Parental decision about human papillomavirus vaccination for their daughters

Background: Human papillomavirus (HPV) infection is a sexually transmitted infection common in teenagers and adults in their early 20s. Some types of HPV are associated with 90% of cervical cancer around the world. The risk of HPV infection in women can be reduced by giving HPV vaccine to girls beginning at the age of 9, as recommended by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). For children and young adolescents, parental decision on HPV vaccination is crucial for the uptake of HPV vaccine rate. This study explored the factors influencing parental decisions on HPV vaccination for their daughters. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted between February and March 2017. Data were collected from parents of girls aged 9 to 17 (n=420, 100 % response rate) in Hong Kong. A validated 27-item questionnaire was used to elicit parents’ knowledge on HPV and HPV vaccine, barriers to HPV vaccination, and willingness toward vaccinating their daughter(s). Results: Only 59.6% of respondents were aware of the HPV vaccine before this study. Among the parents who were aware of the vaccine, around 32% had already vaccinated their daughters. Majority (83%) of the parents had heard of HPV, but the knowledge levels were poor (70% scored below average). The reasons parents did not vaccinate their daughters were fear of the side-effects of the vaccine (85.7%) and feared the vaccine would affect the immune system of their daughters (38.5%); around 18% believed that HPV vaccination would encourage early sexual activity or promiscuity. More than half of the respondents (69.7%) were willing to vaccine their daughter(s). Conclusions: Given the evidence of suboptimal awareness about HPV vaccination, education and promotional strategies should be enhanced. Interventions should address parental concerns about the misconceptions between vaccination and early sexual activity and promiscuity

Are nursing students in Hong Kong wellprepared for urinary incontinence care?

—Background:  Urinary incontinence is a common disorder that affects men and women of all ages. An effective management of urinary incontinence requires adequate knowledge and positive attitudes from health care professionals. Nursing students who share similar care tasks with qualified nurses should have adequate knowledge to provide quality continence care. There is little evidence to inform the knowledge and attitudes toward urinary incontinence among nursing students in Hong Kong. The purpose of this study was to examine nursing students’ urinary incontinence knowledge and attitude. Methods: A crosssectional survey was conducted in February 2017. A sample of 392 nursing students from 5 different educational institutions in Hong Kong was recruited. Two validated questionnaires, the Urinary Incontinence Knowledge Scale (UIKS) and Urinary Incontinence Attitude Scale (UIAS) were used to measure knowledge and attitudes towards urinary incontinence respectively. Results: Overall urinary incontinence knowledge was moderate (73.3%, mean 22.0/30, SD 4.4) and attitudes concerning urinary incontinence were generally positive (69.3%, mean 41.6/60, SD 4.5). There was a weak correlation between urinary incontinence knowledge and attitudes (r = 0.175, p = 0.001). A high level of interest in learning more about urinary incontinence was reported (71.2%). Conclusions: Hong Kong nursing students had moderate level of knowledge and positive attitude towards urinary incontinence. This study suggests that nursing students in Hong Kong are not well prepared to provide urinary incontinence care. There is still a need to examine the urinary incontinence course content within the nursing programme in Hong Kong

A survey: Knowledge about breast cancer and health beliefs towards screening practice among menopausal and postmenopausal women

Breast cancer is a major health problem with high mortality in women worldwide and has become the third most prevalent disease among women in Hong Kong. Knowledge about breast cancer is closely related to health beliefs towards screening practices for breast cancer. This study examined knowledge about breast cancer and breast cancer screening (BCS) beliefs among menopausal and postmenopausal women. A total of 213 eligible women, mostly aged 55 to 60, who were housewives or retired and were educated at secondary school level or above, were selected. A survey using the Chinese Breast Cancer Screening Beliefs (CBCSB) questionnaire was conducted. The results revealed that menopausal and postmenopausal women had better health beliefs towards breast cancer screening practices. Education was found to be positively associated with attitudes of BCS health beliefs. It indicates that education can affect attitudes towards breast cancer screening practice. Most of the women presented inadequate knowledge and they wished to receive more information about breast cancer although they were well-educated. It is important to note that knowledge about breast cancer cannot be effectively delivered to the at-risk women. In addition, menopausal and postmenopausal women can be more likely to seek more information about the effectiveness and side effects of the medication for breast cancer. Therefore, treatment about effectiveness, side effects, and prices ought to be included in current educational programs and healthcare services in the promotion schemes. Healthcare professionals should also pay more attention to better BCS practices in community-based educational programs with information on preventive measures for breast cancer to menopausal and postmenopausal women, particularly to those in lower socioeconomic classes

Menopausal-specific quality of life among women in Hong Kong

This study aimed to explore the menopausal-specific quality of life and assess its relationship with the sociodemographic characteristics in menopausal and post-menopausal women in Hong Kong. A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 218 women aged between 45 and 80 or over. The quality of life was assessed by Menopause-Specific Quality of Life Questionnaire (MENQOLTM). Results showed that the mean scores for vasomotor domain: 2.59 ± 1.71; psycho-social domain: 2.77 ± 1.39; physical domain: 2.89 ± 1.23 and sexual domain 2.60 ± 1.16. The physical domain had the highest score in menopausal and post-menopausal women. Univariate analysis demonstrated that younger and less educated working post-menopausal women perceive lower quality of life. Our findings suggest that menopausal-related symptoms affect the quality of life

