Pullet production and supply business development by women’s groups in selected kebeles of Dale pilot learning district (PLW): Experiences from IPMS

Shortage of pullet supply and high mortality of local chicks arising from diseases and inadequate feed were the main challenges identified through a rapid diagnostic survey on the poultry value chain in Dale. Accordingly, women group-based commercial pullet rearing as an input for smallholder poultry production was initiated by the Office of Agriculture and Rural Development (OoARD) and IPMS. To develop the program, a credit scheme was initiated using IPMS’s credit innovation funds. With assistance of OoARD, eighty women subdivided into five (village) groups, collectively purchased 4000 day-old chicks (50/woman) and other inputs such as feed, vaccines, hay box brooder and watering equipment. The women were trained and developed their skills through their group structures. The required vaccinations were also given by the women themselves under the auspices of the group structures. After 4–5 months, 3470 pullets survived and were kept by the women or sold to others for egg producers. Empirical results show that: i) the group approach helped to improve linkages, communication, and access to knowledge, technology, finance, inputs (day-old chicks and feed), veterinary service, and market; ii) the groups were able to successfully produce and supply pullets thus making an additional income of Ethiopian birr (ETB) 833/hh; iii) the approach stimulates growing demand for the 5 months-old pullets, especially by government/donor financed programs. While being technically and economically viable, the system requires institutional upgrading so as to ensure sustainability of input supply (chicks, feed and vaccine/drugs). The commitment shown by WoARD to provide technical backstopping in all aspects of poultry production also leaves much to be desired. These are crucial at least for the first few cycles, while more emphasis should be given to promoting improved local birds. As the follow-up studies on subsequent egg production showed, considerable attention needs to be paid to building the capacity of poultry farmers to engage in semi-commercial egg production, since egg production was still far below its potential. The study also shows that a difference of as high as 35% existed between egg production level by households who had purchased the pullets privately and households who had received the pullets through food security funded projects in Dale area

Perceptions and attitude towards violence against women by their spouses: A qualitative study in Northwest Ethiopia.

Introduction: To stop violence against women by their spouses we need to understand how the specific society perceives and views such violence. Then and only then can we institute effective and acceptable strategy to tackle the problem.Objective: To assess community perceptions and attitude towards violence against women by their spouses Methods: We conducted a qualitative study using focus group discussions and in-depth interviews with women,family arbitrators, healthcare workers, psychosocial experts, victims and perpetrator of violence, and law enforcement bodies in Gondar town, Northwest Ethiopia. Data were analyzed thematically using the Open Code Software. Results: The normative expectation that conflicts are inevitable in marriage makes it difficult for society to reject violence. Acts of violence against women represent unacceptable behavior according to existing social and gender norms when there is no justification for the act and the act causes severe harm. There is considerable permissiveness of violent acts when the act is not regarded as wrong, there is socially acceptable premise, and the consequences are deemed mild. Marital rape is not understood well and there is less willingness to condemn it. Conclusions: We conclude that there is insufficient understanding of violence against women in its contemporary use and many people hold a non-disapproving stance regarding violence against women by their spouses calling for a culturally sensitive information, education and communication intervention. [Ethiop. J. Health Dev. 2010(1):39-45

Pullet production and supply business development by women’s groups in selected kebeles of Dale pilot learning woreda: Experiences from IPMS

Shortage of pullet supply and high mortality of local chicks arising from diseases and inadequate feed were the main challenges identified through a rapid diagnostic survey on the poultry value chain in Dale. Accordingly, women group-based commercial pullet rearing as an input for smallholder poultry production was initiated by the Office of Agriculture and Rural Development (OoARD) and IPMS. To develop the program, a credit scheme was initiated by the Regional Rural Finance Fund Administration, using IPMS’s credit innovation funds. With assistance of OoARD, eighty women subdivided into five (village) groups, collectively purchased 4000 day-old chicks (50/woman) and other inputs such as feed, vaccines, hay box brooder and watering equipment. The women were trained and developed their skills through their group structures. The required vaccinations were also given by the women themselves under the auspices of the group structures that taught them how to make best use of available vaccine size (500 doses/vial). After 4–5 months, 3470 pullets survived and were kept by the women or sold to others for egg production. Empirical results show that: i) the group approach helped to improve linkages, communication, and access to knowledge, technology, finance, inputs (day-old chicks and feed), veterinary service, and market; ii) the groups were able to successfully produce and supply pullets thus making an additional income of Ethiopian birr (ETB)1 833/hh; iii) the approach stimulates growing demand for the 5 months-old pullets, especially by government/donor financed programs. While being technically and economically viable, the system requires institutional upgrading so as to ensure sustainability of input supply (chicks, feed and vaccine/drugs) at the nearest market both for pullet and egg producers. The commitment shown by WoARD to provide technical backstopping in all aspects of poultry production also leaves much to be desired. These are crucial at least for the first few cycles, while more emphasis should be given to promoting improved local birds. As the follow-up studies on subsequent egg production showed, considerable attention needs to be paid to building the capacity of poultry farmers to engage in semi-commercial egg production, since egg production was still far below its potential. The study also shows that a difference of as high as 35% existed between egg production level by households who had purchased the pullets privately and households who had received the pullets through food security funded projects in Dale area

