Risk factors for visceral leishmaniasis in a new epidemic site in Amhara Region, Ethiopia

We conducted a case-control study to evaluate risk factors for visceral leishmaniasis during an epidemic in a previously unaffected district of Ethiopia. We also collected blood and bone marrow specimens from dogs in the outbreak villages. In multivariable analyses of 171 matched case-control pairs, dog ownership, sleeping under an acacia tree during the day, and habitually sleeping outside at night were associated with significantly increased risk. Specimens from 7 (3.8%) dogs were positive by immunofluorescent antibody test (IFAT) and both enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs), whereas Leishmania DNA was detected in 5 (2.8%) bone marrow aspirates (from 3 seropositive and 2 seronegative dogs). Insecticide-treated nets may only protect a portion of those at risk. Further research on the vectors, the role of the dog in the transmission cycle, and the effect of candidate interventions are needed to design the best strategy for control

The impact of watershed development and management practices on rural livelihoods: A structural equation modeling approach

AbstractWatershed development and management practices (WDMP) have become essential to rural livelihood development. However, studies related to the livelihood implication of WDMP should have been considered. The present study assessed the impacts of WDMP on the livelihoods of watershed practitioners and non-practitioner households in the central highlands of Ethiopia. The investigation showed that the difference between practitioner and non-practitioner households’ total livelihood status was insignificant; both ranged in average level indexed within 0.34–0.66. The impact analysis result revealed that due to the implemented WDMP, the agricultural productivity and incomes of the community increased, employment opportunities were generated, and social service and infrastructure were improved. As WDMP increases by one standard deviation, agricultural productivity, income, employment generation, and social service and infrastructure increase by 0.555, 0.493, and 0.461 standard deviations, respectively. This is in addition to any direct (unmediated) effect that WDMP may have on agricultural productivity, income and employment generation, and social service and infrastructure. The study suggests that the community needs to improve natural and social capital for agricultural productivity. Besides, policymakers and non-governmental development-oriented organizations need to invest in natural, social, and physical capital to improve the social service and infrastructure of the study area. Furthermore, the government must identify and promote human, financial, physical, and natural capital elements that increase the study area’s income and employment generation opportunities

Prevalence of Female Genital Mutilation and Attitude of Mothers Towards it in Serbo Town

No abstract - Available on PD

The impact of watershed on household food security: A comparative analysis

Watersheds provide a substantial contribution to household food security. The study investigates whether watershed development and management practices (WDMP) can help with food security challenges, and it compares the impact of WDMP on household food security status among practitioners and non-practitioners in the central highlands of Ethiopia and identified the determinants factors. The study employed a mixed research design with a cross-sectional approach. Household Dietary Diversity Score and Household Food Insecurity Access Scale were used to estimate households' food security status and An Ordered logit econometric model was applied to identify determinant factors. The study resulted in 44.65 % of non-practitioners and 18.30 % of practitioners had a low level of dietary diversity; whereas, 43.40 % of non-practitioners and 38.56 % of practitioners were severely food insecure. The household head's age, the number of laborers, income, livestock size, and agricultural land size highly determined the food security status of households. The HDDS and HFIAS findings reveal a statistically significant difference between WDM practitioners and non-practitioners. Therefore stakeholders must stress the promotion of WDMP to achieve food security

Identification of environmental parameters and risk mapping of visceral leishmaniasis in Ethiopia by using geographical information systems and a statistical approach

Visceral leishmaniasis (VL), a vector-borne disease strongly influenced by environmental factors, has (re)-emerged in Ethiopia during the last two decades and is currently of increasing public health concern. Based on VL incidence in each locality (kebele) documented from federal or regional health bureaus and/or hospital records in the country, geographical information systems (GIS), coupled with binary and multivariate logistic regression methods, were employed to develop a risk map for Ethiopia with respect to VL based on soil type, altitude, rainfall, slope and temperature. The risk model was subsequently validated in selected sites. This environmental VL risk model provided an overall prediction accuracy of 86% with mean land surface temperature and soil type found to be the best predictors of VL. The total population at risk was estimated at 3.2 million according to the national population census in 2007. The approach presented here should facilitate the identification of priority areas for intervention and the monitoring of trends as well as providing input for further epidemiological and applied research with regard to this disease in Ethiopia

