The Perception of Married People about Premarital Counseling. A Survey in the Techiman Municipality of Ghana

This study was an investigation into the perception of married people in Techiman Municipality about premarital counseling. The purposive and the disproportional stratified sampling methods were used to select eight churches and 259 respondents (married people) respectively in the Techiman Municipality for the study. The instrument used to collect data was a questionnaire. It consisted of five-point likert scale items designed by the researcher and was administered to married people in the municipality. The researcher had three research questions to work with. The major finding from the study was that premarital counselling has positive impact on marriages and Techiman Municipality married people have positive perception about premarital counselling .It was suggested that premarital counselling should be maintained and encouraged in all churches. All these can be a reality if more counsellors are trained. This means that universities should increase their intake of students in guidance and counselling so that more professional counselors could be turned out to help in this direction Keywords: Premarital Counseling, Perception, Married Couples, Counselin

Assessment of the Rationality of Senior High School students’ Choices of Academic Programmes in Kwabre East District of Ghana

The study sought to find out whether Senior High School students in Kwabre East District make rational choices of academic programmes in school. The population of the study was all students in the six Senior High Schools in Kwabre East District. However, the Form 3 students were purposively sampled for the study. Stratified random sampling technique with proportional allocation was used to sample 331 Form 3 students from the various programmes in each school for the study. A self-made questionnaire was used to gather data from the 331 respondents. A total of 320 copies of the questionnaire were obtained from the respondents. Statistical Product for Service Solutions was used to analyze the data. Frequencies and percentages were analyzed to answer all the research questions.It was found out that generally Senior High School students in Kwabre East District make rational choices of their programmes of study. This is because most of them assessed their strengths and weaknesses and sought information on their programmes before choosing them. Again, most of them chose their programmes based on their abilities or interests. However, few of them sought counselling from qualified counsellors before choosing their programmes. It was recommended that school counsellors should reinforce students’ rational programme choice behaviour by intensifying counselling in schools so that students will continue to make rational choices of programmes in school. Keywords: career choice, rational choice, academic programmes, Senior High Schools

The implementation of the South African Triage Score (SATS) in an urban teaching hospital, Ghana

IntroductionTriage is the process of sorting patients based on the level of acuity to ensure the most severely injured and ill patients receive timely care before their condition worsens. The South African Triage Scale (SATS) was developed out of a need for an accurate and objective measure of urgency based on physiological parameters and clinical discriminators that is easily implemented in low resource settings. SATS was introduced in the emergency center (EC) of Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) in January 2010. This study seeks to evaluate the accurate use of the SATS by nurses at KATH.MethodsThis cross-sectional study was conducted in the EC at KATH in Kumasi, Ghana. Patients 12years and over with complete triage information were included in this study. Each component of SATS was calculated (i.e. for heart rate of 41–50, a score of 1 was given) and summed. This score was compared to the original triage score. When scores did not equate, the entire triage record was reviewed by an emergency physician and an advanced practice emergency nurse separately to determine if the triage was appropriate. These reviews were compared and consensus reached.Results52 of 903 adult patients (5.8%) were judged to have been mis-triaged by expert review; 49 under-triaged (sent to a zone that corresponded to a lower acuity level than they should have been, based on their vital signs) and 3 over-triaged. Of the 49 patients who were under-triaged, 34 were under-triaged by one category and 7 by two categories.ConclusionUnder-triage is a concern to patient care and safety, and while the under-triage rate of 5.7% in this sample falls within the 5–10% range considered unavoidable by the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma, concentrated efforts to regularly train triage nurses to ensure no patients are under-triaged have been undertaken. Overall though, SATS has been implemented successfully in the EC at KATH by triage nurses

Increasing the use of continuing professional development courses to strengthen trauma care in Ghana

Injury is a major cause of death and disability in Ghana. Strengthening care of the injured is essential to reduce this burden. Trauma continuing professional development (CPD) courses are an important component of strengthening trauma care. In many countries, including Ghana, their use needs to be more uniformly promoted. We propose lowcost strategies to increase the utilization of trauma CPD in Ghana, especially in district hospitals and higher need areas. These strategies include developing plans by regional health directorates and teaching hospitals for the regions for which they are responsible. Lists could be kept and monitored of which hospitals have doctors with which type of training. Those hospitals that need to have at least one doctor trained could be flagged for notice of upcoming courses in the area and especially encouraged to have the needed doctors attend. The targets should include at least one surgeon or one emergency physician at all regional or large district hospitals who have taken the Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) (or locally-developed alternative) in the past 4 years, and each district hospital should have at least one doctor who has taken the Primary Trauma Care (PTC) or Trauma Evaluation and Management (TEAM) (or locally-developed alternatives) in the past 4 years. Parallel measures would increase enrollment in the courses during training, such as promoting TEAM for all medical students and ATLS for all surgery residents. It is important to develop and utilize more “home grown” alternatives to increase the long-term sustainability of these efforts, Keywords: trauma, injury, education, training, continuing professional developmentFunding: Non

International programmes and research on effective activity-based learning (ABL): What can Ghana learn from international best practices?

