The Ongoing Ebola Epidemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: Contributing Factors that have Influenced Disease Control

Ebolavirus outbreaks and epidemics have affected regions of Africa since its discovery in 1976. Presently, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is experiencing its tenth and largest outbreak of Ebolavirus, infecting nearly 3,432 individuals and causing 2,253 deaths. First declared an official outbreak on August 1, 2018, the DRC Ministry of Health (MOH) and other global health institutions are having difficulties in controlling the spread of infection due to community resistance and mistrust, poor healthcare infrastructures, political conflict, civil unrest, and porous geographic boundaries. A literature review and analysis were performed to evaluate contributing factors to the ongoing outbreak in the DRC. In this essay, I outline the contributing factors that have led to the continuity of the ebolavirus epidemic in the DRC and predict long-term effects it may have on the country. By analyzing up-to-date World Health Organization (WHO) situation reports, journal articles, and newspaper reports, I have found that in order to sufficiently control the outbreak, continued surveillance and contact tracing is required in combination with building community trust and transparency. It is important to understand outbreak and infection control measures in historically underdeveloped areas, especially those with poor healthcare infrastructure and politically unstable environments. By gaining insight on the successes and shortcomings of specific public health control measures, health ministries and global health organizations can improve upon their actions and distribution of resources in times of dangerous outbreaks

An integrated cybernetic awareness strategy to assess cybersecurity attitudes and behaviours in school context

Digital exposure to the Internet among the younger generations, notwithstanding their digital abilities, has increased and raised the alarm regarding the need to intensify the education on cybersecurity in schools. Understanding the human factor and its influence on children, namely their attitudes and behaviors online, is pivotal to reinforce their awareness towards cyberattacks and to promote their digital citizenship. This paper aims to present an integrated cybersecurity and cyber awareness strategy composed of three major steps: (1) Cybersecurity attitude and behavior assessment, (2) self-diagnosis, and (3) teaching/learning activities. The following contributions are made: Two questionnaires to assess risky attitudes and behaviors regarding cybersecurity; a self-diagnosis to measure students’ skills on cybersecurity; a lesson plan addressing cyber awareness to be applied on Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and citizenship education curricular units. Cybersecurity risky attitudes and behaviors were evaluated in a junior high school population of 164 students attending the sixth and ninth grades. The assessment focused on two main subjects: To identify the attitudes and behaviors that raise the risk of cybersecurity among the participating students; to characterize the acquired students’ cybersecurity and cyber awareness skills. Global and individual scores and the histograms for attitudes and behaviors are presented. The items in which we have observed significant differences between sixth and ninth grades are depicted and quantified by their corresponding p-values obtained through the Mann–Whitney non-parametric test. Regarding the results obtained on the assessment of attitudes and behaviors, although positive, we observed that the attitudes and behaviors in ninth-grade students are globally inferior compared to those attained by sixth-grade students. The deployed strategy for cyber awareness was applied in a school context; however, the same approach is suitable to be applied in other types of organizations, namely enterprises, healthcare institutions, and the public sector.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Classification of Non-International Armed Conflicts S : Lessons from the Sierra Leone Conflict

Dissertation (LLM (International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights in Military Operations))--University of Pretoria, 2023.Classification of armed conflicts in international law is important because it determines whether the law of international armed conflict or the law of non-international armed conflict applies to the parties in a conflict. The clearer and more accessible the law of conflict classification is to all involved, the better the chance that those affected will be in a position to apply international humanitarian law correctly in urgent or borderline situations. Classification is additionally relevant to international criminal law since the existence of an armed conflict informs the two contextual elements inherent in war crimes as the type or categorisation of armed conflict determines the category of crimes under which the alleged offender is charged. This research explores what constitutes a non-international armed conflict, the challenges of classifying conflicts with legal certainty and the mixed nature of the armed conflict that took place in Sierra Leone. The Sierra Leone conflict spanned eleven years and had different dimensions and parties that were of abiding significance to the classification of the conflict. However, in the case of Prosecutor v Fofana the Special Court failed to consider the issue of classification. The study, accordingly, draws lessons from the Sierra Leone conflict on ways to approach conflicts of a mixed nature taking into consideration the complexities of the conflict and the missed opportunity by the Special Court.Public LawLLM (International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights in Military Operations)UnrestrictedFaculty of LawsSDG-16:Peace,justice and strong institution

