditions of field medical sorting point (FMSP). Materials and methods of investigation. Investigation materials – normative legal acts in the spere of organization and conducting of antiterrorists exercises with attracting of forces and means of SDM, including material of inter-department work group which leads by deputy Governor of Altay region. Legislative and regulatory framework were analyzed. Experience of conducting a command-staff exercises (CSE) and elimination of medical-sanitary losses, including losses in case of antiterrorists operations, was researched. It allowed to assess a system of medical treatment provision and to develop a complex of measures for Service improvement. During summarizing of exercises results of the intermediaries reference was analyzed. Investigation results and their analysis. During the exercise to eliminate a medical-sanitary consequences of ES a work of Service forces and measures in pre-hospital periods was organized; FMSP was deployed; Ensuring of temporary medical points for providing round-the-clock urgent medical help in the points of temporary placement (PTP) of population by the forces of SDM was provided for; Provision of psychological help was ensured by specialists from Altay region clinical psychiatrist hospital named after Y.K. Ardman. In addition, members of unregular former of Altay region bureau of forensic medical examination were on alert. This way, all forces and measures of SDM were ready for the elimination of medical-sanitary consequences of ES according to the plan for municipal formers.

Gender-Based Violence: Sociocultural Barriers to Men speaking up and Seeking Help in South Africa

Gender-based violence (GBV) includes, but is not limited to, physical, sexual, psychological, and other threats, coercion, economic harm, etc. Because of their gender placement in society, men are frequently associated with being the perpetrators.. Therefore, using the term “gender-based” reflects the unequal power relationships between the genders, which are entrenched in all societies. It portrays the male gender as being the aggressor and the more powerful, endowed, and opportune in society. This article examines and speculates on the notion that men are sometimes the victims of gender-based violence and women are the perpetrators. Mobilising a secondary data methodology through a systematic review approach, the article consulted electronic resources such as EBSCOHOST, JSTOR, and Google Scholar. The articles consulted ranged from 1996 to 2022, were searched from a global perspective, especially the West, and finally narrowed down to South Africa. JSTOR and Google Scholar produced 95% of the search results, though Google Scholar was most dominant. The key words and phrases used for the search were centred on foregrounding the problem of male GBV victims and their reluctance to speak up and seek help. The inclusion criteria focused on males who suffered violence at the hands of female perpetrators. Male to female violence was excluded. The study concluded that there is a need for society, especially the police organisation to recognise violence against men as a social problem that requires urgent help. It also suggests that counsellors be set up for men in remote places who are losing their self-confidence and esteem in relationships, family setting, and society. It also recommended that South African men need to be encouraged by the media and the Civil Society Organisation to speak up and seek help so that they can maintain their sociocultural prestige, and manage social cohesion in the family and society.

Did the COVID-19 Pandemic Restrict Access to Emergency Urological Services: Assessment of Reorganisation Effectiveness for Hospital Treatment.

Urolithiasis derived renal colic is a common urological condition. If treated properly, the disease resolves without complications; if not treated, it causes infection and renal failure. The COVID-19 restrictions impacted hospitalised treatment of diseases. We analysed the impact of COVID-19 on renal colic treatment at a hospital in Poland. Clinical and demographic data of patients treated during the COVID-19 era were compared with those treated before this pandemic. During the COVID-19 restrictions, renal colic patient hospital admissions fell significantly. However, more patients presented with chronic renal colic symptoms and urinary tract infections. Nevertheless, the degree of hydronephrosis and the number and location of stones did not differ between the two groups. No marked changes were observed in the chosen treatment options. The observed decrease in emergency admissions of patients with acute renal colic with a simultaneous increase in the rate of infectious stones might indicate that some patients requiring urgent medical help did not report to the emergency department or came later than they would before the pandemic, reporting more serious symptoms. One plausible explanation for this may be that the reorganisation of the healthcare system restricted access to urological care. Moreover, some patients may have delayed their visit to the hospital due to the fear of contracting the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.

The spectrum of functional tic-like behaviours: Data from an international registry.