Risk map for cutaneous leishmaniasis in Ethiopia based on environmental factors as revealed by geographical information systems and statistics

Cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) is a neglected tropical disease strongly associated with poverty. Treatment is problematic and no vaccine is available. Ethiopia has seen new outbreaks in areas previously not known to be endemic, often with co-infection by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) with rates reaching 5.6% of the cases. The present study concerns the development of a risk model based on environmental factors using geographical information systems (GIS), statistical analysis and modelling. Odds ratio (OR) of bivariate and multivariate logistic regression was used to evaluate the relative importance of environmental factors, accepting P ?0.056 as the inclusion level for the model’s environmental variables. When estimating risk from the viewpoint of geographical surface, slope, elevation and annual rainfall were found to be good predictors of CL presence based on both probabilistic and weighted overlay approaches. However, when considering Ethiopia as whole, a minor difference was observed between the two methods with the probabilistic technique giving a 22.5% estimate, while that of weighted overlay approach was 19.5%. Calculating the population according to the land surface estimated by the latter method, the total Ethiopian population at risk for CL was estimated at 28,955,035, mainly including people in the highlands of the regional states of Amhara, Oromia, Tigray and the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples’ Region, one of the nine ethnic divisions in Ethiopia. Our environmental risk model provided an overall prediction accuracy of 90.4%. The approach proposed here can be replicated for other diseases to facilitate implementation of evidence-based, integrated disease control activitie

Access to malaria prevention and control interventions among seasonal migrant workers: A multi-region formative assessment in Ethiopia.

BackgroundMobile or seasonal migrant workers are at increased risk for acquiring malaria infections and can be the primary source of malaria reintroduction into receptive areas. The aim of this formative assessment was to describe access to malaria prevention and control interventions among seasonal migrant or mobile workers in seven regional states of Ethiopia.MethodsA cross-sectional formative assessment was conducted using a qualitative and quantitative mixed-method design, between October 2015 and October 2016. Quantitative data were collected from organizations that employ seasonal migrant workers and were analyzed using Microsoft Excel and ArcGIS 10.8 (Geo-spatial data). Qualitative data were collected using in-depth interview from 23 key informants (7 seasonal migrant workers, and 16 experts and managers of development projects who had hired seasonal migrant workers), which were recorded, transcribed, translated, coded, and thematically analyzed.ResultsThere were 1,017,888 seasonal migrant workers employed in different developmental organizations including large-scale crop cultivating farms, sugar cane plantations, horticulture, road and house construction work, and gold mining and panning. Seasonal migrant workers' housing facilities were poorly structured and overcrowded (30 people living per 64 square meter room) limiting the use of indoor residual spraying (IRS), and forcing seasonal migrant workers not to use long lasting insecticidal treated nets (LLINs). Seasonal migrant workers are engaged in nighttime activities when employment includes watering farmlands, harvesting sesame, and transporting sugar cane from the field to factories. Despite such high-risk living conditions, access and utilization of preventive and curative services by the seasonal workers were limited. Informal migrant worker employment systems by development organizations and inadequate technical and financial support coupled with poor supply chain management limited the planning and delivery of malaria prevention and treatment strategies targeting seasonal migrant workers.ConclusionsSeasonal migrant workers in seven regions of Ethiopia were at substantial risk of acquiring malaria. Existing malaria prevention, control and management interventions were inadequate. This will contribute to the resurgence of outbreaks of malaria in areas where transmission has been lowered. A coordinated action is needed among all stakeholders to identify the size of seasonal migrant workers and develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to address their healthcare needs

2AIRTC: The Amharic Adhoc Information Retrieval Test Collection

International audienceEvaluation is highly important for designing, developing, and maintaining information retrieval (IR) systems. The IR community has developed shared tasks where evaluation framework, evaluation measures and test collections have been developed for different languages. Although Amharic is the official language of Ethiopia currently having an estimated population of over 110 million, it is one of the under-resourced languages and there is not yet Amharic adhoc IR test collection. In this paper, we promote the monolingual Amharic IR test collection that we built for the IR community. Following the framework of Cranfield project and TREC, the collection that we named 2AIRTC consists of 12,583 documents, 240 topics and the corresponding relevance judgments