A Secure Cloud-based Platform to Host Healthcare Applications

Digital technologies, such as Big Data analytics, artificial intelligence, cloud and high-performance computing are presenting new opportunities to transform healthcare systems, increase connectivity of hospitals and other providers, and therefore potentially and significantly improve patient care. However, such networked computing infrastructures also raise significant cybersecurity risks, especially in the healthcare domain, where protecting sensitive personal information is of paramount importance. Project ASCLEPIOS aims at strengthening the trust of users in cloud-based healthcare services by utilizing trusted execution environment and several modern cryptographic approaches such as attribute based encryption, searchable encryption, functional encryption to build a cloud-based e-health framework that protects users’ privacy, prevents both internal and external attacks, verifies the integrity of medical devices before application, and runs privacy-preserving data analytics on encrypted data. The project investigates modern encryption techniques and their combination in order to provide increased security of e-health applications that are then presented towards end-users utilizing a cloud-based platform. Although some topics such as security and privacy are already investigated through block-chain related technologies, it has been decided that the selected approaches would be more suitable for these particular challenges. In order to prototype its security services, ASCLEPIOS develops and deploys three large-scale healthcare demonstrators, provided by three leading hospitals from Europe. These demonstrators are rooted in the practice-based problems and applications provided by the project’s healthcare partners. The Amsterdam University Centers, University of Amsterdam, plans to improve stroke hyper-acute care through secure information sharing on a cloud computing platform to improve patient management. Additionally, they are also building prediction models to enable earlier discharge of patients from hospitals with lower risk factors. Charité Berlin plans to improve inpatient and outpatient sleep medication by remotely controlling the quality of the collected data and transferring it on-line for further analysis. Finally, the Norwegian Centre for e-health Research, University Hospital of North Norway is developing a system for privacy-preserving monitoring and benchmarking of antibiotics prescription of general practitioners. The common characteristics of these three scenarios are the increased demand for high levels of security in data transfer, storage and privacy preserving analytics on cloud infrastructures. In order deploy, operate and further develop these applications to increase their security with the ASCLEPIOS framework, a cloud computing testbed is being setup. The testbed uses state-of-the-art technologies for cloud application deployment and run-time orchestration in order to ensure the optimized deployment and execution of the demonstrator applications. As the data sources do not require the local execution (albeit in one case data may remain on the data source) of processing, there is no need for fog or edge computing, but the testbed is based on private OpenStack cloud computing infrastructures and utilizes the MiCADO framework which is compatible with different containers such as Docker and Kubernetes. The project started only recently, and currently it is in the early stages of systems design and specification. This presentation will provide a short introduction to the ASCLEPIOS project and its demonstrators and will present early results of the currently ongoing requirements specification and platform design processes

Sprouty2 mediated tuning of signalling is essential for somite myogenesis

Background: Negative regulators of signal transduction cascades play critical roles in controlling different aspects of normal embryonic development. Sprouty2 (Spry2) negatively regulates receptor tyrosine kinases (RTK) and FGF signalling and is important in differentiation, cell migration and proliferation. In vertebrate embryos, Spry2 is expressed in paraxial mesoderm and in forming somites. Expression is maintained in the myotome until late stages of somite differentiation. However, its role and mode of action during somite myogenesis is still unclear. Results: Here, we analysed chick Spry2 expression and showed that it overlaps with that of myogenic regulatory factors MyoD and Mgn. Targeted mis-expression of Spry2 led to inhibition of myogenesis, whilst its C-terminal domain led to an increased number of myogenic cells by stimulating cell proliferation. Conclusions: Spry2 is expressed in somite myotomes and its expression overlaps with myogenic regulatory factors. Overexpression and dominant-negative interference showed that Spry2 plays a crucial role in regulating chick myogenesis by fine tuning of FGF signaling through a negative feedback loop. We also propose that mir-23, mir-27 and mir-128 could be part of the negative feedback loop mechanism. Our analysis is the first to shed some light on in vivo Spry2 function during chick somite myogenesis

