Zimbabwe’s COVID- 19 vaccination roll-out: Urgent need to rethink strategies to improve the supply chain

No abstract

Flow-Controlled Background Replication for Big Data Jobs

This thesis proposes mechanisms to reduce the cost of data replication. Data replication is an extremely expensive but crucial operation in distributed file systems(DFSs). DFSs lie at the foundation of big data processing systems, therefore, improving them benefits nearly the entire big data ecosystem. Replication secures data against system failures but slows down applications by increasing I/O contention in the system. This thesis proposes flow-controlled background replication as a method to minimize the impact of replication on the performance of applications. The proposed system accelerates jobs, exploits under-utilized storage I/O bandwidth and supports job-based and replica-based bandwidth allocation. Our implementation, called Pfimbi, improved the runtime of data-intensive jobs by up to 30%. Pfimbi accelerated the job runtimes, in a workload based on a Facebook trace, by 15% on average. Pfimbi successfully improves application runtime while obtaining a work span comparable to that of the common synchronous replication scheme

When culture, traditions and public health clash : a paradigm shift urgently needed to stem the spread of COVID-19 in Zimbabwe

No abstract available.http://www.samj.org.zadm2022School of Health Systems and Public Health (SHSPH

The COVID-19 pandemic : public health responses in sub-Saharan Africa

The World Health Organisation declared the ongoing COVID-19 global health challenge a pandemic in March 2020. Since then, countries across the globe have implemented different public health control strategies—including global vaccination programs—in attempts to mitigate the further transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. However, to date, the virus has continued to spread rapidly despite these interventions. Countries across sub-Saharan Africa have implemented variable control strategies to combat the pandemic; however, despite the continent being among the least affected in terms of direct case burden, morbidity, and mortality, it has experienced marked socioeconomic disruption. Therefore, economic resuscitation is an urgent priority. The continent is vastly underrepresented in the body of scientific evidence due to limited research resources, testing capacity and genomic surveillance leading to empirical responses or responses guided by evidence from elsewhere. To inform the ongoing pandemic, and to prepare for the future, this Special Issue calls for manuscripts on global COVID-19 responses, and encourages researchers and stakeholders from resource-limited settings, particularly from sub-Saharan Africa, to share their COVID-19 public health responses. Areas to be covered include, but are not limited to, surveillance, case management, infection prevention and control, risk communication and community engagement, logistics, laboratory, ports of entry, and co-ordination. Manuscripts including primary research, viewpoints/perspectives, and comprehensive literature reviews are all welcome.http://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerpham2023School of Health Systems and Public Health (SHSPH