Assessment of antiretroviral treatment outcome in public hospitals, South Nations Nationalities and Peoples Region, Ethiopia

Background: The outcome of antiretroviral treatment, survival patterns and associated determining factors in public hospitals are not well known. Thus a longitudinal study is vital to understand the pattern of survival and treatment outcome.Objective: To assess the outcome of antiretroviral treatment in rural public hospitals in South Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region, Ethiopia.Method: A historical retrospective cohort study design was used for patients visiting hospitals from January 1, 2005 to January 31, 2009. A total of 5,664 patient records were examined from eight randomly selected public hospitals. Kaplan-Meier models were used to estimate mortality and Cox proportional hazards models to identify predictors of mortality.Results: The median age was 30 years and 73.6% were in the age group 25-40 while the higher HIV risk age group 14-24 covered only 12.8%. The proportion of females was 56.3%. The cumulative proportions of survivals were 92%, 90%, 88% and 86% at months 6, 12, 24 and 36 respectively. The hazard of death was higher in male (AHR: 1.632, CI: 1.309-2.034) and those who had a baseline CD4 cell count < 50 cells /ml compared to these with a count of above 200 (AHR: 3.176, CI: 2.304- 4.434). Patients with WHO stage IV at baseline had a higher risk of death compared to these with a WHO stage I (AHR: 5.603, CI: 1.753-17.905).Conclusions: There is an indication of improvement of survival in the patient population. An advanced disease stage, Low CD4 cell count, gender and timing of ARV regimen combinations had significant contribution in determining a longer survival time. Priority should thus be given to identify HIV-infected individuals and start ART earlier in the course of their illness. [Ethiop. J. Health Dev. 2011;25(2):102-109

Constructing a cardinal measure of democratic development in a transition polity: the Nigerian example

Existing measures of the level of democracy present in a given state treat democracy as a product and therefore place undue emphasis on actual freedoms enjoyed by the citizens of the country. In transition polities where the actual levels of freedom are low despite continuing efforts to democratize, democracy should be seen as a process rather than a product. A measure that dilutes the end product to capture today's struggles against undemocratic structures and policies does so in order to recognize the foundations these inputs lay for future democratic development. Nigeria exemplifies the many polities in transition on the African continent. This essay looks at the major political events that typify the processes of power change, quality of governance, political environment and democratic dividends, and uses them to construct democratization indices to determine the pattern and level of democratization in Nigeria since political independence. This exercise sets the stage for assessing the impacts of various dimensions of democratization on the performance of the Nigerian economy

Pattern of Fatal Injuries in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: A One-year Audit

Background: Injury continues to account for a large number of clients attending emergency department in Addis Ababa. Reliable information on causes of death is essential to the development of health policies for prevention and control. The aim of this atudy was to identify the pattern and common causes of fatal injuriesMethods: This is prospective study analyses autopsy data related to fatal injuries handled by Menilik II Hospital between July1, 2006 –June 30, 2007. (Sene 24, 1998 - Sene 23, 1999)Results: A total of 2107 cases were analyzed. The victims were mostly male and the most vulnerable age group was found to be 15-44 years. Accidents versus homicide and accident versus suicide ratio was 1.8:1 and 5:1 respectively. Road traffic accidents were the most frequent causes of accident related death. Main means of homicide was hit by blunt or sharp object or firearm. More than 90% of victims who committed suicide use hanging or poisoning.Ninety percent of deaths occur with in 24 hours of the injury and only 105 (5%) died from the second day on wards. Eighty one percents of this patients had never received any medical care (either pre-hospital or hospital level).Conclusion: Road traffic accidents accounted for most causes of injury related deaths. Significant proportion of patients had no access to emergency medical care. The findings strongly suggest that more aggressive, regulatory, educational, and rapid emergency treatment is necessary to address the large number of injury related death

Minimal Absorption Measurements

We show that it is not possible to discriminate two close transparencies without a certain number of photons being absorbed. We extend this to the discrimination of patterns of transparency (images).Comment: 11 pages (latex

Pattern of injuries in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: A one-year descriptive study

Background: Globally, trauma is recognized as one of the most life threatening public health problems. Traumatic injuries account for 12% of the global burden of diseases and are the third most important cause of overall mortality. This study was aaimed at assessing the burden of injuries in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.Methods: A one-year (July 2005-June 2006) retrospective descriptive audit of injuries in a public health facility of Addis Ababa using external causes of injury codes on district health information system.Results: During the study period there were 40,752 out-patient department visits, of which 956 were hospitalizations with 35 deaths occurring as a results of injury which accounted for 27% of all emergency and 3% of all regular visits, 5% of all hospitalizations and 3% of deaths. The patients were predominantly young males. Even though falls were the commonest causes of unintentional injury, road traffic injuries were the main burden of the health facility being the commonest cause among young male and also accounted for 61% of injury related admission, 52% of injury related death, and leading cause of repeated visits. A total of 44% of unintentional injuries were categorized under ‘other accidental causes’, only 6 deaths were reported in the out patient department, and the conditions of one third of the patients at discharge were not recorded.Conclusion: The injury, especially road traffic injury, is the burden for health facility; there is a need for improving the way injuries are recorded and compiled

Entanglement criterion for pure M⊗NM\otimes N bipartite quantum states

We propose a entanglement measure for pure $M \otimes N$ bipartite quantum states. We obtain the measure by generalizing the equivalent measure for a $2 \otimes 2$ system, via a $2 \otimes 3$ system, to the general bipartite case. The measure emphasizes the role Bell states have, both for forming the measure, and for experimentally measuring the entanglement. The form of the measure is similar to generalized concurrence. In the case of $2 \otimes 3$ systems, we prove that our measure, that is directly measurable, equals the concurrence. It is also shown that in order to measure the entanglement, it is sufficient to measure the projections of the state onto a maximum of $M(M-1)N(N-1)/2$ Bell states.Comment: 6 page

Interaction-free measurement and forward scattering

Interaction-free measurement is shown to arise from the forward-scattered wave accompanying absorption: a "quantum silhouette" of the absorber. Accordingly, the process is not free of interaction. For a perfect absorber the forward-scattered wave is locked both in amplitude and in phase. For an imperfect one it has a nontrivial phase of dynamical origin (``colored silhouette"), measurable by interferometry. Other examples of quantum silhouettes, all controlled by unitarity, are briefly discussed.Comment: 4 pages in RevTex + 1 figure in eps; submitted to Phys. Rev. A since 09Jan98; now update

Complementarity and the uncertainty relations

We formulate a general complementarity relation starting from any Hermitian operator with discrete non-degenerate eigenvalues. We then elucidate the relationship between quantum complementarity and the Heisenberg-Robertson's uncertainty relation. We show that they are intimately connected. Finally we exemplify the general theory with some specific suggested experiments.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, REVTeX, uses epsf.sty and multicol.st