4^th World Congress on Public Health and Nutrition March 06-07, 2019 Berlin, Germany

Vikas Bhatia is Dean at All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Bhubaneswar and Professor and Head, Deptt. of Community & Family Medicine since August, 2012. and contributed significantly in establishing AIIMS- BBSR. He did MBBS, MD in Community Medicine from MGIMS, Sewagram, Maharashtra and PGD in Hospital & Health Management. Dr Bhatia is Fellow of IMSA, IAPH and IAPSM. He has experience of over three decades in various institutions such as PGIMER, Chandigarh, GMC, Chandigarh, UCMS Delhi. As Health Officer / Officer Incharge, Health Section, UNICEF managed state-wide RCH Program with budget of about US$ one million /annum by facilitating capacity building, advocacy and policy Influencing with Govt. and established partnership with WHO, USAID, CARE, World Vision, NIPI, CDC and other organizations. Jointly with UNICEF – Govt. of UP reached to 180 million population in 70 districts with focus on children and women’s health & nutrition.

The estrogen receptor alpha (ERα) gene has been extensively studied in breast cancer, however, the function as well as regulation of its splice variants are poorly understood. During our study of HMGA1a (formerly termed HMGI), which is known as a DNA-binding transcription factor, we found it regulates alternative splicing of ERα pre-mRNA as a sequencespecific RNA-binding protein.We searched for HMGA1a RNA-binding sites we previously identified (1,2) and found one in ERα exon 1. HMGA1a binds to this sequence (detected by RNA-EMSA) that resulted in a splicing switch of two alternatively spliced isoforms, ERα66 (full length) and ERα46 (truncated). ERα46 is known to inhibit AF-1 activity of ERα66. Psoralenmediated UV crosslinking showed HMGA1a anchored U1 snRNP to the adjacent pseudo-5’ splice site. MCF-7 cells transfected with expression plasmids of HMGA1a and its RNA-decoy could induce and repress ERα46 expression, respectively. The in vivo effect of the HMGA1a RNA-decoy were checked by transplanting its stable transfectants into nude mice, showing that they increased estrogen-dependent proliferation. In tamoxifen-resistant MCF-7 TAMR1 cells, the HMGA1a RNA-decoy improved tamoxifen-responsiveness by inhibiting estrogen-dependent cell proliferation. We conclude that this HMGA1a RNA-decoy would be implicated in novel therapeutic application to improve tamoxifen effectiveness in breast cancer patients.

Completed the Master’s Degree in Dental Medicine in 2006 at the Health Sciences Institute of the Universidade Católica Portuguesa (UCP), Viseu, Portugal. In 2010, completed the Masters Degree in Public Health at the Medical School of the University of Porto and in 2015, completed the PhD degree in Biomedicine at the Beira Interior University. Auxiliary professor at the Health Sciences Institute of the UCP and also Clinical Director of the Dental University Clinic of the UCP. Responsible for the knowledge field of Epidemiology and Community Oral Health at the same university and has presented research in these fields counting with more than 100 congress presentations and publications in the form of abstract and over 40 scientific articles.

The presentation will have as main goals the description of the reality of oral health and the prevalence of oral diseases and consequent need of oral rehabilitation among the institutionalized elderly and patients with mental and physical limitations in Portugal, based on an epidemiological approach. The main problems identified among the elderly and patients with special healthcare needs are: difficulty in maintaining daily oral hygiene habits, toothache, dental infections, edentulism and poor chewing capacity which may bring other systemic diseases associated. This presentation will show what has been done in the field of oral health education and promotion in various nursing homes in the centre region of Portugal and also some results of epidemiological research developed in the past years, demonstrating that poor oral health among the elderly and patients with mental and physical limitations should be considered a serious public health issue and the definition of oral health promotion strategies are needed. The audience will be able to understand the reality of oral health and the lack of oral hygiene and dental treatment among these patients in analysis; understand the difficulties associated with treatment and primary prevention; demonstrate some epidemiological research developed in various samples of institutionalized elderly and patients with mental and physical limitations, which is a population-group that clearly presents lack of epidemiological research developed. Also, the audience may benefit in understanding some efficient strategies in oral health promotion and how an epidemiological research can be developed among these specific risk community groups.

Abigail Brown is a recent graduate from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, with a degree in International Public Health. The research conducted in as part of her master’s project was highly important and successful and has led to a recent submission for paper publication.

Background: WHO defines health as a state of “physical, mental and social wellbeing”. In low and middle income settings 15.6% of women experience a mental disorder during pregnancy and 19.8% after pregnancy; almost three times that of women in high income settings. Pregnant women in low resource settings are more susceptible to poor maternal psychological ill-health

due to increased exposure to risk factors such as low socioeconomic status and cultural stigma. The effects of maternal psychological ill-health can be detrimental for both mother and baby, resulting in low birth weight and malnutrition.

Aim: The primary aim of my master’s dissertation research was to qualitatively investigate healthcare providers’ knowledge, attitudes and perceptions on screening and treating maternal mental health during and after pregnancy in Ghana.