Vassteling van die intensiteitsvereiste in 'n mosaiek van burgeroorloe van Lubanga tot Ongwen : die Internasionale Strafhof se bydrae tot 'n kumulatiewe assesseringsmetode

Die oorgrote meerderheid van hedendaagse konfliksituasies word geken aan 'n mosaiek van geweld waar verskillende rebellemagte gedurende dieselfde tydperk binne dieselfde geografiese ligging oorlog voer. Die toerekening van die gevolge van sodanige geweld om te bepaal of 'n bilaterale konflik, wat deel uitmaak van die mosaiek van geweld, aan die intensiteitsvereiste voldoen om sodanig 'n burgeroorlog daar te stel, is 'n onbegonne taak. Hierdie artikel ondersoek die vraag of 'n kumulatiewe assesseringsmetode gebruik kan word om te bepaal of die totale geweld wat in sekere komplekse burgeroorloe ontstaan, uitgebreide gewapende geweld daarstel, sodat oorlogsreg op sodanige situasie toepassing kan vind. Die relevante regspraak van die Internasionale Strafhof word in hierdie verband ondersoek. Ek voer aan dat daar wel in sekere situasies 'n noodsituasie ontstaan, asook dat dit juridiese ondersteuning is vir die gebruik van 'n kumulatiewe assesseringsmetode in stede van die tradisionele bilaterale metode om gewapende geweld-gebonde komplekse burgeroorloe te assesseer. Die onlangse Ongwen-saak, soos op 4 Februarie 2021 deur die Internasionale Strafhof beslis, word ook onder die vergrootglas in did artikel ontleed.For a discussion of mixed armed conflicts, see Akande "Classification of armed conflicts: Relevant legal concepts" in Wilmshurst (ed) International law and the classification of conflicts (2012) 631; Geiss "Armed violence in fragile states: Low-intensity conflicts, spillover conflicts, and sporadic law enforcement operations by third parties" (2009) International Review of the Red Cross 133; Radin "Global armed conflict? The threshold of extraterritorial non-international armed conflicts" 2013 International Law Studies 724. Such complex conflict situations include the mosaic of violence that raged in Yemen in the period around 2017 and the ongoing situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). For an overview of the situation in Yemen up to 2017, see Arraf "The war report 2017: The armed conflict in Yemen: A complicated mosaic" The Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, October 2017, available at The Armed Conflict in Yemen.pdf (geneva-academy.ch) (accessed 25-02-2021). For a mapping of the multiplicity of non-international armed conflicts co-existing in the DRC during 2019, see Rulac Geneva Academy "DRC: A mapping of non-international armed conflicts in Kivu, Kasai and Ituri" (5 February 2019) blog post available at DRC: A Mapping of Non- International Armed Conflicts in Kivu, Kasai and Ituri Rulac (accessed 25-02-2021).http://www.lexisnexis.co.zaam2022Public La

From epidemics to pandemics: elucidating the dynamics of Ebola Virus and SARS-CoV-2

