Background & Objective: Most of the acute poisonings are mild with no complication but in some rare cases they can be life threatening. About 70% of acute poisoning happens in children. More than 90% of these toxic exposures are incidental and easily preventable. The factors leading to acute poisoning are variable based on cultural and socioeconomic differences among the population. The increasing production and distribution of new drugs and chemicals change the etiologic factors. This study was conducted to investigate common acute poisonings and their victims in Tabriz.

 Methods: In this retrospective study 306 cases of acute poisoning were reviewed from April 1999 to March 2002, in Tabriz Pediatric Medical Center. The factors that were considered included: age, gender, manner (incidental versus intentional), agents route of intoxication, residential area (rural versus urban), duration of admission, clinical presentation, date of first admission and mortality.

 Results: 306 patients (53.3% male and 46.7% female) were studied in this research. Most of the cases (31%) were 1-2 years old, and the fewest (1.3%) were under 6 months of age. About 95% of the cases were incidental, and 5% intentional suicide attempts among children above 10 years of age. 63% of the subjects were living in Tabriz, 29.5% of them were from rural areas and the rest (7.5%) were dwelling small towns. Poisons in the order of prevalence included: drugs (45.5%), hydrocarbons (26%), organo phosphates (7%), atropinic material and datura intoxication (6%), Rodenticides (3.6%), Opiates (2.9%), Carbon monoxide (2.2%) and alcohol, mushrooms, animal bites, acids & alkalines (6.8%). Average duration of hospitalization was 2 days and the total mortality rate was 3 cases.

 Conclusions: The most common etiologic factor was drug poisoning followed by hydrocarbons as the second most prevalent factor in this regard. It seems that mass media especially TV programs can play a key role to increase the public knowledge about this issue.

 Background & Objective: The nationwide amblyopia prevention program is performed by prevention deputy of welfare organization every year. In this analytic report practical results of screening program in 1998-2001 were presented and compared with similar findings in other countries. The results were also compared with the findings of previous similar researches in Iran.

  Methods : The amblyopia screening program was performed on all 3-65 year-old children in day-care centers as well as those referring to the visual acuity measuring centers. The first examination was accomplished by trainers. In the second step doubtful cases were referred to optometrist by trainers and amblyopia was diagnosed by an optometrist and confirmed by an eye specialist after excluding organic causes.

 Results: 608 out of 8427(7.21%) children examined by trainers in 2001 were referred to an optometrist because of suspected visual disorders. The prevalence of amblyopia in different cities of Ardabil province was 2%-15%. The figures in 2000-2001 were 10% (Rangs=1%-13%), respectively. In 1998 it was 11% (Range =5%-13%). In the second phase of amblyopia plan the prevalence of visual problems was estimated about 21%, 45%, 47%, and 74% in 1998-2001, respectively. In the third phase of the plan the amblyopia prevalence for children examined by eye-specialist in 1999-2001 were 1.6%, 1.41% and 1.25% respectively.

 Conclusions: In this research the prevalence of amblyopia was found to be 1.42% which has a conformity with the findings of other countries. Moreover, the higher variation in the estimation of the prevalence of visual disorders in this province requires further comparative researches.

 Background & Objectives:�Understanding children’s behavior and its affecting factors is the foundation for practicing dentistry for children effectively and, at the same time instilling a positive dental attitude into them. A number of studies have been done in this regard during the last three decades. This study is another attempt to find out proper strategies in order to control and optimize the diagnostic and trearment measures as well as to investigate the effect of mothers ’ personality characteristics on children ’ s behavior.

 Methods: The sample consisted of 104 randomly selected children (53 boys and 51 girls) at the age of 3 to 6 together with their mothers. The children had no previous dental experiences and no mental or physical disabilities entailing special care. Children’s behavior was assessed during three different dental visits according to Frankle ’ s Behavioral Rating Scale, in which four distinctive scales, namely absolutely negative, negative, positive and absolutely positive were precisely defined and scaled. The first visit was dental examination, the second was fluoride therapy and the last one was restorative dental treatment. Meanwhile, their mothers ’ personalities were determined through an interview conducted by a psychiatrist and based on DSMIV criteria and using General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) these personality characteristics were categorized in four groups: Normal, Depressed, Anxious and Obsessional.

 Results:�The findings revealed that 12.5% of children had no cooperation during 3 visits, most of whom were 3 to 4 years old. The difference was significant compared to 4-5 and 5-6 year old children (p<0.05). In addition, sex did not influence children ’ s behavior. This study showed that children of mothers with obsessional personality were the most cooperative ones during the 3 visits compared to mothers with other personality characteristics. This difference was statistically significant at the first visit, (p<0.05).