Magnitude and Correlates of Intimate Partner Violence against Women and Its Outcome in Southwest Ethiopia

BACKGROUND: Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is a major public health problem with serious consequences. This study was conducted to assess the magnitude of IPV in Southwest Ethiopia in predominantly rural community. METHODS: This community based cross-sectional study was conducted in May, 2009 in Southwest Ethiopia using the World Health Organization core questionnaire to measure violence against women. Trained data collectors interviewed 851 ever-married women. Stata version 10.1 software and SPSS version 12.0.1 for windows were used for data analysis. RESULT: In this study the life time prevalence of sexual or physical partner violence, or both was 64.7% (95%CI: 61.4%-67.9%). The lifetime sexual violence [50.1% (95% CI: 46.7%-53.4%)] was considerably more prevalent than physical violence [41.1% (95%:37.8-44.5)]. A sizable proportion [41.5%(95%CI: 38.2%-44.8%)] of women reported physical or sexual violence, or both, in the past year. Men who were controlling were more likely to be violent against their partner. CONCLUSION: Physical and sexual violence is common among ever-married women in Southwest Ethiopia. Interventions targeting controlling men might help in reducing IPV. Further prospective longitudinal studies among ever-married women are important to identify predictors and to study the dynamics of violence over time

Iron deficiency was not the major cause of anemia in rural women of reproductive age in Sidama zone, southern Ethiopia: A cross-sectional study

Background Anemia, which has many etiologies, is a moderate/severe public health problem in young children and women of reproductive age in many developing countries. The aim of this study was to investigate prevalence of iron deficiency, anemia, and iron deficiency anemia using multiple biomarkers and to evaluate their association with food insecurity and food consumption patterns in non-pregnant women from a rural area of southern Ethiopia. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted in 202 rural women of reproductive age in southern Ethiopia. Anthropometrics and socio-demographic data were collected. A venipuncture blood sample was analyzed for hemoglobin (Hb) and for biomarkers of iron status. Biomarkers were skewed and were log transformed before analysis. Mean, median, Pearson\u27s correlations and ordinary least-squares regressions were calculated. Results Median (IQR) Hb was 138 (127, 151) g/L. Based on an altitude-adjusted (1708 m) cutoff of 125 g/L for Hb, 21.3% were anemic. Plasma ferritin was \u3c15 μg/L in 18.6% of the women. Only one woman had α-1-acid glycoprotein (AGP) \u3e1.0 g/L; four women (2%) had \u3e 5 mg/L of C-reactive protein (CRP). Of the 43 women who were anemic, 23.3% (10 women) had depleted iron stores based on plasma ferritin. Three of these had elevated soluble transferring receptors (sTfR). Hemoglobin (Hb) concentration was negatively correlated with sTfR (r = -0.24, p = 0.001), and positively correlated with ferritin (r = 0.17, p = 0.018), plasma iron (r = 0.15, p = 0.046), transferrin saturation (TfS) (r = 0.15, p = 0.04) and body iron (r = 0.14, p = 0.05). Overall prevalence of iron deficiency anemia was only 5%. Conclusion Iron deficiency anemia was not prevalent in the study population, despite the fact that anemia would be classified as a moderate public health problem

Two-Thirds of Smear-Positive Tuberculosis Cases in the Community Were Undiagnosed in Northwest Ethiopia: Population Based Cross-Sectional Study

Background: Tuberculosis (TB) case detection rate remains low in Ethiopia. One of the underlying reasons is the emphasis on passive case finding strategy which may seriously underestimate the burden of the disease. Estimating the prevalence of smear-positive pulmonary TB through active case finding at population level can help assessing the degree to which passive case detection is successful. Methods and findings: This is population based cross-sectional study. The study population was all individuals aged $14 years. Interviews using a uniform questionnaire were done initially to identify individuals with chronic cough ($15 days) and the two sputum (spot and morning) samples were gathered for standard smear microscopy. A total of 23,590 individuals aged $14 years were interviewed and 984 had a chronic cough for$15 days. Of 831 individuals who provided two sputum samples for acid fast bacilli (AFB), 41 had positive smears. A total of 22 smear-positive TB cases detected through passive case finding were on anti-TB treatment. The prevalence of new smear-positive TB was 174 per 100,000 in persons aged $14 years (95$45 years [AOR: 2.26, 95 % CI (1.12–4.59). Conclusions: The study revealed that about two-thirds of patients with active TB remain undiagnosed and thus untreated. This may indicate the need for strengthening case detection at the community level. Furthermore, the high burden of T