Suprane

In the fight against doping, creating a level playing field across all sports is very challenging from a legal perspective. A harmonized approach presupposes first and foremost a supreme regulatory authority on a global level. This task cannot be attributed to the public sector, because there is no supranational authority of public international law capable of dealing with it. Thus, responsibility has to be assumed by a private law entity. This in turn requires complicated contractual agreements by which duties and responsibilities are transferred from the individual to the national level and from there to the top of the pyramid...

This paper investigates the relationship between economic development and water pressures using a global Multiregional Input-Output model (MRIO) dataset that takes into account the increasingly connected global supply chains underlying the economic systems. In particular, we analyse differences in water indicator outcomes by income level among European Union countries (EU27) from 1995 to 2008, focusing specifically on production and consumption-based water metrics for the member states. We use panel fixed effects regressions to study the dynamics of adjustment of water resources alongside controlling for individual country heterogeneity...

This paper focus upon the changes of global infectious disease governance in 2000s and the transformation of infectious disease control system in South Korea. Traditionally, infectious disease was globally governed by the quarantine regulated by the international conventions. When an infectious disease outbreak occurred in one country, each country prevented transmission of the disease through the standardized quarantine since the installation of international sanitary convention in 1892. Republic of Korea also organized the infectious disease control system with quarantine and disease report procedure after the establishment of government...

Freedom of movement is recognised by national and supranational law. It falls within the scope of the definition of freedom set out in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, in 1789. It is also legally formulated and recognised as a basic right in two European texts: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 10th December 1948 and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of 4th November 1950. How can it be respected in psychiatry, in view of the obligation to provide care and safety?...

The European Union defines rare diseases (RDs) as life-threatening or chronically debilitating conditions whose prevalence is less than 5 per 10,000. Moreover, for many RDs, including those of genetic origin, combined efforts are required to reduce morbidity or perinatal or early mortality, and address the considerable decline in an individual's quality of life and socioeconomic potential. Their specificities, i.e., a limited number of patients and scarcity of relevant knowledge and expertise, make RDs a unique condition which requires wide cooperation at a supranational level...

The EU offers a suitable milieu for the comparison and harmonisation of healthcare across different languages, cultures, and jurisdictions (albeit with a supranational legal framework), which could provide improvements in healthcare standards across the bloc. There are specific ethico-legal issues with the use of data in healthcare research that mandate a different approach from other forms of research. The use of healthcare data over a long period of time is similar to the use of tissue in biobanks. There is a low risk to subjects but it is impossible to gain specific informed consent given the future possibilities for research...

PURPOSE: To review psychosocial and policy interventions which mitigate the effects of poverty and inequality on mental health. METHODS: Systematic reviews, controlled trials and realist evaluations of the last 10 years are reviewed, without age or geographical restrictions. RESULTS: Effective psychosocial interventions on individual and family level, such as parenting support programmes, exist. The evidence for mental health impact of broader community-based interventions, e...

The question of surrogacy has dominated much of the European human rights agenda over the last two years, at the time writing, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe hopes to adopt a resolution on surrogacy in the coming months. There is, however, danger in taking action at a supranational level to address the European 'surrogacy problem', without first honestly answering the question: does surrogacy undermine the human dignity and rights of the surrogate mother and child? This paper presents the case that surrogacy, by its nature, necessarily undermines the human dignity of both the woman and child born through such arrangements, and thus neither commercial nor altruistic surrogacy can ever be justified...

84 Background: Cancer patients receiving chemotherapy can become ill, often leading to hospitalization, adding huge costs to care. This is especially true with older cancer patients. Innovent Oncology (IO), an oncology disease management program, and Texas Oncology (TO) are conducting a novel program, funded by Aetna. Patients who begin IV chemotherapy are called by an IO nurse, working remotely, but with access to TO's Electronic Medical Record. If the call center nurse detects a concern she notifies the practice...

There is a growing evidence base on the cost effectiveness of malaria interventions. However, certain characteristics of malaria decision problems present a challenge to the application of healthcare economic evaluation methods. This paper identifies five such challenges. The complexities of (i) declining incidence and cost effectiveness in the context of an elimination campaign; (ii) international aid and its effect on resource constraints; and (iii) supranational priority setting, all affect how health economists might use a cost-effectiveness threshold...

