Impacts of Ebola disease outbreak in West Africa : implications for government and public health preparedness and lessons from COVID-19

There has been an increase in the outbreak of communicable diseases in recent times; the most recent ones are Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) and COVID-19. These diseases have had different impacts on society and the ecosystem. However, underlying these impacts are the levels of preparedness of governments and public health institutions to mitigate and control these diseases. Therefore, this paper aims to explore these impacts, government and institutional interventions and their nexus towards the effective management of such crises. A critical review of empirical literature was adopted for the methodological approach and narrative synthesis used for analysis. Results show that EVD had diverse impacts on West Africa; economically through the loss of income from economic activities due to widespread sickness among workers and movement restrictions. EVD also had significant social impacts, such as reduced community cohesion, school and business closures, job losses, food insecurity, and high morbidity and mortality. Though some good efforts have been made by different countries in collaboration with international organisations like the World Health Organization to control disease outbreaks more effectively, the recent COVID-19 pandemic has however exposed major weaknesses in the capacity of most African countries to cope. Poor capacity for testing and treatment, inadequate health facilities, poor incentives for health care workers, poor governance systems, poor border control, and awareness and research capacities impacted negatively on the capacity to control disease outbreaks. There is, therefore, a need to strengthen health systems across Africa through improved resource mobilisation, staff training, and coordination of investment strategies to sustain health system preparedness to manage future emerging or re-emerging outbreaks

Mixture Proportioning Approaches For Self Compacting Concrete - A Review

In the production and application of concrete, Mix design is a critical step. Many mix design methods have been proposed for Self – compacting Concrete (SCC); but these methods lacks a uniform criterion, specific design parameters of factors to evaluate their design process or procedures which makes it cumbersome to compare the effectiveness of these mix design methods and properties of SCC.  This study is an in depth review on the mix design methods for SCC available in the literatures so as to evaluate progress made so far and thus provide valuable data to help select suitable mix design method(s) for SCC. On the basis of their principles, these approaches can be classified into five groups such as rational mixture proportioning method, compressive strength mixture proportioning method, aggregate packing mixture proportioning, statistical and rheology of paste model mixture proportioning method respectively. Each mixture proportioning method was discussed based on their procedure, pros and cons. To obtain high quality SCC with satisfactory properties, appropriate method should be chosen in accordance with actual situation

Mixture Proportioning Approaches For Self Compacting Concrete - A Review

In the production and application of concrete, Mix design is a critical step. Many mix design methods have been proposed for Self – compacting Concrete (SCC); but these methods lacks a uniform criterion, specific design parameters of factors to evaluate their design process or procedures which makes it cumbersome to compare the effectiveness of these mix design methods and properties of SCC.  This study is an in depth review on the mix design methods for SCC available in the literatures so as to evaluate progress made so far and thus provide valuable data to help select suitable mix design method(s) for SCC. On the basis of their principles, these approaches can be classified into five groups such as rational mixture proportioning method, compressive strength mixture proportioning method, aggregate packing mixture proportioning, statistical and rheology of paste model mixture proportioning method respectively. Each mixture proportioning method was discussed based on their procedure, pros and cons. To obtain high quality SCC with satisfactory properties, appropriate method should be chosen in accordance with actual situation