Quality of Care: Marketing of Trypanocides for the Control of Trypanosomiasis in the Coastal Savanna of Ghana

The rapid change in the privatization of veterinary services and social marketing of drugs have serious implications on the quality of care by the private sector in Ghana’s agricultural system, especially drug use, inrecent decades. The study explores the perception of 250 farmers over drug marketing to assess the level of drug quality, with particular reference to the treatment of cattle trypanosomiasis in the country and to investigate ways in which they could make better use of trypanosomiasis to control the disease. Specifically, the study seeks to identify constraints associated with trypanocides (e.g. Berenil® and Samorin®) services to assist in policyrecommendation. It anticipated a better understanding of how cattle farmers ranked the quality of veterinary drug services from drug-sellers using Likert Scale. The views on drug services were ranked as follows: excellent (5), good (4), fair (3), undecided (2) and poor (1). The findings showed that farmers judged drug “effectiveness of treatment” most leniently and on “regularity of follow up” most harshly among the 10 response categories. The average rating on “effectiveness” of rating was 4.21 ± 0.29 s.d. and 10 districts recorded an average score above 4.On the other hand, the average treatmeant on “regularity of follow-up” was 1.05 ± 0.05 s.d., with five districts recording 1. It was concluded that the perception of 250 farmers in the 11 districts over the drug use is similar. For the fact that farmers take the responsibility of treating livestock diseases themselves, there is the need to include them in training programmes and also in decision making and policy development on drug use. Training curriculum for drug sellers is a key factor and should include the implications involved in buying drugs from veterinary stores without prescriptions from the veterinary doctor. Further, drug sellers should also be trained on the implications of drug abuse (overdose and under dose)

Aedes (Stegomyia) Mosquitoes in the Ashanti Region of Ghana: Implications for Yellow Fever Paucity

A research was carried out to map Aedes mosquito vectors of Yellow Fever (YF) in 4 localities (KNUST, Ejisu, Angola and Akropong) in the Ashanti Region of Ghana to identify and catalogue the various species of Aedes mosquitoes that may occur in the Region. This is to ascertain possible factors (both physical and biological) that may influence the population densities of Aedes mosquitoes and the possible reasons for the paucity of YF in the Region. Several species of Aedes mosquitoes were encountered and identified. Of all the mosquito species identified, Aedes aegypti was the predominant (81%). This was followed by Aedes vittatus (3.3%) and Toxorhynchites brevipalpis (3.1%). The bulk of the other mosquitoes apart from Aedes and Toxorhynchites brevipalpis was only 9.5%.  The research analyzed the output of elliptical profile model generated for 4 Aedes vectors (n=2,7492) and 4 sample locations. Analysis of the model output  reveals that the standard deviational ellipse is significantly better able to predict the linear distribution of Aedes populations within the geographical region. The relationship between the orientation of the elliptical profiles and the mean linear orientation of the corresponding quarters was assessed to reveal a moderate but significant association.  These findings demonstrate that the sample locations vis-à-vis pH concentration impact on the distributions of Aedes within the geographical area and supports the ecological variability within the sample locations. Keywords: Yellow Fever, Aedes mosquitoes, Toxorhynchites brevipalpis,  pH Range, GI

PREFERENCE HETEROGENEITY IN COMMERCIAL VEHICLE PASSENGER CHOICE: A DISCRETE CHOICE EXPERIMENT

The study sought to identify the knowledge of passengers about the characteristics of commercial vehicles that influence passenger’s choice and makes it attractive to private car users. It therefore presents the preference estimates for various attributes that affect commercial vehicles choice, with reference to students in University of Ghana who patronize commercial vehicles from Circle bus station in Accra to Kumasi with the main objective of understanding more about the factors that influence passenger’s choice of commercial vehicles. A discrete choice experiment was designed to capture the responses for estimating passenger’s commercial vehicles choice for various attributes specific to vehicles in the study area, that are loading passengers simultaneously. The main model was generated using the binary probit in STATA which was further segmented according to gender. The magnitude of estimates fromthe probit model indicated that, generally, passengers prefer commercial vehicles with entertainment, very new and almost full with passengers. This was generally supported by the segmented model by gender. Also, passengers will generally trade the size and brand off for very new and commercial vehicles with reduced loading/waiting period