  Conclusion: Mother ’ s personality has the strongest effect on children’s behavior during the first dental visit.

 Background & Objectives: Cryptosporidium is a coccidial protozoa parasite belonging to subphylum of Apicomplexa. Although it is globally widespread and its species exist all over the world, this parasite was unknown until several years ago. Nowadays it is considered as an important infective agent in Immunocompromised hosts especially patients with AIDS. Due to high mortality rate of this infection in immunocompromised and cancerous patients and because of the popularity of Urmia as one of the animal husbandry regions in Iran and since this disease is likely to transfer from animals to human beings this study was conducted to determine the rate of contamination with this parasite.

 Methods: This case-control study was performed on 72 children (case) with cancer who referred to oncology clinic of Urmia Imam Hospital during 2001. Another 30 children with normal immune system were selected as controls. To determine the amount of contamination with parasite, two fecal specimens were collected from each patient. After being concentrated with Formalin–Ether, these specimens were examined using modified acid fast method.

 Results: Three cases of�cryptosporidiosis was seen in the patients (4.16%). Of these, there were 2 patients from the rural area and 1 from urban region. There was no significant relationship between the presence of cryptosporidiosis and living in rural or urban areas.

 Conclusion: Cryptosporidium was detected in three cases of the patients under study who were undertaking chemotherapy. However since the population under study was small, no statistically significant relationship was found between being immunocompromised and contamination with parasite.

 Background and Objectives: Children are one of the most vulnerable groups of society. Any qualitative and quantitative problem in offering health services to them is a main health and social problem. Cooperative health centers for the first time in Iran were established in East Azerbaijan as a proper strategy for solving health problems and limitations of expansion of government health centers. This study was conducted to evaluate their quality of services to children under one year old in comparison with governmental health centers.

 Methods: This descriptive and cross-sectional study was done on 7 cooperative health centers and 14 neighboring government health centers selected by convenience method. Data were collected by filling checklists obtained from observation of services offered to these children by healthcare personnel as well as studying the children's health records. Descriptive (absolute and percent frequency distribution, mean and standard deviation) and inferential (independent samples t-test) statistics were used for analyzing the data.

 Results: The findings showed that the quality of health care for children under one was good (85.71%) in cooperative centers and moderate (78.57%) in government health centers and their statistical difference was significant (P=0.002). In terms of services about growth monitoring of child, nutrition of infant and mothers' education, cooperative health centers had better practice compared to government health centers (P= 0.001, 0.007and 0.023respectively). Regarding the equipment both centers had good facilities (85.71%) and there was no statistically significant difference between them (P= 0.912).

 Conclusion: The results showed that, in most cases, the quality of health care given to children under one was good in cooperative health centers and moderate in government centers. This optimum performance of cooperative centers can encourage health care authorities to plan for the expansion of such centers to compensate for the deficiencies of health services especially in children under one year old.

 Background & Objective: Visceral leishmaniasis is a reticulo endothelia system and it is known as 'black fever' by Indians. According to WHO every year there are 500 thousand new cases of it in the world. The province of Ardabil, with 25-40% from all the country's leishmaniasis has a major part in the country and is considered as one of the main focuses in Iran. Due to its importance, this study was done to identify clinical signs and demographic characteristics of the patients.

 Methods: This was a descriptive cross-sectional study which was done retrospectively 110 children who were hospitalized in three different active hospitals between 1375-1382 entered in this study. Disease definition include parasite detection in bone marrow aspivation or special clinical signs (fever, spleenomegal, pansytopenia and weight loss) in addition direct agglutination test was positive. The samples were investigated in terms of demographic information. Place of living, clinical signs and the length of time between the symptoms of the disease and its diagnosis. To get to the results, simple descriptive statistics was used. 37.8% of the patients were diagnosed from the beginning of symptoms with in a month.

 Results: There were 56.4% boys and 43.6% girls of all the 110 children. DAT test was done in 97 patients which was positive in 91 cases (minimum positive titer ¹/₄₀₀). In 42 patients biopsy and bone marrow aspiration was done which was positive in 26 cases (lishman body detection). The age of the patients was 4 months -14 years. The most common findings were fever 97.3% and anorexia 97.1%. There was anemia in 90% thrombocytopenia in 60.8% and leukopenia in 24.8%. There was death in 6 patients (5.5%) and unresponsiveness to the treatment in 3 cases (2.7%).

 Conclusion: The results of the present study nearly corresponds to those of other studies. The main vulnerable community of visceral lieshmaniasis are mainly children. In order to decrease the mortality and morbidity its early diagnosis is essential. It is necessary that the physicians working in endemic regions be familiar enough with the disease.