1,721,006 research outputs found
Epidemiology of dengue in Bhutan
No full textDengue has been rapidly spreading worldwide, resulting in higher morbidity than other vector-borne viral diseases. The majority of this burden is borne by the South-East Asia Region of the World Health Organization (WHO-SEAR). Bhutan is a lower-middle-income country located in the WHO-SEAR. After the first documented outbreak in 2004, dengue has gradually expanded its geographical range with a concomitant increase in incidence and severity. The aim of my research was to describe the epidemiological characteristics of dengue in Bhutan.
Member countries in the WHO-SEAR have become hyper-endemic with the co-circulation of multiple dengue virus (DENV) serotypes. Although case fatalities have decreased steadily, dengue incidence has increased dramatically over the past decade in the region. As 0.5%-5% of the infection progresses to severe dengue including deaths, a meta-analysis was conducted to identify the risk factors of the disease. Children (odds ratio [OR]: 1.96; 95% CI: 1.22, 3.13), patients with secondary infection (OR: 3.23; 95% CI: 2.28, 4.57), and patients with pre-existing co-morbidities such as diabetes (OR: 2.88; 95% CI: 1.72, 4.81) and renal disease (OR: 4.54; 95% CI: 1.55, 13.31) were shown to have an increased risk for severe dengue. The study also corroborated the WHO's recommendation to monitor seven warning signs of severe dengue. However, the current surveillance system in Bhutan and other countries in the WHO-SEAR does not provide adequate information for early case detection and for effective management of dengue due to inadequate reporting. Additionally, vector surveillance was predominantly carried out using larval indices without routinely employing adult mosquito sampling.
To explore the spatio-temporal pattern of dengue incidence, an ecological study was conducted in a Bayesian framework. Individuals aged >14 years (relative risk [RR]: 0.471, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.378-0.582) and temperature (RR: 1.625, 95% CI: 1.493-1.772) were positively associated with dengue incidence, while normalised difference vegetation index [NDVI] (RR: 0.515, 95% CI: 0.353-0.748) was negatively associated with dengue incidence. Bhutan experienced the worst dengue epidemic in 2019, which resulted in cases greater than the combined total cases in all the previous years. Dengue expanded from six to 44 sub-districts across 19 districts. The effective reproduction number was 30.
A multicriteria decision-making analysis (MCDA) was used to develop a vulnerability map of dengue at a fine spatial resolution. Interestingly, this study pointed out new geographical locations including the nation's capital, as being at risk of dengue.
An online survey revealed critical gaps in the clinical management of dengue amongst medical practitioners (MPs). Major gaps included limited knowledge about the peak activity of feeding time of the dengue vector, the use of clinical warning signs of severe dengue for monitoring dengue patients, the use of NS1 antigen for early diagnosis, and the clinical significance of hematological parameters.
This thesis illustrates the contemporary epidemiology of dengue in Bhutan and identified ecological, clinical, and demographic risk factors of dengue transmission. This information will be crucial for forward planning of dengue prevention and control by the public health authorities in the country
Evaluating Country Performance After Transitioning From Gavi Assistance: An Applied Synthetic Control Analysis
No full textInternational audienceDespite context-specific differences in vaccination coverage among countries after transitioning from Gavi assistance, most countries successfully maintained or further improved key outcomes compared to their expected performance. Unstable or decreasing vaccination coverage before becoming fully self-financing may be considered risk indicators, particularly among countries facing governance challenges. Annual fluctuations in vaccination coverage may have a limited impact on the overall trajectory of post-neonatal mortality when the rate is relatively low
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
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
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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