Between 2019 and 2022, there was a marked rise in adolescents/young adults seeking urgent help for functional tic-like behaviours (FTLBs). Given the global scale of this phenomenon, we aimed to pool cases from different institutions in an international registry to better characterize this spectrum and facilitate future longitudinal observation. An international collaborative group from 10 tertiary referral centres for tic disorders collected retrospective data on FTLB patients who sought specialists' attention between the last quarter of 2019 and June 2022. An audit procedure was used for collection of data, which comprised demographics, course of presentation and duration, precipitating and predisposing factors, phenomenology, comorbidities, and pharmacological treatment outcome. During the study period, we collected data on 294 patients with FTLBs, 97% of whom were adolescents and young adults and 87% of whom were female. FTLBs were found to have a peak of severity within 1month in 70% of patients, with spontaneous remissions in 20%, and a very high frequency of complex movements (85%) and vocalizations (81%). Less than one-fifth of patients had pre-existing primary tic disorder, 66% had comorbid anxiety disorders, 28% comorbid depressive disorders, 24% autism spectrum disorder and 23% attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Almost 60% explicitly reported exposure to tic-related social media content. The vast majority of pharmacologically treated patients did not report benefit with tic-suppressing medications. Our data from the largest multicentre registry of FTLBs to date confirm substantial clinical differences from primary tic disorders. Social modelling was the most relevant contributing factor during the pandemic. Future longitudinal analyses from this database may help understand treatment approaches and responsiveness.

Statistical machine learning defensive mechanism against cyber intrusion in smart grid cyber-physical network

Cyber-Physical Systems are becoming more susceptible to cyber intrusion, compromising the critical infrastructure of the smart grid. This emerging concern requires the urgent help of researchers to find a practical and better approach to secure an intelligent power grid against cyber-attack. This research article proposes a "Statistical Machine Learning Defensive Mechanism (SML-DM)" for Smart Grid Cyber-Physical Networks (SGCPN) against cyber intrusion by using a Gaussian mixture model merged with wireless sensor data. Using SML-DM, two new indices are proposed to evaluate the performance of the defensive mechanism. The first index, Data Prediction Error (DPE), calculates actual and predicted data errors during a cyber-attack. The second index, Sensor Reliability Score (SRS), is used to assess the reliability status of wireless sensors. MATLAB software was used to validate this research, and data was taken from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Using the proposed defence mechanism, it is found that the data integrity and reliability of the sensors can increase by up to 90%.

Healthcare Chatbot using Artificial Intelligence

Abstract: Healthcare as one of the vital spheres of human life is badly falling behind technological progress. While e-commerce, hospitality, and the food industry are advanced and augmented with various technological solutions, healthcare still sticks to the traditional way of doing things. Why can you order a pizza in ten seconds but must wait for an appointment with a doctor for days and weeks? How can you make sure that urgent medical help is indeed urgent? Why finding a credible answer to an important question about your health is so annoyingly difficult? I am also deeply concerned about the lack of attention that the healthcare industry receives. And the first and easiest solution I can offer to change it is to implement chatbot technology in healthcare. Healthcare chatbots will never substitute doctors. But they provide plenty of opportunities to facilitate their job or to improve their performance. The medical chat-bots functioning depends on Natural Language Processing which helps users to submit their problems about their health. The user can ask any personal query related to health care through the chatbot without being out physically available to the hospital. By using Google API for voice-text and text-voice conversion query is sent to the chatbot and gets a related answer and displays the answer on the android app. The system’s major concern behind developing this web-based platform is analyzing customers’ sentiments.

