Urban Cholera transmission hotspots and their implications for Reactive Vaccination: evidence from Bissau city, Guinea Bissau

Use of cholera vaccines in response to epidemics (reactive vaccination) may provide an effective supplement to traditional control measures. In Haiti, reactive vaccination was considered but, until recently, rejected in part due to limited global supply of vaccine. Using Bissau City, Guinea-Bissau as a case study, we explore neighborhood-level transmission dynamics to understand if, with limited vaccine and likely delays, reactive vaccination can significantly change the course of a cholera epidemic

Prolong placement of tracheostomy tube causing unusual complication

Tracheostomy can be associated with numerous complications. Here, we present a case of large hypertrophic skin of tracheostoma with tracheal granulation tissue causing malpositioning of tracheostomy tube and airway obstruction, secondary to prolong placement of a cuff tracheostomy tube due to improper tracheostomy care. This case illustrates that awareness and knowledge of proper tracheostomy tube care among medical personnel are very important to avoid any mismanagement that can cause life-threatening complications

Relationship Between Service Quality and Behavioral Intentions: the Mediating Effect of Customer Satisfaction

This study was undertaken to measure the relationship between service quality, customer satisfaction and behavioral intentions. A survey method was employed to collect data from customers who received treatments at army medical organizations in Malaysia. The outcomes of Smart-PLS path model analysis confirmed that relationship between service qualities features (tangible, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy) with customer satisfaction were positively and significantly correlated with behavioral intentions. This result demonstrates that effect of tangible, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy on behavioral intentions was mediated by customer satisfaction.DOI: 10.15408/etk.v16i2.553

Analysis of Drought Index in Sub-Urban Area Using Standard Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI)

The climate change interference and increase of surface temperature have contributed to the changes at the atmosphere that give a significant effect to the availability of water. Malaysia is one of the countries which effected with this event and had been suffered series of drought events in 1997, 1998, and 2014. These problems contribute to the disruption of country’s economic development and quality of life. The using of drought indices for analytical is important and it can estimate the drought affect hat are being experienced accurately. The Standard Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) is one of the methods in determination of drought indices. Thus, the objective of this paper is to determine the drought index using the Standard Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) for sub-urban river basin which is Pahang River basin. The rainfall and potential evapotranspiration (PET) data were obtained from Malaysian Meteorological Department (Met Malaysia) starting from 1988 until 2018 in determining the SPEI value for sub-urban river basin. RStudio software are being used to determine the value of SPEI for different timescale, which is 3, and 12-month. The significant value of SPEI for the river basin are influence by the population, topography, rainfall, and land use. Findings from this study are believed to the mitigation can be proposed to the related organization to take an action in designing, planning, and managing the water supply and to prevent the serious impact on the agricultural and country economic development as well

Analysis of Drought Index in Sub-Urban Area Using Standard Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI)

The climate change interference and increase of surface temperature have contributed to the changes at the atmosphere that give a significant effect to the availability of water. Malaysia is one of the countries which effected with this event and had been suffered series of drought events in 1997, 1998, and 2014. These problems contribute to the disruption of country’s economic development and quality of life. The using of drought indices for analytical is important and it can estimate the drought affect hat are being experienced accurately. The Standard Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) is one of the methods in determination of drought indices. Thus, the objective of this paper is to determine the drought index using the Standard Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) for sub-urban river basin which is Pahang River basin. The rainfall and potential evapotranspiration (PET) data were obtained from Malaysian Meteorological Department (Met Malaysia) starting from 1988 until 2018 in determining the SPEI value for sub-urban river basin. RStudio software are being used to determine the value of SPEI for different timescale, which is 3, and 12-month. The significant value of SPEI for the river basin are influence by the population, topography, rainfall, and land use. Findings from this study are believed to the mitigation can be proposed to the related organization to take an action in designing, planning, and managing the water supply and to prevent the serious impact on the agricultural and country economic development as well

Detection Technique of Squamous Epithelial Cells in Sputum Slide Images Using Image Processing Analysis

A good quality sputum is important to detect diseases. The presence of squamous epithelial cells (SEC) in sputum slide images is important to determine the quality of sputum. The presence of overlapping SEC in sputum slide images causes the process become complicated and tedious. Therefore this paper discusses on technique of detection and summation for Squamous Epithelial Cell (SEC) in sputum slide image. We addressed the detection problem by combining K-means and color thresholding algorithm. The design of aided system is evaluated using 200 images and the proposed technique is capable to detect and count each SEC from overlapping SEC image. Total of 200 images were clustered to 10 groups, labelled as Group Cell 1 to group Cell 10 that correspond to the number of cells in the image. Therefore, each group will contain 20 images. The accuracy of the algorithm to detect SEC was also measured, and results show that in 91% which provides a correct SEC detection and summation

Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy for palm cooking oil discriminator using planar electromagnetic sensor array

Cooking oil is an important product in the Malaysia food industries. Most of the cooking oil products is based on palm oil. However, there are activities in selling cheaper cooking oil by labelling as high quality in cooking oil product. Traditional methods have been developed to measure the quality of the cooking oil product such as the chromatography technique but the cost for the system setup is expensive and requires a large amount of time to analyse the sample. Thus, a suitable and reliable system with less analysis time is needed for widespread industrial uses. This paper has presented a discriminative technique for palm cooking oil using Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) with planar electromagnetic sensor array. The sensor consists of a meander sensor and an interdigital sensors which interact with the test samples. Three types of palm cooking oil such as double refined palm oil, refined and deodorized palm oil with peanut and sesame oil, and filtered palm oil were prepared. The results obtained showed that the presented technique was able to differentiate the samples between 20 kHz to 1 Mhz. The results obtained correlate with the theories on EIS technique and planar electromagnetic sensor which are presented in this paper

Influence of citronella and chlorpyrifos on Chrysomya megacephala (Fabricius) and Chrysomya rufifacies (Macquart) (Diptera: Calliphoridae) infesting rabbit carcasses

Influence of citronella and chlorpyrifos on oviposition and duration for completing life cycles for Chrysomya megacephala and Chrysomya rufifacies infesting decomposing rabbit carcasses was studied. Male rabbit carcasses (n = 12) were equally divided into control, citronella-and chlorpyrifos–treated groups, and left to decompose for 14 consecutive days. C. megacephala was the first necrophagous fly oviposited in all control and citronella-treated carcasses followed by C. rufifacies. Although initial oviposition of C. megacephala was delayed (4-6 hours) in citronella-treated carcasses (P < 0.05), prolongation in completing its life cycle was not observed. Neither delayed initial oviposition nor prolonged life cycle for C. rufifacies in citronella-treated carcasses was observed. Oviposition was delayed for chlorpyrifos-treated carcasses (0.42 g/L), and eclosion of eggs remained unsuccessful. The findings deserve consideration because these chemicals are easily accessible and can be used by cunning criminals to confuse forensic entomologists while estimating minimum postmortem interval