A review of the role of Agricultural Research, Technology And Policy In The Seasonality Of Household Food Supply And Production In Sub-Saharan Africa

The seasonal patterns o f food supply and consumption are directly related to the food production capacities and the overall agricultural development status of a given region. In this paper, various aspects of the consequences of seasonality on food supply and production in sub-Saharan Africa , excluding South Africa , are reviewed. The paper i s presented under the following ten main headings: 1) Food production trends and crop yields 2) Food production and population growth 3) Consumption and production 4) Seasonality of foods, price and agricultural productivity 5) Food expenditure, labor, and traditional agriculture 6) Food marketing 7) Food security and self-sufficiency 8) Some traditional solutions to seasonality 9) The Green Revolution and Africa 10) Agricultural research priorities for minimizing seasonalit

Short Communication: Thoraco-pericardiotomy in two bovines under field condition

The present paper deals with two typical cases of traumatic pericarditis,in a crossbred pregnant cow and a bullock. The patients had a history of brisket edema, anorexia, and wasting condition for a period of 15 days. The physical and clinical examination for both cases revealed jugular pulsation, marked edema of brisket extending back up to udder, rise in rectal temp., heart rate and respiratory rate with muffled cardiac sounds audible over a wide area in chest. Based on the history and clinical examination data the cases were diagnosed as traumatic pericarditis. Thoraco-pericardiotomy was performed through resection of left fifth rib under sedation with xylazine and local infiltration anesthesia. Small quantity of fluid from thoracic cavity was removed; however, the foreign body was not detected. The thoracotomy wound was closed in routine manner. Post operatively both animals were given parenteral antibiotic and wound dressing was carried out. The skin sutures were removed on 10th post operative day. Both the cases survived and recovered well within a period of one month. The pregnant cow delivered and was yielding 10 liters of milk daily. Keywords: Thoraco-pericardiotomy, Traumatic pericarditis, Bovin

Short communication: Surgical Management of Urethral Obstruction in three Bullocks

Three typical cases of urolithiasis were reported for treatment at college of veterinary medicine, Mekelle clinics. All cases were of adult male bovine between 5-10 years of age group. The first and third case was of necrosis of penis and subcutaneous accumulation of urine in the prepuce and scrotal area, while the second case was of rupture of urinary bladder and subsequent uroperitoneam and uremia. The first and third case was operated for amputation of penis and drainage of urine from subcutaneous region and the second case was operated for post-scrotal urethrotomy and repair of ruptured urinary bladder through posterior left flank. The operative procedure for these cases including treatment of uremia is described in detail. All cases made an uneventful recovery. Keywords: Amputation of penis, necrosis of penis, obstructive urolithiasis, rupture of urinary bladder, uroperitoneam

Ocular Dermoid in Crossbred calf- A Case Report

The present paper deals with a typical case of ocular dermoid cyst in three weeks old crossbred calf. The patient had a history of lacrimation and a hairy growth in the left eye. Based on the history and clinical examination, the case was diagnosed as ocular dermoid cyst and removed successfully by superficial keratectomy.Key words: Calf, Dermoid, Keratectomy, Teratolog

The COVID-19 pandemic and healthcare systems in Africa: a scoping review of preparedness, impact and response.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has overwhelmed health systems in both developed and developing nations alike. Africa has one of the weakest health systems globally, but there is limited evidence on how the region is prepared for, impacted by and responded to the pandemic. METHODS: We conducted a scoping review of PubMed, Scopus, CINAHL to search peer-reviewed articles and Google, Google Scholar and preprint sites for grey literature. The scoping review captured studies on either preparedness or impacts or responses associated with COVID-19 or covering one or more of the three topics and guided by Arksey and O'Malley's methodological framework. The extracted information was documented following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension checklist for scoping reviews. Finally, the resulting data were thematically analysed. RESULTS: Twenty-two eligible studies, of which 6 reported on health system preparedness, 19 described the impacts of COVID-19 on access to general and essential health services and 7 focused on responses taken by the healthcare systems were included. The main setbacks in health system preparation included lack of available health services needed for the pandemic, inadequate resources and equipment, and limited testing ability and surge capacity for COVID-19. Reduced flow of patients and missing scheduled appointments were among the most common impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Health system responses identified in this review included the availability of telephone consultations, re-purposing of available services and establishment of isolation centres, and provisions of COVID-19 guidelines in some settings. CONCLUSIONS: The health systems in Africa were inadequately prepared for the pandemic, and its impact was substantial. Responses were slow and did not match the magnitude of the problem. Interventions that will improve and strengthen health system resilience and financing through local, national and global engagement should be prioritised