Despite tremendous success in improving access and enrolment of pupils in the Ghanaian basic education system in recent times, learning outcomes still remain below expected levels. Through a systematic review international programmes and research on activity based learning (ABL), this article highlights exemplary practices which could help improve the quality of teaching, raise student learning and close achievement gaps for Ghanaian pupils. The article finds that Ghana has been the testing ground for many initiatives aimed at improving the quality of teaching and learning. However, owing to the litany of problems associated with these initiatives, the article contends forcefully that Ghana now needs to focus on drawing lessons from international best practices on ABL pedagogies to adopt to uncover what is working and not working to set the foundation for developing a new national approach to ABL, which should have the potential to transform the education landscape in Ghana. Keywords: ABL; ABL pedagogy; active learning pedagogies; Ghana’s basic education system; teaching and learning; classroom practice

Road traffic fatalities - a neglected epidemic in rural northern Ghana: evidence from the navrongo demographic surveillance system

Globally, road traffic fatalities have been on the increase, particularly in low-and-middle income countries. Much of this is attributed to increases in the acquisition, and use of motorized vehicles. However, there is very little empirical research to understand the causes and determinants of this threat. This paper investigates time trends and determinants of road traffic accidents in the Kasena-Nankana district of northern Ghana. First, we utilized causes of death data gathered by the Health and Demographic Surveillance System in Navrongo, to examine trends in deaths due to injury, particularly those related to road traffic crashes. Subsequently, we employed multivariate logistic regression to examine factors associated with deaths due to all injuries and road traffic crashes among adults 15–59 years of age. Results show a three-fold increase in mortality (18%) due to injuries in the Kasena-Nankana district in about a decade. Fatalities resulting from road traffic crashes constitute the greatest share of the burden of mortality resulting from injuries. Increases in road traffic fatalities have coincided with recent increases in motor and vehicular traffic in the region. Several factors are associated with the increased risk of deaths from road traffic accidents, principal among which include urban residence (OR = 1.74 95% CI 1.09-2.78), being male and in the prime adult ages of between 20–29 years old (OR = 4.85 95% CI 2.65-8.89), as well as people with higher levels of education (OR = 3.21 95% CI 1.75-5.87) and those in higher socioeconomic status categories (OR = 2.43 95% CI 1.21-4.88). Results suggest that road traffic fatalities have become a major cause of morbidity and mortality and brings into focus the need for measures to curb this looming crisis. There is need for strategic interventions to be adopted to avert what is sure to become one of the leading causes of death in this impoverished locality

Extinction risk of Chinese angiosperms varies between woody and herbaceous species

Aim: Understanding how species' traits and environmental contexts relate to extinction risk is a critical priority for ecology and conservation biology. This study aims to identify and explore factors related to extinction risk between herbaceous and woody angiosperms to facilitate more effective conservation and management strategies and understand the interactions between environmental threats and species' traits. Location: China. Taxon: Angiosperms. Methods: We obtained a large dataset including five traits, six extrinsic variables, and 796,118 occurrence records for 14,888 Chinese angiosperms. We assessed the phylogenetic signal and used phylogenetic generalized least squares regressions to explore relationships between extinction risk, plant traits, and extrinsic variables in woody and herbaceous angiosperms. We also used phylogenetic path analysis to evaluate causal relationships among traits, climate variables, and extinction risk of different growth forms. Results: The phylogenetic signal of extinction risk differed among woody and herbaceous species. Angiosperm extinction risk was mainly affected by growth form, altitude, mean annual temperature, normalized difference vegetation index, and precipitation change from 1901 to 2020. Woody species' extinction risk was strongly affected by height and precipitation, whereas extinction risk for herbaceous species was mainly affected by mean annual temperature rather than plant traits. Main conclusions: Woody species were more likely to have higher extinction risks than herbaceous species under climate change and extinction threat levels varied with both plant traits and extrinsic variables. The relationships we uncovered may help identify and protect threatened plant species and the ecosystems that rely on them

An open dataset of Plasmodium falciparum genome variation in 7,000 worldwide samples.

MalariaGEN is a data-sharing network that enables groups around the world to work together on the genomic epidemiology of malaria. Here we describe a new release of curated genome variation data on 7,000 Plasmodium falciparum samples from MalariaGEN partner studies in 28 malaria-endemic countries. High-quality genotype calls on 3 million single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and short indels were produced using a standardised analysis pipeline. Copy number variants associated with drug resistance and structural variants that cause failure of rapid diagnostic tests were also analysed.  Almost all samples showed genetic evidence of resistance to at least one antimalarial drug, and some samples from Southeast Asia carried markers of resistance to six commonly-used drugs. Genes expressed during the mosquito stage of the parasite life-cycle are prominent among loci that show strong geographic differentiation. By continuing to enlarge this open data resource we aim to facilitate research into the evolutionary processes affecting malaria control and to accelerate development of the surveillance toolkit required for malaria elimination