Mortality patterns in Vietnam, 2006: Findings from a national verbal autopsy survey

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Accurate nationally representative statistics on total and cause-specific mortality in Vietnam are lacking due to incomplete capture in government reporting systems. This paper presents total and cause-specific mortality results from a national verbal autopsy survey conducted first time in Vietnam in conjunction with the annual population change survey and discusses methodological and logistical challenges associated with the implementation of a nation-wide assessment of mortality based on surveys.</p> <p>Verbal autopsy interviews, using the WHO standard questionnaire, were conducted with close relatives of the 6798 deaths identified in the 2007 population change survey in Vietnam. Data collectors were health staff recruited from the commune health station who undertook 3-day intensive training on VA interview. The Preston-Coale method assessed the level of completeness of mortality reporting from the population change survey. The number of deaths in each age-sex grouping is inflated according to the estimate of completeness to produce an <it>adjusted </it>number of deaths. Underlying causes of death were aggregated to the International Classification of Diseases Mortality Tabulation List 1. Leading causes of death were tabulated by sex for three broad age groups: 0-14 years; 15-59 years; and 60 years and above.</p> <p>Findings</p> <p>Completeness of mortality reporting was 69% for males and 54% for females with substantial regional variation. The use of VA has resulted in 10% of deaths being classified to ill-defined among males, and 15% among females. More ill-defined deaths were reported among the 60 year or above age group. Incomplete death reporting, wide geographical dispersal of deaths, extensive travel between households, and substantial variation in local responses to VA interviews challenged the implementation of a national mortality and cause of death assessment based on surveys.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Verbal autopsy can be a viable tool to identify cause of death in Vietnam. However logistical challenges limit its use in conjunction with the national sample survey. Sentinel population clusters for mortality surveillance should be tested to develop an effective and sustainable option for routine mortality and cause of death data collection in Vietnam.</p

Bringing the countryside to the city: practices and imaginations of the rural in Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam

10.1177/0042098014563031Urban Studies532324-33

A physical layer network coding based modify-and-forward with opportunistic secure cooperative transmission protocol

This paper investigates a new secure relaying scheme, namely physical layer network coding based modify-and-forward (PMF), in which a relay node linearly combines the decoded data sent by a source node with an encrypted key before conveying the mixed data to a destination node. We first derive the general expression for the generalized secrecy outage probability (GSOP) of the PMF scheme and then use it to analyse the GSOP performance of various relaying and direct transmission strategies. The GSOP performance comparison indicates that these transmission strategies offer different advantages depending on the channel conditions and target secrecy rates, and relaying is not always desirable in terms of secrecy. Subsequently, we develop an opportunistic secure transmission protocol for cooperative wireless relay networks and formulate an optimisation problem to determine secrecy rate thresholds (SRTs) to dynamically select the optimal transmission strategy for achieving the lowest GSOP. The conditions for the existence of the SRTs are derived for various channel scenarios

The first genome sequences of human bocaviruses from Vietnam

As part of an ongoing effort to generate complete genome sequences of hand, foot and mouth disease-causing enteroviruses directly from clinical specimens, two complete coding sequences and two partial genomic sequences of human bocavirus 1 (n=3) and 2 (n=1) were co-amplified and sequenced, representing the first genome sequences of human bocaviruses from Vietnam. The sequences may aid future study aiming at understanding the evolution of the virus

The first genome sequences of human bocaviruses from Vietnam.

As part of an ongoing effort to generate complete genome sequences of hand, foot and mouth disease-causing enteroviruses directly from clinical specimens, two complete coding sequences and two partial genomic sequences of human bocavirus 1 (n=3) and 2 (n=1) were co-amplified and sequenced, representing the first genome sequences of human bocaviruses from Vietnam. The sequences may aid future study aiming at understanding the evolution of the pathogen

Clinically and microbiologically derived azithromycin susceptibility breakpoints for Salmonella enterica serovars Typhi and Paratyphi A.

Azithromycin is an effective treatment for uncomplicated infections with Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi and serovar Paratyphi A (enteric fever), but there are no clinically validated MIC and disk zone size interpretative guidelines. We studied individual patient data from three randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of antimicrobial treatment in enteric fever in Vietnam, with azithromycin used in one treatment arm, to determine the relationship between azithromycin treatment response and the azithromycin MIC of the infecting isolate. We additionally compared the azithromycin MIC and the disk susceptibility zone sizes of 1,640 S. Typhi and S. Paratyphi A clinical isolates collected from seven Asian countries. In the RCTs, 214 patients who were treated with azithromycin at a dose of 10 to 20 mg/ml for 5 to 7 days were analyzed. Treatment was successful in 195 of 214 (91%) patients, with no significant difference in response (cure rate, fever clearance time) with MICs ranging from 4 to 16 μg/ml. The proportion of Asian enteric fever isolates with an MIC of ≤ 16 μg/ml was 1,452/1,460 (99.5%; 95% confidence interval [CI], 98.9 to 99.7) for S. Typhi and 207/240 (86.3%; 95% CI, 81.2 to 90.3) (P &lt; 0.001) for S. Paratyphi A. A zone size of ≥ 13 mm to a 5-μg azithromycin disk identified S. Typhi isolates with an MIC of ≤ 16 μg/ml with a sensitivity of 99.7%. An azithromycin MIC of ≤ 16 μg/ml or disk inhibition zone size of ≥ 13 mm enabled the detection of susceptible S. Typhi isolates that respond to azithromycin treatment. Further work is needed to define the response to treatment in S. Typhi isolates with an azithromycin MIC of &gt;16 μg/ml and to determine MIC and disk breakpoints for S. Paratyphi A

Population-Based Incidence Rates of First-Ever Stroke in Central Vietnam

Introduction: Stroke incidence data with methodologically acceptable design in Southeast Asia countries is limited. This study aimed to determine incidence of age-, sex- and subtype-specific firstever stroke (FES) in Vietnam. Methods: We conducted a hospital-based retrospective study, targeting all stroke cases hospitalized at a solo-provider hospital in our study site of Nha Trang from January 2009 to December 2011 with International Classification of Diseases, 10th revision (ICD-10) codes I60-69. We calculated positive predictive values (PPVs) of each ICD-10-coded stroke by conducting a detailed case review of 190 randomly selected admissions with ICD-10 codes of I60-I69. These PPVs were then used to estimate annual incident stroke cases from the computerized database. National census data in 2009 was used as a denominator. Results: 2,693 eligible admissions were recorded during the study period. The crude annual incidence rate of total FES was 90.2 per 100,000 population (95% CI 81.1-100.2). The ageadjusted incidence of FES was 115.7 (95% CI 95.9-139.1) when adjusted to the WHO world populations. Importantly, age-adjusted intracerebral hemorrhage was as much as one third of total FES: 36.9 (95% CI 26.1-51.0). Conclusions: We found a considerable proportion of FES in Vietnam to be attributable to intracerebral hemorrhage, which is as high or exceeding levels seen in high-income countries. A high prevalence of improperly treated hypertension in Vietnam may underlie the high prevalence of intracerebral hemorrhagic stroke in this population