To-date, the dominant approach to improving farm animal welfare has consisted of a combination of voluntary improvements undertaken by farmers and the tightening of legal requirements. However, history suggests that there is a limit to the improvements capable of being secured by this approach. In this paper, it is argued that economic principles can and should have an important role when new, market-driven and other approaches are set up to improve farm animal welfare. The paper focuses on two ways in which economic principles can improve analyses of animal welfare. The first is by helping to define priorities as to which aspects of animal welfare should be promoted. Here, economic approaches can be used to capture and synthesise the perspectives of all the stakeholders, including the animals, in a transparent and systematic way. The second way is by helping to ensure that incentives are set up in the right way. Where the benefits and costs of improving animal welfare are initially distributed unevenly across stakeholders so that a socially desirable situation will not develop automatically, or be implemented, suitable economic principles may help to create incentives which correct this situation. Thus, if society is to achieve its goal of improving animal welfare, scholars from different disciplines should collaborate in identifying animal needs, assessing stakeholder preferences, making priorities transparent and providing incentives that make solutions realistically attainable.

In Abbey National Building Society v Cann, the House of Lords held that a mortgagee who has funded the purchase of the mortgaged title to land (an “acquisition creditor”) has a right over the land that binds any other grantee of the purchaser. This article considers the basis for and limits of this principle, in light of its origins. It argues that the cases treat the lender's financial contribution as an independent source of an equitable interest in the purchased asset, rather than as a reason why the grant in favour of the lender takes effect earlier in time than the grant in favour of any third party. This has important and desirable consequences for the scope of the principle, rendering it more coherent with general principles of English property law and allowing for an apportionment solution in some situations involving co-contributors to acquisition.

This is the second of a two-part profile on mental healthcare in Bangladesh. It describes the state of mental health research in the country and presents a set of priorities for addressing improvements to the fundamental gaps in mental healthcare highlighted in part 1. Focus on building infrastructure for public mental health facilities, training skilled mental health professionals, adequate distribution of financial resources and addressing stigma are all priorities that will contribute to significantly improving mental healthcare in Bangladesh.

Mental health is a significant factor for a sound and productive life; nevertheless, mental disorders do not often receive adequate research attention and are not addressed as a serious public health issue in countries such as Bangladesh. Part 1 of this two-part profile describes the current situation of mental health in Bangladesh in its wider sociocultural context, outlining existing policies and highlighting mental illness as a neglected healthcare problem in the country using a narrative synthesis method. The prevalence of mental disorders is very high and augmented in nature among different population groups in Bangladesh. A lack of public mental health facilities, scarcity of skilled mental health professionals, insufficient financial resource distribution, inadequately stewarded mental health policies and stigma contribute to making current mental healthcare significantly inadequate in Bangladesh. The country has few community care facilities for psychiatric patients. Furthermore, the current mental health expenditure by the Bangladeshi government is only 0.44% of the total health budget. Less than 0.11% of the population has access to free essential psychotropic medications.

Objectives: The aim of this study was to explore the needs and requirements of decision makers in our regional healthcare system for health technology assessment (HTA) products to support portfolio development planning for a new HTA agency in Madrid, Spain.

Methods: A Delphi study was conducted during 2003. Questionnaires were developed based on a review of products and services offered by other agency members of the International Network of Agencies for Health Technology Assessment, and included preference and prioritization questions to evaluate twenty-two different products and services. The initial Delphi panel involved eighty-seven experts from twenty-one public hospitals, eleven primary healthcare centers, six private hospitals, and eight departments of the Regional Ministry of Health of the Community of Madrid.

Results: The global participation rate was 83.9 percent. Ten of the twenty-two possible products were rated of high interest by more than 80 percent of respondents. Important differences in preferences and priorities were detected across different settings. Public hospitals and primary healthcare centers shared a more “micro” perspective, preferring classic technology-centered HTA products, whereas private hospitals and Ministry representatives demanded more “macro” products and services such as organizational model and information system assessments.

