1,721,016 research outputs found
Prevalence of trachoma and risk factors for disease in Benue State, Nigeria
Get PDFBackground: Trachoma is a common contagious bacterial eye infection caused by Chlamydia trachomatis serovariants A, B, Ba or C. It is the leading infectious cause of blindness worldwide and is responsible for about 3% of global blindness. World Health Organization (WHO) reports suggest that of the 2.2 million people who have been rendered visually impaired worldwide by trachoma, 1.2 million are irreversibly blind while an additional 7.3 million people are suffering from trachomatous trichiasis (TT) and are at risk of developing blindness. According to WHO 2007 reports, globally about 84 million people suffer from active trachoma while an estimated 299 million people still live in trachoma endemic districts. In order to eliminate trachoma as a public health problem, The Global Trachoma Mapping Project (GTMP) was initiated on 23 July 2012 as a first step in generating population-level prevalence estimates of the disease so as to determine the need for intervention. Between 2013 and 2015, the GTMP mapped suspected endemic districts including Benue state of Nigeria. This current study took advantage of this data to generate prevalence information on Trachomatous inflammation Follicular (TF) and Trichiasis for Benue state and to describe the some of the household risk factors associated with the disease. The thesis is structured in three parts 0(Preamble), A (Protocol), B (Literature Review), C (Article) and D (Appendix).
Methods: A two-stage cluster random sampling technique was utilized in a population based prevalence survey to generate estimates for TF and Trichiasis.
Results: Overall unadjusted prevalence of TF among persons 1-9 years was 2.00% (95% CI: 1.20 – 2.98) and that of trichiasis among persons ≥15 years was 0.11% (95% CI 0.06 – 0.12). Trichiasis was more prevalent among adult women 0.05% (95% CI: 0.03 – 0.07) compared to males 0.03 % (95% CI: 0.02 – 0.05), (p=0.13). LGA-level prevalence of TF and Trichiasis among persons 1-9 years and persons ≥15 years ranged from 0.30% (95% CI: 0.1–0.5) to 5.30% (95% CI: 3.30–7.70) and 0.00% to 0.35% (95% CI: 0.12–0.50) respectively. Two LGAs had trichiasis prevalence above 0.2%. TF prevalence was between 5% and 9.9% in 2 LGAs. The common risk factors identified included age, sex, inaccessibility to water and latrine facility. Adults ≥15 years were 8.94(95%CI: 2.79 – 29.64) times more likely to have trichiasis compared to persons between 1-9 years of age.
Conclusion: Trachoma was found to be a public health problem in 3 LGAs of Benue state. One round of mass antibiotic distribution will be required in 2 LGAs. With an estimated trichiasis backlog of 1,064, about 173 individuals with trichiasis needed to be managed to reduce the prevalence to less than the elimination threshold
Health System Analysis of Diabetes and Diabetic Retinopathy Services in Nigeria – The Case of Akwa Ibom State
Get PDFThis research project, undertaken for a MPH dissertation investigated and analysed the situation of diabetes and diabetic retinopathy services and management systems in four (4) government hospitals in Akwa Ibom State Nigeria using the World Health Organisation (WHO) Tool for the Assessment of Diabetic Retinopathy and Diabetes Management Systems (TADDS). Part A is the research protocol, which explains the background and the key components of this research study. This is a cross sectional descriptive case study involving primary data collection. We conducted the case study using the WHO TADDS to survey health personnel involved in the management of diabetes mellitus (DM) and diabetic retinopathy (DR) in four (4) government hospitals in Akwa Ibom State. Concurrently, semi-structured interviews were conducted with key informants to investigate and analyse the situation of DM and DR services in Akwa Ibom State in Nigeria. Part B is a structured literature review of published articles, online reports, and summaries related to DR. It covers the review of scientific evidence (clinical overview) about the aetiology and prevention of DR and the known risk factors; the review of epidemiological evidence on DM and DR globally and in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA); and the review of the evidence on effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of public health and health system interventions for the prevention and management of DR. Part C is the journal-ready manuscript. In this part, the format of the journal Ophthalmic Epidemiology was used to present the research project and its main findings. Part D contains all the relevant appendices used during the research project
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Extracapsular cataract extraction with intraocular lens implantation in leprosy and non-leprosy patients: visual outcome and complications
No full textCataract is the leading cause of blindness in leprosy patients. Sight restoration to blind leprosy patients prevents them from injuring their anaesthetic limbs. The visual outcome and complications of extracapsular cataract extraction with intraocular lens implant in 42 leprosy and 91 non-leprosy patients were compared. The mean age of the study population was 57.1 years; that of non-leprosy patients was 57.4 years while that of leprosy patients was 56.5 years. The male to female ratio was 1:1 — in the non-leprosy group, the ratio was 1.2:1 and in the leprosy group it was 1:1.2. The ocular lesions seen before surgery and the complications of surgery were comparable in the two groups of patients. Visual outcome between the two groups was similar — 4.3% of the non-leprosy and 4.8% of the leprosy patients had poor visual outcome. With the introduction of the multidrug therapy, the causes of cataract, complications and short-term visual outcome of extracapsular cataract extraction with intraocular lens implant in leprosy and non-leprosy patients are similar. Nigerian Journal of Ophthalmology Vol. 14(1) 2006: 9-1
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
- …
