Caught in the act: new stakeholders, decentralization and water management processes in Zimbabwe

Catchment areasWater resource managementGovernanceDecentralizationInstitutionsPolicyWater lawFarmers

Water as a Productive Resource: Governance for Equity and Poverty Reduction

human development, water, sanitation

The Regression Model of Risk Factors Associated with Maternal Mortality in Tanzania

Maternal mortality is one of the statistics showing the largest degree of disparity between the developed and developing countries. According to literature up to 2016 Tanzania was among the countries with unacceptably maternal mortality ratio and claimed to be still very far from reaching the Millennium developing goals. This study aimed at modeling of risk factors for   maternal mortality using pre collected data Based on Tanzania Demographic Health Survey (TDH 2015 -16.  Therefore secondary data were used to build the model. Data were reanalyzed by descriptive statistics using statistical software package STATA version 13. Based on data the result indicates that mortality was about 345 per 100,000 live births. The contributing factor was identified as education [OR= 0.81), Age group between 20 to 24 (OR = 2.84), distance to the health center (OR = 0.89), Marital status (OR = 1.39). It is concluded that, the risk factor of maternal death is age groups 20 – 24 and 25 – 29 years especially in the mainland rural. Keywords : Martenal Motility, Regression model, Prevalence on maternal DOI: 10.7176/JHMN/67-06 Publication date:October 31st 201

Effectiveness of a multivitamin supplementation program among HIV-infected adults in Tanzania

Objective: The objective of this study was to assess the effectiveness of a routine multivitamin supplementation program for adults living with HIV in Tanzania. Design: We conducted a retrospective cohort study of 67,707 adults enrolled in the Dar es Salaam HIV care and treatment program during 2004-2012. Methods: The Dar es Salaam HIV care and treatment program intended to provide all adult patients with multivitamin supplements (vitamins B-complex, C, and E) free of charge; however, intermittent stockouts and other implementation issues did not afford universal coverage. We use Cox proportional hazard models to assess the time-varying association of multivitamin supplementation with mortality and clinical outcomes. Results: The study cohort contributed 41,540 and 129,315 person-years of follow-up time to the ART-naïve and ART-experienced analyses, respectively. Among 48,207 ART-naïve adults, provision of multivitamins reduced the risk of mortality (adjusted hazard ratio (aHR): 0.69; 95% CI: 0.59-0.81), incident tuberculosis (TB) (aHR: 0.83; 0.76-0.91), and meeting ART eligibility criteria (aHR: 0.78; 95% CI: 0.73-0.83) after adjustment for time-varying confounding. Among 46,977 ART-experienced patients, multivitamins reduced mortality (HR: 0.86; 95% CI: 0.80-0.92), incident TB (aHR: 0.78; 95% CI: 0.73-0.84), and immunologic failure (aHR: 0.70; 95% CI: 0.67-0.73). The survival benefits associated with provision multivitamins appeared to be greatest during the first year of ART and declined over time (p-value \u3c0.001). Conclusion: Multivitamin supplementation appears to be a simple, effective, safe, and scalable program to improve survival, reduce incidence of TB, and improve treatment outcomes for adult HIV patients in Tanzania

Susceptibility to ergot in Zimbabwe of sorghums tbat remained uninfected in their native climates in Ethiopia and Rwanda

Forty-four local Ethiopian and Rwandan sorghums (Sorghum bicolor) were observed to remain free of ergot, or had only low incidence, in their natural equatorial latitudes and were potentially of interest, in the design of male-sterile lines for F| hybrid breeding, if they possessed a physiologically based resistance mechanism. These sorghums were therefore also investigated under natural and artificial disease pressures in Zimbabwe where unadapted development and inappropriate long daylengtb prevented flowering in 18 accessions. Of the remaining 16 Ethiopian and 10 Rwandan accessions which flowered, only one from each country remained free of ergot. The susceptibility expressed was ascribed to observed asynchrony of stigma exsertion with anthesis. In the Rwandan accession that persistently remained free of ergot in Zimbabwe, histology of ovules showed pollination before floret gaping, so that a general principle of disease escape due to efficient pollination is proposed for the Ethiopian and Rwandan sorghums in their native climates. The findings emphasize that cleistogamy is a desirable character for avoiding ergot infection in self-fertile sorghums and suggest that the Ethiopian and Rwandan sorghutns may not generally be useful for breeding ergot-resistant male-sterile female lines. However, a few accessions deserve more detailed study as a potential genetic resource, before a firm conclusion that all apparent resistance is disease escape owing to efficient pollination

Can 'functionlaity' save the community management model of rural water supply?

As attention increasingly turns to the sustainability of rural water supplies - and not simply overall levels of coverage or access - water point functionality has become a core concern for development practitioners and national governments, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. Within the long-enduring Community-Based Management (CBM) model this has resulted in increased scrutiny of the “functionality” of the local water point committee (WPC) or similar community management organisation. This paper reviews the literature written from both practice-focused and critical-academic perspectives and identifies three areas that pose challenges to our understanding of water point functionality as it relates to CBM. These concern the relative neglect of (i) the local institutional and socio-economic landscape, (ii) broader governance processes and power dynamics, and (iii) the socio-technical interface. By examining these three areas, the paper engages with the specific issue of WPC functionality, whilst also considering broader issues relating to the framing of problems in development and the methodological and disciplinary ways that these are addressed. Furthermore, by focusing on community management of rural water points, the paper lays the ground for a more substantial critique of the continuing persistence of the CBM model as a central development strategy