The future of medical waste regulation: simplicity and consistency as goals

There are some favorable signs. At this time of federal budget constraints, the EPA is tightening its belt. EPA's Science Advisory Council recognizes these fundamental constraints and urges the agency to consider relative risks to public health and the environment in establishing regulatory priorities. If Congress and EPA follow this informed advice, and consider honestly where medical waste fits into the spectrum of environmental risks, there is at least a chance that they could come up with a simple system--just enough to satisfy public opinion, but not enough to keep people from solving the problem.     

Managed competition

People don't like change. That includes materiel managers, administrators, and clinical providers. Managed competition or managed care will work if, and only if, the American professions and the American public recognize the value of highly educated and qualified clinical and nonclinical providers and if the health care industry responds in kind.     

Information sources for medical waste management

Although many hospital professionals now have personal access to online databases, popular communications services may not have the full range of electronic services needed for technical problem solving. Librarians are practiced at cross-disciplinary technical research and so health professionals may be best served by consulting an experienced database search analyst so that important information is not accidentally missed. Additionally, many commercially produced databases have repackaged and redistributed data developed by NIOSH and other federal agencies, data that are readily available in the public sector. The cost of accessing or purchasing commercial databases is usually higher than for federal databases, though commercial products use the federal databases to develop their products. Public agencies should always be consulted to obtain the most current information issued by those bodies and also because a variety of free and low-cost support materials may be available. Because of the expense of routinely consulting electronic databases when comparable printed materials may be available at a lower cost, a small reference collection of books, journals, and audiovisuals may be desirable. A selective print reference collection is found in Appendix A.     

An appropriate development strategy for Southern Africa∗

The limited successes achieved with development in the Third World and the national states in Southern Africa have necessitated a considerable change in development thinking and practice. The conventional developmental approach, which is based on growth models, is inappropriate for the conditions in the LDCs. A new development approach, coupled with an appropriate development strategy, has culminated in the development literature.

In this article the poverty problem in Southern Africa is outlined as a general background, whereafter the new development approach and a few guidelines for an appropriate development strategy is discussed. The application of the new strategy in the circumstances of Southern Africa is highlighted.     

Black americans and Ghanaians: Comparative patterns of internal migration

Conclusions For our purposes here, the analysis has been fruitful in that it has served to indicate and underscore in both general and specific terms the sources and determinants of migration movement and the destination of migrants. The qualitative analysis and the statistical test have led to several research conclusions. Both United States and Ghanaian migrants behave in accordance with the migration concepts examined. Common relationships between migration and economic opportunity are apparent. While push factors have generally initiated migratory movement among black Americans, particularly in respect to the South, both groups tend to move to regions with better economic opportunities. In both cases, migration is a negative function of distance, and a large labor force at the origin is a stimulus to out-migration at the origin.