3 research outputs found
Soil-Transmitted Helminthiasis and Schistosomiasis in Children of Poor Families in Leyte, Philippines: Lessons for Disease Prevention and Control
Objective
Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) continue to be a public health problem in the Philippines. We assessed the association of soil-transmitted helminthiasis (STH) and schistosomiasis with selected health-related and socioeconomic variables in four villages in Leyte, Philippines.
Methods
Stool specimens from 418 adults and 533 of their children from 209 families were examined through the Kato-Katz technique.
Results
STH and schistosomiasis were present in 64.6% and 12.5%, respectively, of study participants. Analysis through the generalized linear mixed model revealed a number of associations between infection in parents and their children. Findings indicate that years of disease prevention and control efforts in these areas have been unable to bring down prevalence in children and their parents. Eliminating NTDs as public health problems will require a systems thinking approach beyond implementation of vertical control programs alone
Marikina flood hazard models using historical data of water level
In this paper, ten-year historical data of water levels recorded at Sto. Niño, Marikina station of MMDA-EFCOS were analysed and processed to determine the number of times per year (annual frequency) that critical levels of the Marikina River near the Sto. Niño station were reached and for how long (duration). Probability distributions for the annual frequency and duration were then fitted to the samples obtained. Monte Carlo simulation was applied in order to generate possible realizations of the random variables. Summary statistics were then obtained from the simulated values. Finally, backtesting using historical data of water levels after the period of model development was performed to check the validity of the models. The results showed that the models obtained were reliable. The results of this study may be used to guide the local government of Marikina in planning the needed resources in order to sufficiently respond in times of flooding incidents
Forecasting the Term Structure of Philippine Interest Rates Using the Dynamic Nelson-Siegel Model
The three-factor Nelson-Siegel model is a widely used model for forecasting the term structure of interest rates. Several extensions have recently been proposed. Even for the original model, different methods of treating the parameters have been shown. Ultimately, what works best depends on the data used to estimate the parameters. In this paper, the original three-factor model with fixed shape parameter was applied to forecast the term structure using market data from the Philippines. Instead of giving a pre-determined model for the latent factors, the best time series model for them was searched using standard statistical tools. Based on the historical data, the best model for each latent factor is of the form ARMA(p,q)+eGARCH(1,1). The dependence structure of these parameters was considered in generating their future values. This was carried out by finding the joint distribution of the residuals via appropriate copula. Results show that forecast of interest rates for different tenors is reliable up to the near future. For an active market, this is good enough since the models for the parameters can be adjusted as new information comes in