Methods: Interviews took place at Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra; a large tertiary facility and leading referral centre in Ghana. The Ghanaian Mental Health Act was revised in 2012, but fails to specify guidelines to treat maternal psychological ill-health. 20 key informant interviews and 1 focus group discussion were conducted with healthcare providers of varying experience-including doctors and nurses-to allow for triangulation.

Results: Healthcare providers appreciated the importance of maternal mental wellbeing and how psychological ill-health can affect both mother and baby. Time pressures and cultural attitudes were reasons for why maternal mental health was not regularly assessed.

Conclusion: Enthusiasm for potential screening guidelines was shown but to be truly effective, they should be incorporated into pre-existing antenatal and postnatal care treatment.

After his studies at the University of Northumbria, Newcastle upon tyne, UK where he received his graduation of Masters, MA in Events and Conference Management and Masters Sciences, Msc in Business Information Technology, Cevito WILSON joined back home, Togo in 2009 the Catholic University of Togo and the University of Lome as lecturer of Business Management, Communication and Information System courses. In November 2011 he was appointed by the SOS Children Villages Togo where he led the Information System department of this International Organisation for over Three (3) years and a half while still delivering courses in the above Universities. In November 2015, Cevito started his PhD in Learning and Cognitive at the University of Jyvàskylà, Finland. He is the actual Catholic University of Togo’s Manager of the Information System. Cevito WILSON was involved in several ICT projects including with World Bank in Mali and the UNHCR in Togo.

Despite the growing state of the African economy which is recording nowadays growth of up to 7% each year, poverty remains a critical concern throughout the continent. Africans do not give any consideration to their healthcare, because of the unavailability of funds to afford it. The poor are usually facing health risk factors; they have insufficient access to health care services, and have off course limited lifestyle-related choices. Hence, health care issues are tremendous over Africa and need to be seriously tackled even though sub-Saharan Africa is showing some signs of a little progress towards the Millennium Development goals. Sub-Saharan Africa is the place of the world where public health is particularly strained. Therefore, a lot

need to be done in order to totally cure low level diseases and maintain the greatest one at an acceptable stage. Health Poverty Action should definitely orient its efforts providing sustainable and innovative pathways to reach goals and to meet people’s health needs. If the reason for this situation is at first the lack of resources and the failure of the African governments, the other reason is the absence of the qualified Doctors and practitioners throughout the continent. However there are several Africa Doctors who are serving extremely well in western hospitals mostly due to the brain drain of homegrown doctors who has

moved abroad, in search of higher wages and a better standard of living. We could recall the various stories of those African Doctors who can cure medical ‘brain drain’, treat cancer and other affections oversea. Thus, there is a need to connect them to the mother land in order for them to give back to the local health service. Diaspora Doctors are already helping. However, this should be institutionalized and automated in order to help carry out difficult surgeries, train and assist local doctors for the wellbeing of the patients in Africa. In order to achieve this goal, a tailor made Information and Communication Technology infrastructures should be developed in order to reinforce this link of a very promising Africa new Healthcare services connecting and stressing mobility of partners including: stakeholders from the private and public hospitals from the

north and the south, African patients, Diaspora Doctors, friends of Africa practitioners from oversea and other Doctors from down Africa. Hence, the infrastructure will be developed and deployed inclusively with the stakeholders to stress medical information exchanges, plan the delivery of various surgeries on the continents, easily plan and implement various training of local physicians involved. Doctors will also get accessed by the patients and answer their questions. This system will at the end save lives by not only implementing several critical health treatments on the continent but also brings the international Doctors closer to the remote patients in Africa and also save money to those fortunate African patients who have to deal with visa issues

and expensive travel and international stay and healthcare bills.

Eman Derbi is a PhD student in public health at Swansea University, had a master degree in Public Health from Westminster University London. She has worked as a lecturer in public health department, Faculty of medical Technology, Tripoli University/ Libya and in Health Promotion department at the National Centre for disease control.

Food subsidy program is a common policy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). In Libya the food subsidy program has been established at the beginning of 1970s to provide social support and reduce health inequalities among citizens. Despite that there is growing arguments and criticisms regard food subsidy programmes as being one of the reasons for increasing obesity especially in the low socio-economic class due to lowering the cost of high calorie dense food. Besides the big financial burden of the program on the state budget. According to the Libya’s Price Regulation Fund the cost of the program is over 2 billion LYD in 2012 which is the latest available data. The aim of this presentation is to share some of the preminarly results of a qualitative study conducted in Tripoli which explored views of health professionals, policy makers and community members towards the food subsidy program, using semi structured interviews with 9 health professionals (doctors, dieticians, and nurses), 6 policy makers and six focus groups with 48 community members from different socio-economic classes and education levels. The findings indicate that there are contradictory views regarding the food subsidy program, where most policy makers and high educated participants reported that the program had a negative impact on people’s eating behaviours and food choices and need to be reformed, while the less educated participants reported that the program provides people with the stable food at a cheap price to feed their children as their wages are very low.