The advent of large-scale viral genomic sequencing has provided a rich source of data to explore the dynamics of infectious disease epidemics. In combination with the field of phylodynamics, which allows the inference of unobserved patterns from a relatively small sample of the true diversity of a virus, it has been used to great effect in the past decade. The most notable examples were during the West African Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) epidemic in 2013-2016 and the COVID-19 pandemic, still ongoing at the time of writing. The genomic datasets from these epidemics can be used to explore the evolution and transmission of viruses at different scales, from the effect of within-host evolution, to small-scale transmission networks, and national and international epidemic dynamics. I begin with the national-scale analysis of the dynamics of Ebola virus in Sierra Leone. I developed a phylogeographic analysis in a generalised linear model framework, at two geographical resolutions and in two epochs. I found that the focus of viral movement shifts from the source location in the east, to the capital city in the west. This chapter explores why different locations were important for viral transmission on a national level, and how well the gravity model of infection applies to the spread of Ebola virus in Sierra Leone through time and across different geographical scales. To address some of the issues in modelling a disease like EVD which has a high degree of superspreading, and to explore the impact of local contact networks, I created ABSynthE (Agent Based Synthetic Epidemic). ABSynthE is a flexible agent based model, which simulates an EVD epidemic across the population of Sierra Leone. ABSynthE outputs coalescent phylogenies, which are then used to obtain transmission parameters at each contact level by fitting to results from chapter 1. I found that without any intervention, just under half of the population of Sierra Leone may have been infected, regardless of which district the epidemic began in. There are now well over 8 million genomic sequences of SARS-CoV-2 available for analysis. Within the UK, the sampling is especially dense, allowing detailed epidemiological and phylodynamic analyses to be undertaken. In chapter 3, I explore the origins of the Alpha variant, the first variant of concern, which arose in South East England. I characterise the long ancestral branch, and find that it has a higher evolutionary rate compared to the background and Alpha clades, as well as a single intermediate sequence. I investigate the branches ancestral to the other variants of concern, and explore their mutational profiles, finding that Beta, Gamma and Omicron (but not Delta) have evidence for evolving in a similar manner to Alpha. I explore three different hypotheses for what this manner may be, and conclude that the most likely option is that they evolved within a persistently-infected, but not necessarily immunocompromised, host. Finally, I use the rich UK genomic SARS-CoV-2 dataset to elucidate the dynamics of the first wave of infection in early 2020, including the emergence of the D614G mutation; the Alpha wave, spreading from Kent and London to the rest of the country in late 2020 and early 2021; and the Delta wave, introduced into multiple regions, but mostly spreading from the North West of England in early 2021. I compare these waves, especially in terms of spreading from multiple introductions versus a single origin; and in the context of tightening or loosening non-pharmaceutical interventions

Social (in) security : exploring welfare reform, poverty and health in North East England

PhD ThesisThis thesis explores the impacts of ‘welfare reform’ on working-age people living in a disadvantaged part of Newcastle upon Tyne, North East England, understanding how these impacts relate to health and wellbeing. A qualitative longitudinal methodology was used, supplemented by participant-driven photo elicitation. Nineteen people took part in up to three interviews between July 2016 and April 2018. This thesis argues that the concept of ‘insecurity’ is central to understanding how ‘welfare reform’ is experienced at the micro level. Standing in contrast to the rhetoric of benefits providing a ‘safety net’, a central plank of ‘welfare reform’ policies has instead been to erode the security of benefits under the guise of ending supposed benefit dependency and moving people back towards the labour market. This research demonstrates that such positive outcomes are unlikely to arise, for many reasons, and that these policies have been implemented at the detriment of benefit recipients’ health and wellbeing. Participants’ experiences were characterised by a pervasive sense of insecurity that flowed not only from the poverty that benefits and low-paid work engendered, but also from the threat of sanction for unemployment benefits, the spectre of reassessments for sickness benefits, and pressure to move home because of the ‘Bedroom Tax’. Participants attempted to ‘manage’ their security through careful handling of their interactions with the state, prudent budget control and borrowing, though none of these strategies were straightforward or unproblematic. Those able to work expressed desires to do so, yet low skill levels, structural barriers, ineffective support from the Jobcentre and minimal financial gains from moving into work often meant that benefits offered greater security in the short-term. Cuts to benefit levels, as a result of the four-year freeze (2016-2020) in benefit uprating, the ‘Bedroom Tax’ and the Benefit Cap, worsened financial security leading to debt, food insecurity, and social exclusion. Cumulatively, the insecurity that participants experienced was embodied through stress, worry and deteriorating mental health