Environment and Human Health in the Anthropocene: Interaction Between Natural and Social Systems in Coastal Tanzania

Coastal Tanzania, a region of historical and geopolitical importance in the western Indian Ocean, is a place where the problem of rapid environmental change is inextricably entwined with the challenges of development. In this region, although the fingerprint of the anthropocene has been discernible over the last century, there is paucity of research on how the population has interacted with the changing environment to generate disparities in perceptions of climate change and human health outcomes. The objectives of this thesis are four-fold: to assess barriers to climate change adaptation based on context (place), to explain group disparities in barriers to climate change adaptation based on relative well-being (income poverty), to evaluate description-based and experienced-based perceptions of environmental change, and to analyse the relationship between subjective and objective health status, on the one hand, and public perception of human health risks associated with climate change, on the other hand. Cross-sectional survey data on 1253 individuals (606 males and 647 females) were collected during March and September 2013 to make inferences about the population in this region. This was complemented with 50-year (1960-2009) meteorological data on rainfall and temperature. Multivariate regression, counterfactual decomposition, multinomial regression and time-series were used in the quantitative analyses. The results show that barriers to adaptation to climate change mainly reflect strong place-specific differences among the population. Disparities in barriers to climate adaptation between poor and nonpoor residents are mainly attributable to group differences in the magnitudes of the determinants (endowments) rather than group differences in the effects of the determinants (coefficients). There is agreement between respondents’ perceptions of temperature change and available scientific climatic evidence over the 50-year period although results on perception of rainfall patterns were varied. Generally, higher ratings on subjective health status were associated with lower scores on perceived human health risks of climate change. Concerning objective health status, the results were varied. Individuals who indicated that they had been previously diagnosed with hepatitis, skin conditions or tuberculosis had lower scores on perceived health risks of climate change unlike their counterparts who stated that they had been previously diagnosed with malaria in the past 12 months or had been diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. These relationships persist even when biosocial and sociocultural attributes are taken into consideration. The results underscore the complex ways in which objective and subjective health interact with biosocial, sociocultural and contextual factors to shape public perception on health risks associated with climate change. At least two policy implications originate from the findings of this dissertation. First, disentangling the complex indirect pathways among barriers to climate change adaptation, place-based attributes and relative well-being is a challenging research endeavour that requires the development of new partnerships to provide more accurate data. Given the complex mechanism by which experiential climate change acts, collectively, with compositional and contextual factors to influence public perception of climate change-related human health risks, it is probably apt to approach the study of environmental change and human health using integrative frameworks

SOURCE SPECIFIC QUANTIFICATION AND CHARACTERISATION OF SOLID WASTE ALONG A SANDY BEACH IN CAPE COAST, GHANA

Ghana is dealing with extensive urban periphery settlements due to the massive migration of rural inhabitants to the cities, especially to the political and economic capital, Accra and other regional capitals including Cape Coast. This phenomenon has culminated in indiscriminate solid waste disposal. With no effective municipal solid waste collection system in place, heaps of refuse have become ubiquitous in Cape Coast especially along the beaches. The quantity and composition of solid waste at two locations along a sandy beach in the Cape Coast municipality was investigated in this study. Using five permanent 20 x 4 quadrats over seven weeks in each of the two locations, the amount and composition of solid waste were assessed. The results indicated that paper, bottle, wood, leather, textile, metal, plastics, organic matter and styrofoam were the main categories of solid waste found at the sandy beach. The results also indicated that the quantity of solid waste generated at Duakor and West Gate was 514 kgha-1 and 374 kgha-1 respectively. This study suggests that source specific waste quantification and characterisation of solid waste at different scales should be a vital part of planning in municipal solid waste management systems.solid waste characterisation; quantification; sandy beach; Ghana.

Effectiveness of interventions to reduce indoor air pollution and/or improve health in homes using solid fuel in lower and middle income countries : protocol for a systematic review

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Ghana’s Right to Information Bill: Opportunity for SDI as a Technical Infrastructure

Information is an important resource in the 21st century knowledge-based society. Access to public sector information is being viewed as an important path to strengthening democracy, good governance, public service and sustainable development. Ghana is about to enact a right to information law (now The Right to Information Bill) to provide a legal framework for making public sector information accessible to the public. However, while the legal framework is necessary, it is not sufficient to ensure real access to public sector information by the public. This paper highlights the need for designing policy and institutional frameworks in general and a technical infrastructure in particular for actuating the provisions of the anticipated law. Therefore, the paper assesses the opportunities and imperatives for building SDI, at least, as part of the technical infrastructure for making public sector information discoverable, retrievable and usable to the public. Steps are then proposed for creating the SDI, including building institutional mandate, creating a metadata catalogue, digitalization of analog data/information and the development of plans to strategically manage and enhance the organic growth of the SDI. The paper is significant in that it makes anticipatory contribution to the discourse on the design of policy and institutional frameworks in general; and technical infrastructure in particular to support the implementation of the Right to Information Law in Ghana

Effectiveness of interventions to reduce household air pollution and/or improve health in homes using solid fuel in low-and-middle income countries : A systematic review and meta-analysis

Peer reviewedPostprin

Enhancing Spatial Data Accessibility in Ghana: Prioritization of Influencing Factors Using AHP