SOUTH SUDAN: Urgent Help Needed

Africa Research Bulletin: Economic, Financial and Technical SeriesVolume 59, Issue 3 p. 23800A-23800C Policy and Practice SOUTH SUDAN: Urgent Help Needed First published: 28 April 2022 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6346.2022.10517.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume59, Issue3May 2022Pages 23800A-23800C RelatedInformation

Prevention of Coronavirus infections SARS-CoV-2 in dental practice

The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented global crisis in public health. Professionals in dental institutions, dental associations and regulatory bodies face various challenges in providing dental care and prevention of oral health of the population, as well as protection of patients and practitioners from the health threat of SARS-CoV-2 virus. The aim of this paper is to present the current findings and views regarding the information on the epidemiological and clinical characteristics of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the need to implement protocols to protect patients and dental practitioners from the health threat posed by the virus, in compliance with medically relevant regulations.Material and methods: References from WHO, FDI and published papers in international scientific journals in this relatively short period were consulted and they presented: updated epidemiological and seroepidemiological information, review of response measures implemented in EU countries / EEA, UK and countries around the world and response options to minimize the risk of recurrence of COVID-19. Results: Viral pneumonia that appeared on February 11, 2020, was named "Coronavirus (COVID 19)" by the WHO, while the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) proposed the name "SARS-CoV-2" for phylogenetic and taxonomic analysis of this corona virus. Dentists/doctors of dental medicine should be familiar with transmission of SARS-CoV-2, how to identify patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection and what measures should be taken for protection during the intervention in order to prevent its transmission. There are recommendations for infection control measures that should be followed by the dentists/doctors of dental medicine. The fact that aerosols and drops have been considered for major SARS-CoV-2 propagation routes has been emphasized. If these measures are not undertaken, then the dental office can potentially expose patients to cross-infection.
 Conclusion: The epidemiological situation around the world is changing dynamically, but patients should not be left without urgent medical help. Oral health team members are required to update their knowledge and skills regarding the prevention, diagnosis and management of communicable diseases that can be transmitted in a clinical setting and to stick to the standard precautions to protect patients from infections as well as protect themselves.

My Son Can’t Socially Distance or Wear a Mask: How Families of Preschool Children with Severe Developmental Delays and Challenging Behavior Experienced the COVID-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT Background: Families of children with developmental delays (DD) prior to the COVID-19 pandemic experienced inequalities in accessing health and social care services. Measures put in place to combat the spread of the coronavirus have potentially exacerbated existing inequalities and have led to additional pressures for these families. Methods: We carried out a cross-sectional online survey of parents of young children with moderate to severe DD and challenging behaviors living in England, UK. We asked about the impact the pandemic has had on their family well-being, receipt of support, and post COVID-19 concerns. Results: Eighty-eight parents who are participants in an ongoing clinical trial (EPICC-ID) reported a broad range of challenges they faced during the pandemic: lack of information specific to children with DD; difficulties following social distancing and isolation rules; disruption or pause of health and social care services; deterioration in parental mental health and regression of the child’s skills. Future access to services, negative long-term impact of school closures, parental unemployment were the parents’ main post-COVID-19 concerns. Conclusions: Families of children with significant developmental delays fear lasting impact of the pandemic on their own psychological and material wellbeing and on their child’s health. These families require urgent help to meet major health and social care needs and should be prioritized within an overall children’s mental health strategy. The article includes a commentary from parents with lived experience.

Report on the activities of the Warsaw VI City Maternity Hospital since its opening (from November 1, 1887 to January 1, 1894)

It has long been recognized, well-known fact of insufficiency of maternity institutions large and small in the mountains. Warsaw is still a sad phenomenon, and nothing has been done to eliminate it. Hundreds of unfortunate poor women in childbirth annually knock the doorsteps of maternity establishments, asking for asylum, which is necessary in their condition, requiring fast, urgent help. Many receive appropriate help, are accepted and cared for in these institutions, but even more leave with refusal and wander in agony, at any time of the day or night, in horror that their birth will be overtaken on the road. That such cases are not rare, everyone knows. What is being done with those hundreds of victims of the inadequacy of our maternity facilities, we do not know - we only know the fact of a large% of illnesses and deaths from childbirth fever in women who are resolved outside maternity facilities.

Online contraceptive discussion forums: a qualitative study to explore information provision

BackgroundWomen in the UK spend up to 30 years avoiding pregnancy, and effective use of contraception requires detailed information and support. Online forums offer opportunities to discuss contraception with few...

Changing patterns of urologic emergency visits and admissions during the COVID-19 pandemic: a retrospective, multicenter, nationwide study.

