INTRODUCTION: In this second of two articles on the history of professionalisation of social work in Aotearoa New Zealand, consideration is given to the more recent coalescing of forces from the 1990s to the initial implementation of the Social Workers Registration Act (2003), which led to our country’s example of a social work regulation project.APPROACH: This critical consideration of social work regulation in Aotearoa New Zealand situates it within the international social work professionalisation context alongside the national context. Consideration is given to the place of leadership and buy-in from the profession, political sponsorship, cultural considerations, and another ministerial review. Overlaying this, an examination of concepts of public trust, respect, and confidence in professions such as social work, are linked to crises of trust in professions in general, and placed within the current neoliberal, market-driven environment in which this project is anchored.CONCLUSION: The literature serves to document the history of social work regulation in Aotearoa New Zealand and as background for an ongoing research project which aims to uncover interests at work and interrogate the legitimacy of those interests, while enabling the voices of key actors from the time to surface, be explored, and be recorded.
Following the Rena grounding and oil spill in the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand, an Incident Command Centre was established which, among other tasks, coordinated a volunteer clean‐up effort. We interviewed volunteers and organisers to gain insight into the efficacy of the volunteer coordination effort. Volunteers praised the system of communication and the involvement of indigenous groups. They expressed a desire for better training, more flexibility and community autonomy, a quicker uptake of volunteer support, and the use of social media. Locating the Incident Command Centre in a single site aided interaction between experts, and the sharing of resources. Overall, the volunteer coordination was considered a success.
We explore the experiences of people who volunteer to help remediate the effects of non‐natural environmental disasters. Following the grounding of the Rena, volunteers were engaged to clean up the resulting oil spill on the beaches of Tauranga, New Zealand. Volunteers were later invited to respond to an online questionnaire about their experiences. More women than men responded, and respondents tended to be older, and engaged in the paid workforce or retired. Greater membership in community organizations was associated with a greater participation in clean‐up events. Respondents were positive about the experience, and were more positive when they had actually participated in a clean‐up event, with positivity remaining high even after multiple volunteer occasions. Recommendations are made for increasing volunteer participation.
We have tested the hypothesis that 2,4-diamino-6-hydroxymethyl-pteridine (DAP), 2,4-diaminopteroic acid (DAPA), and 2,4 diamino-N10-methyl-pteroic acid (DAMPA) could be converted into aminopterin (from DAP and DAPA) and methotrexate (from DAMPA), both of which are potent inhibitors of dihydrofolate reductase, a proven drug target for Plasmodium falciparum. DAP, DAPA, and DAMPA inhibited parasite growth in the micromolar range; DAMPA was the most active, with 50% inhibitory concentrations in vitro of 446 ng/ml against the antifolate-sensitive strain and 812 ng/ml against the highly resistant strain under physiological folate conditions. DAMPA potentiates the activity of the sulfone dapsone, an inhibitor of dihydropteroate synthase, but not that of chlorcycloguanil, a known inhibitor of dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR). Experiments with a Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain dependent upon the P. falciparum DHFR enzyme showed that DHFR is a target of DAMPA in that system. We hypothesize that DAMPA is converted to methotrexate by the parasite dihydrofolate synthase, which explains the synergy of DAMPA with dapsone but not with chlorcycloguanil. This de novo synthesis will not occur in the host, since it lacks the complete folate pathway. If this hypothesis holds true, the de novo synthesis of the toxic compounds could be used as a framework for the search for novel potent antimalarial antifolates.Chemotherapy remains one of the most important tools for the management of falciparum malaria. However, malaria control is hampered by the emergence and spread of parasites resistant to almost all available antimalarial drugs. This situation is critical in Africa as a result of the spread of resistance to the combination sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine, an inexpensive treatment widely used in African countries (9, 16-18, 25, 28). As an alternative, a number of combinations with artemisinins are being recommended and implemented, but questions about the cost and the adequacy of the supply of artemisinins and the intrinsic ability of Plasmodium falciparum to select drug-resistant parasite populations underline the need to identify novel agents.
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