Labour and birth information needs of first time mothers in Malawi and satisfaction with information received

Giving labour and birth information to first time mothers is one of the challenges facing the midwives in Malawi. There are many underlying health and soeioeconomic problems facing the people of Malawi particularly mothers in the child bearing age because of inadequate human and material resources in the health sector. This thesis presents findings of a study carried out in Malawi to explore labour and birth information given to first time mothers at hospitals and in the communities. Maternal satisfaction with the information received was determined. In addition labour and birth information needs of first time mothers in Malawi were determined from the mother\u27s perspective. A descriptive-correctional design was used in this study. One hundred and fifty first time mothers who had given birth to a live full term infant within 8 weeks of the postpartum period participated in the study. The findings of the quantitative results were analysed using SPSS for Windows. Responses to open ended questions were analysed using content analysis. The findings indicated that first time mothers believe that they are not given adequate labour and birth information in the hospital settings. The findings also indicated that labour and birth information given in the community is culturally based and mainly comprises cultural beliefs and taboos of childbirth. First time mothers in Malawi also expressed satisfaction with some of the information given during pregnancy, labour and birth but were not satisfied overall with the amount of information they received in preparing them for childbirth. The findings of the study have implications for improving how and what labour and birth information is given to first time mothers in Malawi. Recommendations are presented for nurse/midwifery practice, education, management and research

The development and evaluation of a childbirth education program for Malawian women

Childbirth education provided to women is an Integral aspect of the childbirth experience. In Malawi, midwives face a major challenge because one of their major roles is to provide childbirth information to women. However, there are no existing Childbirth Education Programs to facilitate this process. The purpose of this study was, therefore, threefold. First, it explored childbirth Information needs of Malawian mothers from the perspectives of both mothers and midwives, as well as strategies that would be appropriate to disseminate this childbirth information to Malawian women. Second, it developed a Childbirth Educational Program (CEP) to meet the specific needs of Malawian women as previously identified. Third, the CEP was implemented and evaluated for it’s effectiveness in increasing Malawian women’s knowledge of childbirth. The study was conducted in three phases. In Phase One, childbirth information needs of Malawian women were determined using findings from previous studies, focus groups and individual interviews of Malawian midwives. In Phase Two, data obtained from Phase One was used to develop a CEP as well as pretest/posttest questionnaire. In Phase Three, a quasi-experimental study using sequential sampling was conducted to implement and evaluate the CEP. Participants Included pregnant women who attended antenatal clinics at the Ndirande and Limbe Health Centres in Blantyre (Malawi). Following informed consent, 125 women from the Ndirande Health Centre were Invited to participate in the study and recruited to a control group. Another 125 women were also recruited to an intervention group at Limbe Health centre. A pretest was administered to both groups of women to determine their childbirth knowledge prior to implementation of the study. Women In the control group were exposed to routine antenatal education from both hospital and traditional non-hospital sources. Therefore, an increase in childbirth knowledge was anticipated. Additionally, women in the intervention group were exposed to both routine antenatal education as well as a systematic and comprehensive CEP. It was anticipated the degree to which knowledge increased in this group would be higher than in the control group, thus demonstrating the effectiveness of the CEP

Single-Document and Multi-Document Summarization Techniques for Email Threads Using Sentence Compression First Author Affiliation / Address line 1

We present two approaches to email thread summarization: Collective Message Summarization (CMS) applies a multi-document summarization approach, while Individual Message Summarization (IMS) treats the problem as a sequence of single-document summarization tasks. Both approaches are implemented in our general framework driven by sentence compression. Instead of a purely extractive approach, we employ linguistic and statistical methods to generate multiple compressions, and then select from those candidates to produce a final summary. We demonstrate our techniques on the Enron collection—a very challenging corpus because of the highly technical language. Results suggest that CMS represents a better approach and additional findings pave the way for future explorations.

Extrinsic Motivation to Use mHealth Interventions in Maternal Healthcare in Rural Malawi

mHealth interventions have the potential to address the inequalities in accessing health information. In maternal healthcare, mHealth interventions provide information to pregnant women on how they can stay healthy during pregnancy, as well as on the danger signs in pregnancy that can contribute to maternal mortality. In this study we posit that extrinsic motivation could promote trialability of mHealth interventions. We employed qualitative research methods to investigate extrinsic factors that motivate maternal healthcare clients in rural Malawi to use mHealth interventions. Self-determination theory was used as the theoretical lens for the study. Data was collected using secondary data sources and semi-structured interviews with maternal clients who used the mHealth intervention. The study found that maternal healthcare clients were extrinsically motivated by incentives and the ability of the technology to suppress social-cultural norms. The study informs mHealth implementers on what they may focus on to bring in beneficiaries to try the intervention which eventually could lead to the adoption and use of interventions

METACOHORTS for the study of vascular disease and its contribution to cognitive decline and neurodegeneration: An initiative of the Joint Programme for Neurodegenerative Disease Research.

