Ecohealth research in Southeast Asia : past, present and the way forward

Ecohealth is a comprehensive approach to understanding health at its human, animal and environmental interface in a socio-ecological systems context. This approach was introduced widely in Southeast Asia (SEA) by the Canadian International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in the late 2000s. Aimed at addressing the problem of emerging infectious diseases (EIDs), numerous such projects and activities have been generated throughout the region. Ecohealth is increasingly converging with the One Health approach, as both movements emphasise a holistic understanding to health. We conducted a scoping review by considering all of the Ecohealth programmes, initiatives and projects that have been implemented in SEA since the introduction of the approach, and also gathered information from peer-reviewed literature. The objective of this paper is to review Ecohealth activities within SEA over the last 10 years to address the lessons learned, challenges faced and the way forward for Ecohealth in the region. Activities range from those focusing purely on capacity, projects focusing on research and projects covering both. Achievements to date include, for example, research contributing to the field of infectious diseases in relation to social ecological factors and associated urbanisation and agricultural intensification. Challenges remain at the project design and implementation level, in the available capacity and coordination to develop Ecohealth research teams in the countries, gauging teams' assimilation of Ecohealth's underlying tenets and their translation into sustainable disease prevention and control, as well as in the ability to scale up Ecohealth projects. We suggest that the way forward for Ecohealth should be from a regional perspective in terms of research, training and policy translation using Ecohealth in combination with the One Health approach

Reinforcement Learning for Multiple HAPS/UAV Coordination: Impact of Exploration-Exploitation Dilemma on Convergence.

This work analyses the application of Reinforcement Learning (RL) for coordinating multiple Unmanned High Altitude Platform Stations (HAPS) or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for providing communications area coverage to a community of fixed and mobile users. Multiple agent coordination techniques are essential for developing autonomous capabilities for multi-UAV/HAPS control and management. This paper examines the impact of exploration-exploitation dilemma on the application of RL for coordinating multiple UAVs/HAPS. In the work, it is observed that RL convergence is a challenge, as the RL algorithm struggles to find optimal positioning for maximum user coverage. This paper attempts to establish the source of the convergence issue with the RL technique for this specific application scenario. The work goes on to suggest methods to minimise this impact, and some insights for applying RL techniques for multi-agent coordination for communications area coverage

Room for Improvement in Conducting and Reporting Non-Inferiority Randomized Controlled Trials on Drugs: A Systematic Review

BACKGROUND: A non-inferiority (NI) trial is intended to show that the effect of a new treatment is not worse than the comparator. We conducted a review to identify how NI trials were conducted and reported, and whether the standard requirements from the guidelines were followed. METHODOLOGY AND PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: From 300 randomly selected articles on NI trials registered in PubMed at 5 February 2009, we included 227 NI articles that referred to 232 trials. We excluded studies on bioequivalence, trials on healthy volunteers, non-drug trials, and articles of which the full-text version could not be retrieved. A large proportion of trials (34.0%) did not use blinding. The NI margin was reported in 97.8% of the trials, but only 45.7% of the trials reported the method to determine the margin. Most of the trials used either intention to treat (ITT) (34.9%) or per-protocol (PP) analysis (19.4%), while 41.8% of the trials used both methods. Less than 10% of the trials included a placebo arm to confirm the efficacy of the new drug and active comparator against placebo, and less than 5.0% were reporting the similarity of the current trial with the previous comparator's trials. In general, no difference was seen in the quality of reporting before and after the release of the CONSORT statement extension 2006 or between the high-impact and low-impact journals. CONCLUSION: The conduct and reporting of NI trials can be improved, particularly in terms of maximizing the use of blinding, the use of both ITT and PP analysis, reporting the similarity with the previous comparator's trials to guarantee a valid constancy assumption, and most importantly reporting the method to determine the NI margin

Insights in improving food safety in smallholder pig value chains in Vietnam. ILRI Policy Brief 38

Biological contamination of pork Salmonella was found in all retail types leads to high-risk for consumers in Vietnam. • Strengthened hygiene practices in traditional markets is important to improve pork safety. • Incentive and simple interventions developed by the SafePORK project can improve food safety in slaughterhouses and traditional pork retail and are scalable. • Consumers expressed a high demand for pork sold by more hygienic shops and are ready to pay a premium. • Alternative solutions to replace antimicrobials in pig fattening showed promising results from a pilot supporting the government’s roadmap towards prudent use of antimicrobials and reducing antimicrobial resistance in livestock