Competition for the best
ideas
By Hubert Markl, Germany
For science and research at the
beginning of the 21st century, globalization is not something that is going to happen
somewhere down the road; it has been an integral part of their praxis for some time. The
most important challenge we face, from climate research to space technology, from
ecosystem and bio-diversity research to oceanography, from demography to infection
biology, are global in nature. Competition for the best young professionals and
researchers is also global, as is communication between scientists-in English, the
language that has come to dominate global discourse, at least in the natural sciences.
Economic competition, especially in the high technology sector forces universities and
research institutes to think of their work in global terms, for knowledge is a much more
mobile production factor than capital or labor. For this reason innovative companies seek
proximity to the most productive research and training centers as to tap the brains of the
up-and-coming generation of the scientists, for it is precisely the best-young minds that
produce the best ideas. Nationality is irrelevant-any nation joining in the global
competition between knowledge societies can be successful only if it possesses excellent
research centers-measured by global standards-both within its universities and elsewhere,
centers which in their turn work in symbiosis with industry-from newly founded research
companies to international concerns-in pursuing both applied and basic research. Only such
regional synergy centers conducting pioneering research-in the fields ranging from
biotechnology to information technology, and from nanotechnology to to the development of
new materials-allow those working in them to contribute meaningfully to the development of
a sustainable global economy and the creation of a global knowledge society. It is
precisely this challenge that science and research must take up in the 21 st century. If
they are to fulfill their responsibility in helping to ensure the future good of the
humanity. For it is not a case of individial nations' competing to produce the best
results in an open spirit of global cooperation-to the sustainable development of human
civilization, a process in which a commitment to maintaining the world's biosphere is of
as paramount important as fostering the creative diversity of culture and nations. Each
nation and each society must contribute to this process. For in cultivating a high
standard of research in our own country, we are helping to secure the basic necessities of
life for all peoples with whom we share this earth-both for the 21 st century and ,
hopefully, for many centuries to come.
The author is the President of the Max Planck
society in Germany. Text courtesy: Deutschland N. April/ May 2001. Embassy of Germany in
Kathmandu, Nepal.
The Paris Institute of
Paediatric Nursing A structure for life
Florence Raynal, Journalist, France
Neonatal center, foetal medicine department,
laboratories, milk bank, paedopsychiatric services, school… the list of activities of
the Paris Institute of Paediatric nursing, the prime purpose of which is the comprehensive
care of mothers with pathological high foetal risk pregnancies and premature babies in
danger, is a long gone
"You are asked to switch off your
mobile phones because they interfere with the equipment and therefore the children's
health". As soon as they enter the imposing redbrick building of the Paris Institute
of paediatric nursing, IPP, users are warned: here the newly born babies rule supreme.
On the second floor, in fact, behind the
glass wall of their incubators, dozens of premature babies are striving to gain weight and
their autonomy under the expert eye of specialists and the tender eyes of their parents,
dressed in protective clothing. While some of the babies in conventional cots manage to
breathe normally, most of them, who are not as lucky. Are kept on respirators and undergo
heavy treatment such as chemotherapy, disappearing behind a forest of wires,, all directly
connected to the ceiling. For here, some occupants weigh scarcely more than… 600
grammes.
After a few months in intensive care. The
newborns move into a special care unit to prepare for discharge into a neonatal paediatric
ward. The Paris Institute of Paediatric Nursing, IPP, has seventy-five incubators in all,
which makes it the largest neonatal department in the Ile-de-France, ahead of the
prestigious mother-child centers of Antoine-Beclere, Cochin-Saint-Vincent-de-Paul and
Robert-Debre hospitals.
A leading center: Managed by the Mother-Child
Health Development Center, the Association de development de'l hygiene materno infantile,
the IPP, whose overall budget amounts to 26.7 euro is noted for its status as a private,
non-profit making hospital. A status linked to its history, which goes back to the end of
the First World War. In fact, in 1919, American doctors became alarmed at the poor level
of hygiene in French maternity hospitals. As part of the foundation that brought together
the American Red Cross-and private donors, a school of paediatric nursing was established.
The IPP was born and was to grow. Over the years, various activities would be set up.
Today the IPP has become, as its Director,
Daniele Beaune, explains, 'one of the leading perinatal centers of the Ile-de-France for
taking newborn babies in distress and women with pathological pregnancies, particularly
those at high foetal risk'.
Caring for these babies medically, socially
and psychologically so that they become stable as far as their health is concerned and are
able to go and live with their parents as quickly possible, is the stated objective of the
neonatal center. But this often conceals a fierce struggle against death and a fight to
lomit the after-effects, notably the neurological ones. The IPP thus treats around 1000
newborn babies a year, 80% of whom are referred by the region's and the province's
hospitals and clinics. Some 70% of those admitted are born prematurely, half of them
weighing less than 1.5 kilo.
Since 1988, the IPP has had an antenatal
diagnostic and foetal medicine center taking pregnant women who, early on, have problems
in seeing their pregnancy through to term and therefore require supervision and
appropriate care. The IPP also encourages transfers in utero. Mothers whose foetus
requires highly specialised neonatal monitoring can thus leave their maternity hospital to
give birth locally with the members of a paediatric intensive care team present. These
guidelines are part of the main thrust of the government's 1994 perinatal oprogram, the
particular aim of which is to reduce the mortality rate of foetuses, infants and mothers
in France, which still is far too high.
A group of satellite services revolves around
the hard obstetric neonatal core with a view to providing consistent care. Among these is
a huge technical platform of laboratories. 'Some of them service our clinics and provide
them with analyses they need to specify or confirm current treatment. Others respond in
particular to external requests for examinations, such as serology tests and research into
toxoplasmosis', Daniele Beaune sums up.
All types of samplings, analyses and
measurements are carried out through the biochemistry, bacteriology, cytogenetic,
molecular biology and hematology laboratories to allow preventive action, early detection,
such as Down's Syndrome, appropriate care and treatment and even foetal postmortems.
A nebula service: Along the same lines, a
milk bank authorizes the collection, storage, teting and pasteurization of 5,500 liters of
breast milk per year. This milk is distributed to mothers who are short of their own
breast milk in the region's hospitals.
Since support for families is meant to be
comprehensive paedopsychiatric structures have also been set up. A sixteen-bed outpatient
clinic therefore accommodates children up to the age of eight, who have important
developmental, psychotic or autistic problems, and it involves parents closely in the work
it does.
An early action community health centers
operates, for its part, in the areas of prevention and monitoring aimed at young children
handicaps: motor disabilities in the cerebrum, growth retardation, Down's Syndrome, mental
and emotional disorders. The term of pediatricians, psychologists, paediatric nurses,
social workers, physiotherapists, psychomotor therapists and speech therapists all work,
of course, in conjunction with the neonatal center where premature or hospitalized infants
at the IPP are involved.
The IPPs desire to pass on its skills does
not stop there. True to its prime purpose of education, it prepares some ninety nurses
each year in its school for the State Paediatric Nursing Diploma. The Institute, moreover,
helps with the preparation of various qualifications, such as diploma in specialist
paediatric studies, the university degree in ultrasound scanning and in prenatal
psychiatry. For specific training courses it brings in biologists, midwives social workers
and foreign doctors. .One way of promoting its know-how and helping others to learn to
face up to newborn babies in distress, as well as the mental and emotional anguish of
their parents. Label France, French embassy in Kathmandu. |