The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is a general problem-solving method that is useful in making complex, multi-criteria and multi-stakeholder decisions based on variables that have or do not have exact numerical consequences. AHP was applied to structure a multi-criteria decision problem regarding access to spatial data in Ghana; and to determine the priorities of spatial data accessibility components and influencing factors. A three-level AHP structure was constructed to examine the spatial data access problem, with a main objective, four sub-objectives and five alternatives. Spatial data accessibility was decomposed into four components (discoverability, retrievability, usability and affordability) which were used as sub-objectives (criteria). More so, spatial data access is mediated by affective factors (institutional, technical, policy/legal, socio-cultural and economic) which were used as alternatives. Fifty individuals from twenty four organizations were interviewed and later engaged in focus-group discussion to generate weights (priorities) for the accessibility components and the alternatives. The results provide both qualitative and quantitative information to decision makers regarding the spatial data access problem and their priorities from the perspective of enhancing access to spatial data. Regarding accessibility components (objectives), discoverability and retrievability had the highest priorities while technical and institutional issues had the highest priorities with regard to the affective factors. Considering the overall impact on the main objective and in the face of limited resources, it is concluded that improvement in the technical and institutional environment with the view to improving discoverability and retrievability require the highest priority in order to enhance access to spatial data in Ghana

Maintaining Momentum for Rotavirus Immunization in Africa during the COVID-19 Era: Report of the 13th African Rotavirus Symposium

The 13th African Rotavirus Symposium was held as a virtual event hosted by the University of Nairobi, Kenya and The Kenya Paediatric Association on 3rd and 4th November 2021. This biennial event organized under the auspices of the African Rotavirus Network shapes the agenda for rotavirus research and prevention on the continent, attracting key international and regional opinion leaders, researchers, and public health scientists. The African Rotavirus Network is a regional network of institutions initially established in 1999, and now encompassing much of the diarrheal disease and rotavirus related research in Africa, in collaboration with the World Health Organization African Regional Office (WHO-AFRO), Ministries of Health, and other partners. Surges in SARS-CoV2 variants and concomitant travel restrictions limited the meeting to a webinar platform with invited scientific presentations and scientific presentations from selected abstracts. The scientific program covered updates on burden of diarrheal diseases including rotavirus, the genomic characterization of rotavirus strains pre- and post-rotavirus vaccine introduction, and data from clinical evaluation of new rotavirus vaccines in Africa. Finally, 42 of the 54 African countries have fully introduced rotavirus vaccination at the time of the meeting, including the two recently WHO pre-qualified vaccines from India. Nonetheless, the full benefit of rotavirus vaccination is yet to be realized in Africa where approximately 80% of the global burden of rotavirus mortality exists

Parenting practices and family relationships during the COVID-19 lockdown in Ghana

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have been far reaching across almost every sphere of life. Families, which are the basic units of society, have not been spared the ravages of the pandemic. Changes in family daily routines as a result of COVID-19 can affect spousal relationships, parenting and childcare practices. However, the extent to which the pandemic has affected parenting practices and family relationships in Ghana is not known. The goal of this study was to assess how parenting practices and family relationships have been influenced during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ghana. Data for this paper was drawn from an online questionnaire response from 463 participants in Ghana as a subset analysis from a multi-country study on personal and family coping system with COVID-19 pandemic in the global south. The mean score for pre-COVID-19 relationship with partner (36.86) was higher (p<0.0001) than the mean score for during COVID-19 relationship with partner (35.32) indicating that COVID-19 has had negative influence on relationships. The mean score for pre-COVID-19 parenting (32.78) was higher (p<0.0001) compared to the mean score for during COVID-19 parenting (31.40) indicating negative influence on parenting. We have predicted that participants whose coping levels were “Well” on the average, are likely to be doing well in relationship with partners and parenting practices during the COVID-19 period The challenging public health containment measures of the COVID-19 pandemic have negatively influenced the relationship between partners and parenting practices in Ghana

Reducing the environmental impact of surgery on a global scale: systematic review and co-prioritization with healthcare workers in 132 countries

Abstract Background Healthcare cannot achieve net-zero carbon without addressing operating theatres. The aim of this study was to prioritize feasible interventions to reduce the environmental impact of operating theatres. Methods This study adopted a four-phase Delphi consensus co-prioritization methodology. In phase 1, a systematic review of published interventions and global consultation of perioperative healthcare professionals were used to longlist interventions. In phase 2, iterative thematic analysis consolidated comparable interventions into a shortlist. In phase 3, the shortlist was co-prioritized based on patient and clinician views on acceptability, feasibility, and safety. In phase 4, ranked lists of interventions were presented by their relevance to high-income countries and low–middle-income countries. Results In phase 1, 43 interventions were identified, which had low uptake in practice according to 3042 professionals globally. In phase 2, a shortlist of 15 intervention domains was generated. In phase 3, interventions were deemed acceptable for more than 90 per cent of patients except for reducing general anaesthesia (84 per cent) and re-sterilization of ‘single-use’ consumables (86 per cent). In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for high-income countries were: introducing recycling; reducing use of anaesthetic gases; and appropriate clinical waste processing. In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for low–middle-income countries were: introducing reusable surgical devices; reducing use of consumables; and reducing the use of general anaesthesia. Conclusion This is a step toward environmentally sustainable operating environments with actionable interventions applicable to both high– and low–middle–income countries