Maternal education, empowerment, economic status and child polio vaccination uptake in Pakistan: a population based cross sectional study

Objectives: To explore the association of maternal education and empowerment with childhood polio vaccination using nationally representative data of Pakistani mothers in a reproductive age group. Design: Cross-sectional. Setting: Secondary analysis of Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey (PDHS), 2012–2013 data was performed. Participants: Of the 13 558 mothers included in the survey sample, 6982 mothers were able to provide information regarding polio vaccinations. Main outcome measures: Polio vaccination coverage among children aged up to 5 years was categorised as complete vaccination (all four oral polio vaccine (OPV) doses), incomplete vaccination, and no vaccination (zero OPV dose received). Mothers' empowerment status was assessed using standard ‘Measure DHS’ questions regarding their involvement in decision-making related to health, household possessions and visits among family and friends. Education was categorised as no education, primary, secondary and higher education. Results of multinomial regression analyses were reported as adjusted OR with 95% CI. We adjusted for age, wealth index, urban/rural residence, place of delivery, and antenatal and postnatal visits. Results: Only 56.4% (n=3936) of the children received complete polio vaccination. Women with no education had significantly higher odds of their child receiving no polio vaccination (OR 2.34, 95% CI 1.05 to 5.18; p<0.01) and incomplete vaccination (OR 1.40, 95% CI 1.04 to 1.87; p<0.01). Further, unempowered women also had significantly higher odds of not taking their child for any polio vaccination (OR 1.58, 95% CI 1.17 to 2.12; p<0.01) and incomplete vaccination (OR 1.18, 95% CI 1.00 to 1.41; p=0.04). Conclusions: Illiteracy, socioeconomic status and empowerment of women remained significant factors linked to poorer uptake of routine polio vaccination

Development of a mucosal vaccine against Respiratory Syncytial Virus infection

Het verkoudheidsvirus ‘Respiratoir Synctieel virus’ (RSV) kan ernstige luchtweginfecties veroorzaken. Vaccinatie van pasgeboren kinderen en ouderen met verminderde afweer zou de kans op infectie en complicaties kunnen verkleinen. UMCG-promovendus Muhammad Shafique stelde vast dat een neusspray geschikt is voor toediening van een nieuw type vaccin tegen RSV. Het nieuwe vaccin bestaat uit virosomen, een virusmantel zonder het genetisch materiaal van het virus. Aan de virosomen zijn stoffen gezet die bedoeld zijn om een sterkere afweerreactie in het lichaam te krijgen. In proefdieronderzoek vond Shafique dat het vaccin met de versterkende stoffen leidde tot een afweerreactie in het bloed en in de luchtwegen. Na blootstelling aan levend RSV, bleken de proefdieren beschermd te zijn tegen infectie. Shafique testte het vaccin in een neusspray bij jonge proefdieren en bij dieren met een verouderd afweersysteem. In beide situaties bleek de neusspray geschikt. Hij concludeert dat het nieuwe vaccin, toegediend met een neusspray, een veelbelovende benadering is voor vaccinatie tegen het verkoudheidsvirus

XBioSiP: A Methodology for Approximate Bio-Signal Processing at the Edge

Bio-signals exhibit high redundancy, and the algorithms for their processing are inherently error resilient. This property can be leveraged to improve the energy-efficiency of IoT-Edge (wearables) through the emerging trend of approximate computing. This paper presents XBioSiP, a novel methodology for approximate bio-signal processing that employs two quality evaluation stages, during the pre-processing and bio-signal processing stages, to determine the approximation parameters. It thereby achieves high energy savings while satisfying the user-determined quality constraint. Our methodology achieves, up to 19x and 22x reduction in the energy consumption of a QRS peak detection algorithm for 0% and <1% loss in peak detection accuracy, respectively.Comment: Accepted for publication at the Design Automation Conference 2019 (DAC'19), Las Vegas, Nevada, US