International Union Against Tuberculosis & Lung Disease 1^st Asia Pacific Region (IUATLD-APR) Conference 2007 was held in Kuala Lumpur from August 2^nd to 5^th 2007. In the pre-congress workshop, reports on national tuberculosis control programs were presented by 6 countries with a high TB burden (Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam). Five countries with an intermediate TB burden (Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, and Singapore) and one country with a low TB burden (Australia) presented the same themes. Following the workshop, some very interesting papers were presented by India, South Africa, Cambodia and New Zealand.

　I collected the historical statistics on tuberculosis from all of these countries (since 1990) using WHO WEB Database of Communicable Diseases, and compared these data with historical statistics of tuberculosis in Japan (Kekkakutoukeisouran). This comparison provided interesting results as shown below. Some discussions and summaries are presented in this paper.

1. WHO Database of Communicable Disease appears to have some problems in collecting raw data.

2. Compared with the history of tuberculosis control in Japan, Asian countries do not seem to be able to provide successful tuberculosis treatmenta acording to the data from WHO Database.

3. The tuberculosis pandemic in South Africa is quite a serious public health problem.

4. Big differences in the tuberculosis epidemic conditions between Asian countries have an impact on Asian Pacific international relations.

　Sojourner Truth, born "Isabella," was a nineteenth-century ex-slave orator and reformer whose causes included both antislavery and woman suffrage. She has been well-known to feminists due to her saying, “Ain't I a Woman?”, but now Truth has won immortality among people in general as a strong-willed, untiring orator. I believe what made her immortal was her work of mediating different groups of people, such as men and women, the white and the black, radicals and moderates. As an orator, she mediated an audience with her eloquence, wit, and religious faith.

　First, Truth's eloquence paradoxically came from her illiteracy, which forced her to develop the ability to be an engaging orator who could instantly ascertain what should be said on the pulpit without any script. As she declared, "I don't read such small stuff as leters, I read men and nations." She could draw on her own lived experience in a political context. Her illiteracy also authenticates her experience as an ex-slave.

　Second, Truth was an entertainer. Her speeches began with singing a hymn, and then she elicited applauses and laughter from an audience. She could cleverly respond to hecklers with wit and jokes. Her sense of humor and singing made her a favorite, both in public and in private.

　Finally, her faith was something that connected people of all colors. She could quote the Bible whenever she chose, because she learned it from children, who would read her any passage as often as she wished. Thus, she orally mastered the Scriptures, applied the gospel to her lived experience, and then orally delivered the truth to an audience. Her wide knowledge of the Bible was vital to her fame as an orator.

　Despite the fact that she was an illiterate ex-slave woman, Sojourner Truth's name survives in history, and she has become a "legend." With her eloquence, wit and faith, Truth inspired - and continues to inspire - people, mediating those with different interests.

　This article was analyzed based on 20 females' longitudinal data which were gathered at 4 time points from their twenties to thirties and were consisted of their descriptions of their own change and questionnaire about IWM on each time point and their retrospective narrative in interview in their thirties. The purpose is to examine 1) the relationship between the change of IWM scores and the change of affirmative degree of recollections of corresponding time, and 2) the relationship between description of own change on those days and the change which was extracted from retrospective narrative in their thirties.

　The results were as follows; 1) there were relationship between the change of IWM scores and the type of description of their own change(whether positive or negative), 2) correspondence was not high between the type of description of own change on those days and the type of change through recollections of corresponding time in their thirties, 3) as to contents of change, there were some who have consistency and their own theme, and some who don't. There were some whose present theme effects the content of change in past.

Purpose: To clarify the problems with convalescence perceived by patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE patients) and the factors associated with them.

Method: A self-reporting questionnaire survey was conducted on 162 SLE patients visiting university hospitals in the metropolis. The questionnaire contained 16 questions related to the perceived problems with convalescence and the factors associated with them; 116 valid responses were analyzed.

Results:

1. The characteristics of the subjects enrolled in this study were as follows: average age, 46.8 years; 90% of the subjects were females, indicating a large gender difference; the disease duration was five years or longer; most of the subjects were occupied as housewives or non-permanent employees; a significant proportion was receiving specified-disease medical expense aid. In terms of self-care activities, a high percentage of the patients visited the hospital to undergo routine medical examinations and regularly took the prescribed medications.

2. Among the perceived problems with convalescence, in a high proportion of the cases, they were related to the uncertainty of the clinical course of the disease; e.g., anxieties about the pattern of disease progression and about the future. From the answers to Item 16 focusing on factor analysis of our questionnaire, four factors were extracted; [psychological stress associated with convalescence], [pain caused by physical symptoms], [anxiety about changes in appearance], and [struggle against economic suffering and the role in society].

3. The G-P analysis of perceived problems with convalescence revealed significant differences between each two groups in the total scores as well as the scores for the four factors. In addition, the results suggested that the age, gender, presence/absence of symptoms and the QOL were factors that were significantly related to the perceived problems with convalescence.

Discussion: A strong correlation was observed between the problems with convalescence perceived by the patients and the QOL; therefore, it is suggested that an attempt to alleviate perceived problems with convalescence is essential to sustain and improve SLE patients' QOL.