IntroductionWe aimed to examine the change in the number and severity of visits to the emergency departments (EDs) and subsequent admissions for urgent urologic conditions in the early stage of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in Poland.Material and methodsWe evaluated data from 13 urologic centers in Poland and compared the number of visits to the EDs and subsequent admissions before and after the advent of COVID-19 in 2020, and before and after the escalating national restrictions. Furthermore, data on types of urologic complaints, crucial laboratory parameters, and post-admission procedures were analyzed.ResultsIn total 1,696 and 2,187 urologic visits (22.45% decrease) and 387 and 439 urologic urgent admissions (11.85% decrease) were reported in given periods in 2020 and 2019, respectively. The year-over-year difference in daily mean visits was clear (36.1 vs. 46.5; p < 0.001). Declines were seen in all complaints but device malfunction. In 2020 daily mean visits and admissions decreased from 40.9 and 9.6 before lockdowns to 30.9 (p < 0.001) and 6.9 (p = 0.001) after severe restrictions, respectively. There was a trend towards more negative laboratory parameter profiles in 2020, with patients who visited the EDs after severe restrictions having twice as high median levels of C-reactive protein (15.39 vs. 7.84, p = 0.03).ConclusionsThe observed declines in ED visits and admissions were apparent with the significant effect of national lockdowns. Our results indicate that some of the patients requiring urgent medical help did not appear at the ED or came later than they would have done before the pandemic, presenting with more severe complaints.

Роль мышечно-фасциального синдрома и дисфункции в развитии синдрома хронической тазовой боли у женщин (Обзор литературы)

According to the classification of chronic pain syndromes proposed by the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) and due to the high clinical significance, chronic pelvic pain (CPP) represents an independent nosological structure and is defined as pain in the pelvic region (in the lower abdomen and the lower back), mainly between the navel and the pubic symphysis, which lasts for at least six months and disrupts the normal functioning of the body. Myofascial pelvic pain syndrome (MPPS) in English literature is included in the subgroup of etiology of CPP. Myofascial pelvic pain syndrome itself is not a direct threat to life and health and does not require urgent help. But today it is almost not diagnosed and is not considered as a source of chronic pain and dysfunction in the pelvic region. Such patients, unfortunately, are left without appropriate treatment and cannot get rid of the oppressive pain. They often receive unnecessary treatment, including surgical interventions. This problem causes neurosis, depression, sexual dysfunction and, as a result, leads to the deterioration in the quality of life. CPP can often have multiple causes and should be evaluated in terms of the pathology of various physiological systems, including reproductive, urogenital, gastrointestinal, musculoskeletal and nervous system. Based on a full picture of the multifactorial nature of CPP, the treatment of this category of patients requires an integrated approach involving specialists in various fields. Particular attention in the differential diagnosis of chronic pelvic pain in women should be paid to abdominal myofascial pain syndrome, the role of which is currently underestimated. Therefore, doctors should be aware of the main directions of diagnosis and treatment of CPP due to myofascial pain syndrome. Keywords: chronic pelvic pain, myofascial syndrome, nidling, post-isometric relaxation of muscles, relising.

Machine-learning methods for identifying social media-based requests for urgent help during hurricanes

Social media is increasingly used by people during large-scale natural disasters to request emergency help. Previous work has had success in applying machine-learning classifiers to detect tweets in coarse-grained categories, such as disaster type and relevance. However, there is a dearth of work that focuses on detecting tweets containing requests for help that are actionable by first responders. Using over 5 million tweets posted during 2017's Hurricane Harvey in Houston, U.S., we show that though such requests are uncommon, their often life-or-death nature justifies the development of tweet classifiers to detect them. We find that the best-performing classifiers are a convolutional neural network (CNN) trained on word embeddings, support vector machine (SVM) trained on average word embeddings, and multilayer perceptron (MLP) trained on a combination of unigrams and part-of-speech (POS) tags. These models achieve F1 scores of over 0.86, confirming their efficacy in detecting urgent tweets. We highlight the utility of average word embeddings for training non-neural models, and that such features produce results competitive with more traditional n-gram and POS features.