Traditional values of virginity and sexual behaviour in rural Ethiopian youth: results from a cross-sectional study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Delaying sexual initiation has been promoted as one of the methods of decreasing risks of HIV among young people. In traditional countries, such as Ethiopia, retaining virginity until marriage is the norm. However, no one has examined the impact of this traditional norm on sexual behaviour and risk of HIV in marriage. This study examined the effect of virginity norm on having sex before marriage and sexual behaviour after marriage among rural Ethiopian youth.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We did a cross-sectional survey in 9 rural and 1 urban area using a probabilistic sample of 3,743 youth, 15–24 years of age. Univariate analysis was used to assess associations between virginity norm and gender stratified by area, and between sexual behaviour and marital status. We applied Kaplan-Meier and Cox regression analysis to estimate age at sexual debut and assessed the predictors of premarital sex among the never-married using SPSS.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We found that maintaining virginity is still a way of securing marriage for girls, especially in rural areas; the odds of belief and intention to marry a virgin among boys was 3–4 times higher among rural young males. As age increased, the likelihood of remaining a virgin decreased. There was no significant difference between married and unmarried young people in terms of number of partners and visiting commercial sex workers. Married men were twice more likely to have multiple sexual partners than their female counterparts. A Cox regression show that those who did not believe in traditional values of preserving virginity (adjusted hazard ratio [AHR] = 2.91 [1.92–4.40]), alcohol drinkers (AHR = 2.91 [1.97–4.29]), Khat chewers (AHR = 2.36 [1.45–3.85]), literates (AHR = 18.01 [4.34–74.42]), and the older age group (AHR = 1.85 [1.19–2.91]) were more likely to have premarital sex than their counterparts.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Although virginity norms help delay age at sexual debut among rural Ethiopian youth, and thus reduces vulnerability to sexually transmitted infections and HIV infection, vulnerability among females may increase after marriage due to unprotected multiple risky sexual behaviours by spouses. The use of preventive services, such as VCT before marriage and condom use in marriage should be part of the HIV/AIDS prevention and control strategies.</p

Refashioning the Ethiopian monarchy in the twentieth century: An intellectual history

This article traces the shift in the Ethiopian monarchical ideology from lineage as symbolic Christian filiation to dynasty as a political genealogy of sovereign power. From the end of the nineteenth century, and more prominently under Haylä Səllase, Ethiopian state sources started qualifying the Ethiopian ruling dynasty as ‘unbroken’ in history. A record of ‘uninterrupted’ power allowed the Ethiopian government to politically appropriate past glories and claim them as ‘ours’, thus compensating for the political weakness of the present with the political greatness of the past. The ideological rebranding of the Ethiopian monarchy in the 1930s brought Ethiopia closer to Japan, and the ‘eternalist clause’ of the Meiji constitution offered a powerful model of how to recodify dynasty in modern legal terms. An intellectual history of dynasty in the Ethiopian context sees the concept simultaneously associated with both hegemonic and counter-hegemonic political projects. The narratives of continuity enabled by the dynastisation of history were successful in invigorating the pro-Ethiopian front during the Italian occupation of Ethiopia (1936-1941), but served at the same time to reinforce domestic mechanisms of class, political and cultural domination

Global, regional, and national under-5 mortality, adult mortality, age-specific mortality, and life expectancy, 1970–2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016