Conclusions: The high participation rate supports the representativeness of the results for our regional context. The strategic development of an HTA portfolio based on decision makers’ needs and requirements as identified in this type of exercise should help achieve a better impact on policy development and decision making.

This Panel Session consisted of three country reports (Bagladesh, Bhutan, and Myanmar) and the common issues identified during the Panel discussions relative to water-related hazards and events in the Southeast Asia Region. The primary event discussed regardless of the hazards encountered was flooding. The merits of the responses generated in Bangladesh before, during, and following the 2004 floods provide evidence of what can be accomplished in community and national levels of preparedness.

Many key issues arose in the discussions: (1) command and control systems and SOPs; (2) ready resources; (3) public information and education and human resource development; (4) community-level preparedness; (5) accessibility to health care; (6) increased focus on disease prevention and control; (7) management of dead bodies; (8) need for a legal framework; (9) funding and the management of funds; and (10) relationships with themedia.

We review the behavioural needs, priorities and preferences of laying hens for increased space, perching, nesting, foraging and dustbathing behaviour. Hens make full use of and may work to gain access to perches, however it is not yet known how perching ranks in comparison with otherbehaviours. Laying hens appearto have an instinctive need to perform pre-laying (nest-building) behaviour and have a strong preference for a discrete, enclosed nest site, for which they will work hard to gain access as oviposition approaches. Access to a nest site is a high-ranking priority for laying hens, preferred over food at this time. Foraging is a behavioural need, with peat, sand and wood shavings preferred substrates in choice experiments. There is no reduction in time spent foraging when a cost is imposed, nor when feed is freely available. Dustbathing is currently viewed as a behavioural need, as the extent to which hens value dustbathing is not known. Bird preferences for space are complex and confounded by interactions between group size and stocking density. There is some evidence that priority for space varies during the day and increases when the total space available to a group of birds is restricted, and that greater priority is given to space than to small group size. The presence of apparently purposeless behaviour, of high levels of aggression or redirected behaviours such as feather pecking and cannibalism are indicators that the housing system is not meeting the behavioural needs of the hens and hence is not satisfactory forbird welfare.

This Summary Report was prepared for Agenda item 13.3 for the meeting of the World Health Assembly convened at the World Health Organizationation (WHO) Headquarters in Geneva, Switzwitzerland on 20 May 2005. It was in part, prepared from the Reports generaged by the Conference, Health Actions in Relation to Crises and Disasters, convened by the World Health Organization in Phuket, Thailand, 04–06 May 2005.

We develop and apply a four-dimensional priority-setting process for the conservation of threatened birds in Venezuela. The axes that we consider are extinction risk, degree of endemicity, taxonomic uniqueness and public appeal. Alhough the first three are relatively objective measures of biological attributes, the last one is a subjective judgement of the likelihood that conservation actions in favour of a species may succeed. By grouping higher priority species according to their geographical distribution within Venezuela, we generate a list of the top priorities to save the country's threatened birds, both species- and bioregion-based. The highest priority species are northern-helmeted curassow Pauxi pauxi, Andean condor Vultur gryphus, red siskin Carduelis cucullata and plain-flanked rail Rallus wetmorei, followed by eight high priority birds, wattled guan Aburria aburri, yellow-shouldered parrot Amazona barbadensis, scissor-tailed hummingbird Hylonympha macrocerca, rusty-faced parrot Hapalopsittaca amazonina, northern screamer Chauna chavaria, torrent duck Merganetta armata, rusty-flanked crake Laterallus levraudi, and military macaw Ara militaris. Northern Venezuela stands out as a significantly higher conservation priority than the south. The Andean Cordillera, Central Coastal Cordillera, Paria Peninsula-Turimiquire Massif Complex, and Sierra de Perijá are the highest priority bioregions, followed by Lara-Falcón Arid Lands and Maracaibo Lake Basin. A final set of combined priorities was determined by integrating all top ranking species and bioregions. Our approach is relatively simple and readily applicable to other taxa and regions.