Prevalence of Early and Late Age-Related Macular Degeneration in India: The INDEYE Study

PURPOSE. To estimate the prevalence of early and late age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in India.

User perspective on palliative care services: experiences of middle-aged partners bereaved through cancer known to social work services in Northern Ireland

This qualitative research study explores experiences of partners bereaved through cancer, who were resident in an urban area of Northern Ireland and who had been service users of the social work services. Data were collected in 2004 from 10 individuals who participated in semi-structured interviews. Emergent themes were identified using thematic content analysis and findings analysed under four categories: cancer journey; impact of bereavement; process of adjustment and change; and experience of support services. Opportunities to facilitate communication were not always maximised, often resulting in poor bereavement outcomes. Although hospices undertook bereavement risk assessment, participants were unaware of its use and queried its accuracy without service user involvement. The most cited informal support was family and friends, although such help was time-limited. Service user feedback regarding social workers was generally positive; however, there was a lack of knowledge about their role in palliative care. Post-bereavement adjustment was influenced by the quality of social networks, the responsibilities of lone parenthood, and challenges to life values and core beliefs. A framework for palliative care social work has been recommended based on research findings.

The Housing Triangulation: A discourse on Quality, Affordability and Lifestyles in India

Since 1991 with the advent of globalization and economic liberalisation, basic conceptual and discursive changes are taking place in housing sector in India. The new changes suggest how housing affordability, quality and lifestyles reality is shifting for various segments of the population. Such shift not only reflects structural patterns but also stimulates an ongoing transition process. The paper highlights a twin impetus that continue to shape the ongoing transition: expanding middle class and their wealth - a category with distinctive lifestyles, desires and habits and corresponding ‘market defining’ of affordable housing standards - to articulate function of housing as a conceptualization of social reality in modern India. The paper highlights the contradictions and paradoxes, and the manner in which the concept of affordability, quality and lifestyles are embedded in both discourse and practice in India. The housing ‘dream’ currently being packaged and fed through to the middle class population has an upper middle class bias and is set to alienate those at the lower end of the middle-and low-income population. In the context of growing agreement and inevitability of market provision of ‘affordable housing’, the unbridled ‘market-defining’ of housing quality and lifestyles must be checked.

Lawyers in a Divided Society: Legal Culture and Legal Services in Northern Ireland",

Also published as Ch. 9 in Tomorrow's Lawyers (ed. P. Thomas) Oxford: Blackwell 1992. (With M. Fox.)

New frontiers and challenges for affordable housing provision in India

The global increase in the number of slums calls for policies which improve the conditions of the urban poor, sustainably. This volume provides an extensive overview of current housing policies in Asia, Africa and Latin America and presents the facts and trends of recent housing policies. The chapters provide ideas and tools for pro-poor interventions with respect to the provision of land for housing, building materials, labour, participation and finance. The book looks at the role of the various stakeholders involved in such interventions, including national and local governments, private sector organisations, NGOs and Community-based Organisations.

Societal perceptions of community pharmaceutical services in Malta

Objective: To assess the views of the Maltese general public on services provided by community pharmacies in Malta and their opinions on the proposed extended role for pharmacies.