A survey of the perceived lifestyle risks of breast cancer in menopausal and postmenopausal women in Hong Kong

Breast cancer ranks as the most common cause of cancer death in women. If menopausal and postmenopausal women know the lifestyle risks associated with breast cancer and its preventive measures, they will make appropriate choices in order to enjoy their life and have a better chance of preventing this disease. This study attempted to explore perceived beliefs with regard to the lifestyle risks associated with breast cancer among menopausal and postmenopausal women in Hong Kong. A survey was designed that used a self-reporting questionnaire to assess the perceived beliefs of 223 women. Results showed that more than half of the participants held misconceptions about lifestyle breast cancer risks. Only those women who were well-educated and were worried about having breast cancer performed breast screening for cancer. The findings of this study suggest that health care professionals should channel resources to educate menopausal and postmenopausal women about the risks of breast cancer and to promote awareness of breast wellness and the value of breast cancer screening

TaintTrace: Efficient Flow Tracing with Dynamic Binary Rewriting

TaintTrace is a high performance flow tracing tool that protects systems against security exploits. It is based on dynamic execution binary rewriting empowering our tool with fine-grained monitoring of system activities such as the tracking of the usage and propagation of data origi-nated from the network. The challenge lies in minimizing the run-time overhead of the tool. TaintTrace uses a number of techniques such as direct memory mapping to optimize performance. In this paper, we demonstrate that TaintTrace is effective in protecting against various attacks while main-taining a modest slowdown of 5.5 times, offering significant improvements over similar tools.

Information Flow for Secure Distributed Applications

PhD thesisPrivate and confidential information is increasingly stored online and increasingly being exposed due to human errors as well as malicious attacks. Information leaks threaten confidentiality, lead to lawsuits, damage enterprise reputations, and cost billion of dollars. While distributed computing architectures provide data and service integration, they also create information flow control problems due to the interaction complexity among service providers. A main problem is the lack of an appropriate programming model to capture expected information flow behaviors in these large distributed software infrastructures. This research tackles this problem by proposing a programming methodology and enforcement platform for application developers to protect and share their sensitive data. We introduce Aeolus, a new platform intended to make it easier to build distributed applications that avoid the unauthorized release of information. The Aeolus security model is based on information flow control but differs from previous work in ways that we believe make it easier to use and understand. In addition, Aeolus provides a number of new mechanisms (anonymous closures, compound tags, boxes, and shared volatile state) to ease the job of writing applications. This thesis provides examples to show how Aeolus features support secure distributed applications. It describes the system design issues and solutions in designing a prototype implementation and presents performance results that show our platform has low overhead

Incorrect identification of recent Asian strains of Coxsackievirus A16 as human enterovirus 71: Improved primers for the specific detection of human enterovirus 71 by RT PCR

BACKGROUND: Human enterovirus 71 has emerged as an important pathogen in the Asia Pacific region and it is important to be able to make a rapid and specific diagnosis for outbreak control. Recent Asian strains of Coxsackievirus A16 have changes in the VP1 gene which causes mispriming of widely used primers for human enterovirus 71 specific identification. METHODS: Local strains of Coxsackievirus A16 were sequenced in the VP4 and VP1 genes and using sequence alignment tools, an improved set of primers were designed for specific identification of human enterovirus 71. These primers were evaluated against virus isolates as well as primary clinical specimens. RESULTS: A total of 218 virus strains were tested. All 39 human enterovirus 71 isolates were positive and none of the 38 Coxsackievirus A16, 127 other enteroviruses and 14 prototype flaviviruses and adenoviruses were positive when tested with the new primers. When aliquots of primary specimens known to have yielded human enterovirus 71 were retrospectively tested, we found that within 2 months of collection of the specimens, greater than 90% were positive but that the success rate diminished rapidly to 18% after 2 years storage. CONCLUSIONS: Our new primers will be useful in rapid diagnosis of human enterovirus 71 infection, and can also be used as a screening tool in surveillance programmes for early warning of human enterovirus 71 transmission

The Specific Characteristics of Childhood Obesity and the Effective Strategies to Combat Childhood Obesity in Hong Kong: A Short Review

Childhood obesity is a serious public health problem all around the world. The problem also currently exists in Hong Kong. Unhealthy lifestyle behavior may be one of key factors contributing to childhood obesity. The review revealed the specific characteristics of childhood obesity and the effective strategies in prevention of childhood obesity in Hong Kong context. Hong Kong is a metropolitan city which is interwoven eastern and western culture. The historical reasons and the complex political issues lead to overcrowded of people living in a small place. The environmental factors and the lifestyle pattern are the crucial causes contributing to childhood obesity. Parents have significant influence in shaping lifestyle behavior of children. While Chinese culture, informal childcare and more energy-dense food consumptions are the specific factors affecting children in lifestyle behavior as shown in the previous studies. The finding of the present review paper is expected to realize root causes of the prevalence of childhood obesity. On the other hand, many studies regarding to the treatment of childhood obesity were also reviewed. It was found that fewer studies were conducted to provide the combined intervention to combat childhood obesity. Generally, parental education was not the focus of childhood obesity intervention programs and parent-oriented approach was not commonly adopted in these programs. While limited childhood obesity intervention programs have been conducted in Hong Kong, it is recommended to conduct an appropriate program for children specifically in Hong Kong context. The design of preventive strategies should take into consideration of these specific characteristics in Hong Kong to reverse the increased prevalence of childhood obesity