Dementia is a global problem and major target for health care providers. Although up to 45% of cases are primarily or partly due to cerebrovascular disease, little is known of these mechanisms or treatments because most dementia research still focuses on pure Alzheimer's disease. An improved understanding of the vascular contributions to neurodegeneration and dementia, particularly by small vessel disease, is hampered by imprecise data, including the incidence and prevalence of symptomatic and clinically "silent" cerebrovascular disease, long-term outcomes (cognitive, stroke, or functional), and risk factors. New large collaborative studies with long follow-up are expensive and time consuming, yet substantial data to advance the field are available. In an initiative funded by the Joint Programme for Neurodegenerative Disease Research, 55 international experts surveyed and assessed available data, starting with European cohorts, to promote data sharing to advance understanding of how vascular disease affects brain structure and function, optimize methods for cerebrovascular disease in neurodegeneration research, and focus future research on gaps in knowledge. Here, we summarize the results and recommendations from this initiative. We identified data from over 90 studies, including over 660,000 participants, many being additional to neurodegeneration data initiatives. The enthusiastic response means that cohorts from North America, Australasia, and the Asia Pacific Region are included, creating a truly global, collaborative, data sharing platform, linked to major national dementia initiatives. Furthermore, the revised World Health Organization International Classification of Diseases version 11 should facilitate recognition of vascular-related brain damage by creating one category for all cerebrovascular disease presentations and thus accelerate identification of targets for dementia prevention.The following funders supported the work. Joint Programme for Neurodegenerative Disease (JPND) Research, specifically the UK Medical Research Council, the Deutsches Zentrum für Neurodegenerative Erkrankungen (DZNE) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). The Scottish Imaging Network, A Platform for Scientific Excellence (SINAPSE) through the Pools Engagement in Europe (PEER) funding from the Scottish Funding Council. The Therese Pei Fong Chow Research Centre for Prevention of Dementia (in memory of Donald H K Chow). We thank the Siemens Foundation, Munich, Germany for providing the workshop venue and catering. F-EdeL acknowledges VIDI Innovation Grant from ZonMW ref 016.126.351. PMM acknowledges generous support from the Edmond J Safra Foundation and Lily Safra and the Imperial College Health Trust BRC. PMWB is Stroke Association Professor of Stroke Medicine. CdeC acknowledges support from Centre Grant NIH P30 AG 010129.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Elsevier via https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jalz.2016.06.00

Kinesin-II is required for axonal transport of choline acetyltransferase in Drosophila

KLP64D and KLP68D are members of the kinesin-II family of proteins in Drosophila. Immunostaining for KLP68D and ribonucleic acid in situ hybridization for KLP64D demonstrated their preferential expression in cholinergic neurons. KLP68D was also found to accumulate in cholinergic neurons in axonal obstructions caused by the loss of kinesin light chain. Mutations in the KLP64D gene cause uncoordinated sluggish movement and death, and reduce transport of choline acetyltransferase from cell bodies to the synapse. The inviability of KLP64D mutations can be rescued by expression of mammalian KIF3A. Together, these data suggest that kinesin-II is required for the axonal transport of a soluble enzyme, choline acetyltransferase. in a specific subset of neurons in Drosophila. Furthermore, the data lead to the conclusion that the cargo transport requirements of different classes of neurons may lead to upregulation of specific pathways of axonal transport

Spiralling dynamics near heteroclinic networks

There are few explicit examples in the literature of vector fields exhibiting complex dynamics that may be proved analytically. We construct explicitly a {two parameter family of vector fields} on the three-dimensional sphere \EU^3, whose flow has a spiralling attractor containing the following: two hyperbolic equilibria, heteroclinic trajectories connecting them {transversely} and a non-trivial hyperbolic, invariant and transitive set. The spiralling set unfolds a heteroclinic network between two symmetric saddle-foci and contains a sequence of topological horseshoes semiconjugate to full shifts over an alphabet with more and more symbols, {coexisting with Newhouse phenonema}. The vector field is the restriction to \EU^3 of a polynomial vector field in \RR^4. In this article, we also identify global bifurcations that induce chaotic dynamics of different types.Comment: change in one figur

LP Liner Notes

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