This study investigates and presents the narratives of Taiwanese women who have reached the young-old stage. The narrative interview method was used for data collection from 12 Taiwanese women. After analysing the recurring themes emerging from the women's life histories, it is found that the meanings of these Taiwanese women's narratives could not be finalised according to traditional Confucian norms. These women rebelled, resisted, and resumed authorship to make changes to their lives in a patriarchal society. The women were reflexive, and had constant struggles. The findings also reveal a prominent characteristic of Taiwanese culture that emphasises relationships. The women were able to pursue their dreams to involve themselves in self-care, leisure, aesthetic activities, and classes for their personal growth and pleasure.
Evidence based on average patient data, which occupies most of our present day information databases, does not fulfil the needs of individual patient-centred health care. In spite of the unprecedented expansion in medical information we still do not have the types of information required to allow us to tailor optimal care for a given individual patient. As our current information is chiefly provided in disconnected silos, we need an information system that can seamlessly integrate different types of information to meet diverse user group needs. Groups of certain individual medical learners namely patients, medical students and health professionals share the patient's need to increasingly interact with and seek knowledge and solutions offered by others (individual medical learners) who have the lived experiences that they would benefit to access and learn from. A web-based user-driven learning solution may be a stepping-stone to address the present problem of information oversupply in medicine that mostly remains underutilized, as it doesn't meet the needs of the individual patient and health professional user. The key to its success would be to relax central control and make local trust and strategic health workers feel more engaged in the project such that it is truly user-driven.
We review evidence for effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, and coverage of antiretroviral therapy (ART) for injecting drug users (IDUs) infected with HIV, with particular attention to low-income and middle-income countries. In these countries, nearly half (47%) of all IDUs infected with HIV are in five nations--China, Vietnam, Russia, Ukraine, and Malaysia. In all five countries, IDU access to ART is disproportionately low, and systemic and structural obstacles restrict treatment access. IDUs are 67% of cumulative HIV cases in these countries, but only 25% of those receiving ART. Integration of ART with opioid substitution and tuberculosis treatment, increased peer engagement in treatment delivery, and reform of harmful policies--including police use of drug-user registries, detention of drug users in centres offering no evidence-based treatment, and imprisonment for possession of drugs for personal use--are needed to improve ART coverage of IDUs.