BACKGROUND: Detailed assessments of mortality patterns, particularly age-specific mortality, represent a crucial input that enables health systems to target interventions to specific populations. Understanding how all-cause mortality has changed with respect to development status can identify exemplars for best practice. To accomplish this, the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016 (GBD 2016) estimated age-specific and sex-specific all-cause mortality between 1970 and 2016 for 195 countries and territories and at the subnational level for the five countries with a population greater than 200 million in 2016. METHODS: We have evaluated how well civil registration systems captured deaths using a set of demographic methods called death distribution methods for adults and from consideration of survey and census data for children younger than 5 years. We generated an overall assessment of completeness of registration of deaths by dividing registered deaths in each location-year by our estimate of all-age deaths generated from our overall estimation process. For 163 locations, including subnational units in countries with a population greater than 200 million with complete vital registration (VR) systems, our estimates were largely driven by the observed data, with corrections for small fluctuations in numbers and estimation for recent years where there were lags in data reporting (lags were variable by location, generally between 1 year and 6 years). For other locations, we took advantage of different data sources available to measure under-5 mortality rates (U5MR) using complete birth histories, summary birth histories, and incomplete VR with adjustments; we measured adult mortality rate (the probability of death in individuals aged 15-60 years) using adjusted incomplete VR, sibling histories, and household death recall. We used the U5MR and adult mortality rate, together with crude death rate due to HIV in the GBD model life table system, to estimate age-specific and sex-specific death rates for each location-year. Using various international databases, we identified fatal discontinuities, which we defined as increases in the death rate of more than one death per million, resulting from conflict and terrorism, natural disasters, major transport or technological accidents, and a subset of epidemic infectious diseases; these were added to estimates in the relevant years. In 47 countries with an identified peak adult prevalence for HIV/AIDS of more than 0·5% and where VR systems were less than 65% complete, we informed our estimates of age-sex-specific mortality using the Estimation and Projection Package (EPP)-Spectrum model fitted to national HIV/AIDS prevalence surveys and antenatal clinic serosurveillance systems. We estimated stillbirths, early neonatal, late neonatal, and childhood mortality using both survey and VR data in spatiotemporal Gaussian process regression models. We estimated abridged life tables for all location-years using age-specific death rates. We grouped locations into development quintiles based on the Socio-demographic Index (SDI) and analysed mortality trends by quintile. Using spline regression, we estimated the expected mortality rate for each age-sex group as a function of SDI. We identified countries with higher life expectancy than expected by comparing observed life expectancy to anticipated life expectancy on the basis of development status alone. FINDINGS: Completeness in the registration of deaths increased from 28% in 1970 to a peak of 45% in 2013; completeness was lower after 2013 because of lags in reporting. Total deaths in children younger than 5 years decreased from 1970 to 2016, and slower decreases occurred at ages 5-24 years. By contrast, numbers of adult deaths increased in each 5-year age bracket above the age of 25 years. The distribution of annualised rates of change in age-specific mortality rate differed over the period 2000 to 2016 compared with earlier decades: increasing annualised rates of change were less frequent, although rising annualised rates of change still occurred in some locations, particularly for adolescent and younger adult age groups. Rates of stillbirths and under-5 mortality both decreased globally from 1970. Evidence for global convergence of death rates was mixed; although the absolute difference between age-standardised death rates narrowed between countries at the lowest and highest levels of SDI, the ratio of these death rates-a measure of relative inequality-increased slightly. There was a strong shift between 1970 and 2016 toward higher life expectancy, most noticeably at higher levels of SDI. Among countries with populations greater than 1 million in 2016, life expectancy at birth was highest for women in Japan, at 86·9 years (95% UI 86·7-87·2), and for men in Singapore, at 81·3 years (78·8-83·7) in 2016. Male life expectancy was generally lower than female life expectancy between 1970 and 2016, an

Intercropping with sorghum at Alemaya, Ethiopia

Meeting: Symposium on Intercropping for Semi-Arid Areas, 10-12 May 1976, Morogoro, TZIn IDL-196

Sorghum genetic resources in Africa

Meeting: Crop Genetic Resources in Africa, 4-6 Jan. 1978, Ibadan, NGPhotocop