Women In Nairobi Research Articles

Use of an enzyme immunoassay to detect serum IgG antibodies to Haemophilus ducreyi.

An experimental enzyme immunoassay (EIA) for detecting serum IgG antibody to Haemophilus ducreyi was developed using an ultrasonicated whole-cell antigen. The mean optical densities (OD) for sera from men with proven chancroid from Nairobi (47 patients) and Bangkok (72 patients) were significantly higher than those obtained from Nairobi men with genital ulcers not due to H. ducreyi, from Nairobi men with urethritis, from pregnant women in Nairobi, and from European men with sexually transmitted disease. When an OD of 0.500 was taken as the cutoff value, 89% and 55% of men with proven chancroid in Nairobi and Bangkok, respectively, were positive for H. ducreyi antibody, as compared with 2%-17% in the control groups. A rise in OD was observed in five of 18 patients with clinical chancroid. These results confirm the development of circulating antibodies in chancroid and suggest that this EIA may be useful for the diagnosis and epidemiological study of H. ducreyi infection.

Peripartum heart disease: an endomyocardial biopsy study.

Endomyocardial biopsies were performed in 11 African women in Nairobi who presented with the clinical features of peripartum cardiomyopathy. The samples were studied by light and electron microscopy. In five patients there was evidence of a "healing myocarditis", that is the presence of a mild inflammatory cell infiltration within the myocardium with foci of necrosis and variable amounts of hypertrophy and fibrosis. Of the nine patients who were followed up, three out of four with myocarditis had persistent heart failure and four out of five without myocarditis improved. Peripheral blood T lymphocyte cell subsets were measured in nine patients by means of monoclonal antibodies. A high helper:suppressor T cell ratio was found in three patients. Almost half of this group of patients with peripartum cardiomyopathy had myocarditis in their biopsy specimens. The myocarditis may have been due to an inappropriate immunological reaction in some patients.

Infant feeding style in Urban Kenya

The concept of infant feeding style is developed as a self‐consistent way of making choices about infant feeding and applied to a study of infant feeding practices of low income women in Nairobi, Kenya. Personal and shared styles, interaction style and eating style are examined using both cross sectional survey data and results of ethnographic fieldwork. The dynamics of status and change are discussed using the concept of feeding “in style.” Mothers' different interpretations of breastfeeding, cow's milk and infant formula are reflected in the statistical analysis of their feeding patterns. The emphasis on breastfeeding as a process, cow's milk as a food, and infant formula as a superfood, explains the infant feeding patterns observed and points to the importance of the concept of infant feeding style for developing culturally appropriate infant feeding policy.

Prostitution, Identity, and Class Consciousness in Nairobi during World War II

This article is in part a response to an essentially right-wing critique of feminism, currently promoted in self-help books and seminars. According to this critique, if a woman takes control of her own life, all by herself, regardless of economic conditions, she can stop complying with her own dependency.' In contrast, my study of the collective actions of malaya prostitutes in Nairobi during World War II demonstrates that one person alone cannot alter the labor process that orders and governs her days, but that several women, acting together, can. Malaya women in Nairobi had shared an occupation, a form of labor, and a community for twenty years without ever acting collectively; indeed, before World War II, they never publicly acknowledged their common working conditions. What caused many malaya women to do a