In 2014, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommendation to include the endorsed rapid molecular technologies (Xpert MTB/RIF, line probe assays) into surveillance systems and surveys allowed the testing of more tuberculosis (TB) patients for drug resistance at country level than ever before. The whole genome sequencing (WGS) approach is emerging as a more powerful tool for epidemiological and drug-resistant routine surveillances, promising a rapid and simultaneous screening of all the clinically-relevant mutations for the determination of resistance to the first-, second-line, and new anti-TB drugs...

Accurately addressing the diverse and complex issues of rare diseases (RD) in terms of prevention, recognition, diagnosis, treatment, care and research along key RD specificities, such as great heterogeneity, a limited number of patients, scarcity of relevant knowledge and expertise as well as enormous costs for patient care is a challenging task for healthcare providers and authorities that makes a supranational approach particularly feasible. The European Union has acknowledged RD matters by several initiatives, including efforts to implement national centres of expertise and European reference networks as well as a cross-border referral mechanism to foster access to expert services and to boost dissemination of clinical expertise and research activities...

This article presents a Latin American vision of global health from a counterhegemonic perspective, applicable to various countries of the world in similar circumstances. It begins by reviewing several concepts and trends in global health and outlining the differences between conventional public health, international health, and global health, but without seeing them as antagonistic, instead situating them in a model that is based on global health and also includes the other two disciplines. It is understood that global factors influenced earlier theories, schemes, and models of classic international health...

The role of Network Theory in the study of the financial crisis has been widely spotted in the latest years. It has been shown how the network topology and the dynamics running on top of it can trigger the outbreak of large systemic crisis. Following this methodological perspective we introduce here the Accounting Network, i.e. the network we can extract through vector similarities techniques from companies' financial statements. We build the Accounting Network on a large database of worldwide banks in the period 2001-2013, covering the onset of the global financial crisis of mid-2007...

Medicines Regulatory Authorities (MRAs) are an essential part of national health systems and are charged with protecting and promoting public health through regulation of medicines. However, MRAs in resource-constrained settings often struggle to provide effective oversight of market entry and use of health commodities. This paper proposes a regulatory value chain model (RVCM) that policymakers and regulators can use as a conceptual framework to guide investments aimed at strengthening regulatory systems. The RVCM incorporates nine core functions of MRAs into five modules: (i) clear guidelines and requirements; (ii) control of clinical trials; (iii) market authorization of medical products; (iv) pre-market quality control; and (v) post-market activities...

Objective To review, organize, and share the experience of the regulatory authorities of countries involved in a project headed by the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Americas (ALBA) for the establishment of a regulatory center (ALBAMED) and a single registry to facilitate access to essential medicines while ensuring quality, safety, and effectiveness, as well as to demonstrate how the construction of this forum for regional cooperation has benefited these authorities and their respective regulatory systems...

Meeting global climate change mitigation goals will likely require that transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions begin to decline within the next two decades and then continue to fall. A variety of vehicle technologies and fuels are commercially available to consumers today that can reduce the emissions of the transportation sector. Yet what are the best options, and do any suffice to meet climate policy targets? Here, we examine the costs and carbon intensities of 125 light-duty vehicle models on the U...

The evolution of knowledge and technology in recent decades has brought profound changes in science policy, not only in the countries but also in the supranational organizations. It has been necessary, therefore, to adapt the scientific institutions to new models in order to achieve a greater and better communication between them and the political counterparts responsible for defining the general framework of relations between science and society. The Federationon of Scientific Societies of Spain (COSCE, Confederación de Sociedades Científicas de España) was founded in October 2003 to respond to the urgent need to interact with the political institutions and foster a better orientation in the process of making decisions about the science policy...

To design the services for adolescents and young adults (AYAs) with cancer, we need to understand the patterns of disease and the other clinical and managerial challenges of the patient group. Cancer occurring between the ages of 15 and 39 years is 4 times less rare than cancer occurring during the first 15 years of life and consists of 2% of all invasive cancer in Europe, about 66,000 patients in Europe each year. AYAs have a unique distribution of cancer types, including the peak in incidence of Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) or germ cell tumors...

Protecting healthcare staff against the risk of infection caused by injuries when using sharp or pointed instruments has been placed - as a special, common and difficult type of "biological risk" - at the centre of attention in the investigations, studies and research conducted by various countries and subjects that have led to a convergence between the results able to influence European and supranational legislation. This convergence of results is headed towards the recognition of the great potential of the role of technology and, more specifically, of the "protection devices" of paramount and essential importance, as "technical measures", over the other, nevertheless important "organisational" and "personal" measures...