Determinants of exclusive breastfeeding practices in Ethiopia

Background: Despite the demonstrated benefits of breast milk, the prevalence of breastfeeding, in-particular exclusive breastfeeding (EBF), in many developing countries including Ethiopia is lower than the international recommendation of EBF for the first six months of lifeObjective: To assess the practice of EBF and explore its determinants in Ethiopia and provide policy makers and NGOs with relevant information for future planning and interventions.Methods: Raw data collected from nine regions and two city administrations using stratified cluster sampling method by the Ethiopian Demographic Health Survey (EDHS) 2005 were used to study the practice and determinants of EBF countrywide. Analysis was based on children whose age was less than six months and alive at the time of interviewthat was extracted from the women’s database.Results: The overall rates of exclusive and full breastfeeding were 49.0% and 68.2% respectively. Maternal education, marital status, wealth index and age of the child were closely associated with EBF practices, nonetheless, in the hierarchical analysis; being not married, middle/ richer/ richest wealth index, and child age 0-1and 2-3 month wereretained as the predictors of EBF (

Utilization of antenatal care services among teenagers in Ethiopia: A cross sectional study

Background: Teenaged women suffer from a disproportionate share of reproductive health problem. The purpose of this study was to estimate the utilization of antenatal care (ANC) services among teenagers (13-19 years) during delivery in Ethiopia.Methodology: Raw data collected from all part of the country on child bearing aged women using stratified cluster sampling method by the Ethiopian Demographic Health Survey 2005 was used. From the large dataset of women, a total of 994 teenage women at the time of their most recent childbirth five years prior to the survey was selected andanalyzed. Both bivariate and multivariate analyses were performed to determine the differentials of ANC by explanatory variables.Result: Most (60%) of the subjects were in the age group between 18 and 19 years. The vast majority (90%) was from the rural settings and most (87%) were in marital union. Almost three out of four (72.4%) of those who had given birth has no any form of formal education. Over a quarter (27.3%) of most recent childbirths had at least one ANC service, of this, 21% had started their first antenatal visit in the first trimester of pregnancy. The majority (80.4%) of the women who attended ANC delivered at home without being assisted. The major deriving factors forthe utilization of ANC service were education level of women and their male partners, better wealth index and urban residence.Conclusion: Education of partners, rich wealth index and urban residence seemed to encourage teenagers to utilize ANC. Appropriate interventions targeting teenaged women with poor socioeconomic status is recommended with more emphasis on the rural underserved segment of population

Parallel scalability study of three dimensional additive Schwarz preconditioners in non-overlapping domain decomposition

In this paper we study the parallel scalability of variants of additive Schwarz preconditioners for three dimensional non-overlapping domain decomposition methods. To alleviate the computational cost, both in terms of memory and floating-point complexity, we investigate variants based on a sparse approximation or on mixed 32- and 64-bit calculation. The robustness of the preconditioners is illustrated on a set of linear systems arising from the finite element discretization of elliptic PDEs through extensive parallel experiments on up to 1000 processors. Their efficiency from a numerical and parallel performance view point are studied

FIRST experiment: Fragmentation of Ions Relevant for Space and Therapy

Nuclear fragmentation processes are relevant in different fields of basic research and applied physics and are of particular interest for tumor therapy and for space radiation protection applications. The FIRST (Fragmentation of Ions Relevant for Space and Therapy) experiment at SIS accelerator of GSI laboratory in Darmstadt, has been designed for the measurement of different ions fragmentation cross sections at different energies between 100 and 1000 MeV/nucleon. The experiment is performed by an international collaboration made of institutions from Germany, France, Italy and Spain. The experimental apparatus is partly based on an already existing setup made of the ALADIN magnet, the MUSIC IV TPC, the LAND2 neutron detector and the TOFWALL scintillator TOF system, integrated with newly designed detectors in the interaction Region (IR) around the carbon removable target: a scintillator Start Counter, a Beam Monitor drift chamber, a silicon Vertex Detector and a Proton Tagger for detection of light fragments emitted at large angles (KENTROS). The scientific program of the FIRST experiment started on summer 2011 with the study of the 400 MeV/nucleon 12C beam fragmentation on thin (8mm) carbon targe

Male involvement in prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV in the context of partner testing in Goba town, Ethiopia: A facility-based cross-sectional study

Background. Antenatal care (ANC) is an entry point for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT), particularly when a man accompanies his spouse for voluntary counselling and testing (VCT), even though this seldom happens in Ethiopia.Objective. To study the role of male partners in improving PMTCT/ANC, which is essential to prevent HIV/AIDS transmission in this country. Our study focused on identifying barriers for the low involvement in PMTCT/ANC among male partners whose spouses received ANC.Methods. A total of 422 male partners in Goba town, Oromia regional state, Ethiopia, were recruited in September - October 2014 and enrolled by a systematic sampling method. A facility-based cross-sectional study and two focus group discussions (FGDs) were conducted. Binary logistic regression and odds ratios were calculated to ascertain sociodemographic and other important information compared with the outcome variable and PMTCT/ANC, while the findings of the FGDs were grouped according to the emerging themes and analysed manually by means of a thematic approach.Results. The percentage of male partners (22.7%) accompanying their spouses for HIV testing and counselling at antenatal clinics improved three-fold when an invitation letter was introduced as a new initiative to increase male participation. Individuals in the age group 15 - 29 years (adjusted odds ratio (AOR) 5.4, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.66 - 17.85), and whose duration of marriage was ˂5 years (AOR 5.6, 95% CI 1.83 - 17.30), were more likely to be tested than their referent groups. Men without a higher education (AOR 0.1, 95% CI 0.02 - 0.50), who disagreed with legal enforcement (AOR 0.1, 95% CI 0.07 - 0.32), were less likely to be tested, while those who did not notify their partners (AOR 8.4, 95% CI 1.92 - 37.12) were more likely to use the service. Being busy, proxy testing, fears of testing HIV-positive, neglecting the importance of VCT, and inadequate knowledge about the PMTCT/ANC programme were other barriers that came to the fore in the FGDs.Conclusion. Identified barriers have to be addressed, and helpful practices, such as using invitation letters to increase the uptake of the service by male partners, have to be instituted

Performance of upstream interaction region detectors for the FIRST experiment at GSI

The FIRST (Fragmentation of Ions Relevant for Space and Therapy) experiment at GSI has been designed to study carbon fragmentation, measuring 12C double differential cross sections (∂2σ/ ∂θ∂E) for different beam energies between 100 and 1000 MeV/u. The experimental setup integrates newly designed detectors in the, so called, Interaction Region around the graphite target. The Interaction Region upstream detectors are a 250 μm thick scintillator and a drift chamber optimized for a precise measurement of the ions interaction time and position on the target. In this article we review the design of the upstream detectors along with the preliminary results of the data taking performed on August 2011 with 400 MeV/u fully stripped carbon ion beam at GSI. Detectors performances will be reviewed and compared to those obtained during preliminary tests, performed with 500 MeV electrons (at the BTF facility in the INFN Frascati Laboratories) and 80 MeV/u protons and carbon ions (at the INFN LNS Laboratories in Catania)