Intimate partner violence against women in rural Vietnam - different socio-demographic factors are associated with different forms of violence: Need for new intervention guidelines?

Background: This population-based study investigated the different forms, magnitude and risk factors of men's violence against women in intimate relationships in a rural part of northern Vietnam and whether a difference in risk factors were at hand for the different forms of violence. Vietnam has undergone a rapid transition in the last 20 years, moving towards a more equal situation for men and women however, Confucian doctrine is still strong and little is known about men's violence against women within the Vietnamese family. Methods: This is a cross-sectional population-based study that used a questionnaire developed by the World Health Organisation for investigating women's health and violence against women in different settings. Face-to face structured interviewing was performed and 883 married women, aged 17 to 60 participated. Bi- and multivariate analyses was used for risk factor assessment. Results: The lifetime prevalence of physical violence was 30.9 percent and past year prevalence was 8.3 per cent, while the corresponding figures for physical and sexual violence combined was 32.7 and 9.2 percent. The lifetime prevalence was highest for psychological abuse ( 27.9 percent) as a single entity. In most cases the violence was of a severe nature and exercised as repeated acts over time. Woman's low educational level, husband's low education, low household income and the husband having more than one wife/partner were risk factors for lifetime and past year physical/sexual violence. The pattern of factors associated with psychological abuse alone was however different. Husband's low professional status and women's intermediate level of education appeared as risk factors. Conclusion: Men's violence against women in intimate relationships is commonly occurring in rural Vietnam. There is an obvious need of preventive and treatment activities. Our findings point at that pure psychological abuse is different from physical/sexual violence in terms of differing characteristics of the perpetrators and it might be that also different strategies are needed to reduce and prevent this violence

Intimate partner violence against women in western Ethiopia: prevalence, patterns, and associated factors

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Intimate partner violence against women is the psychological, physical, and sexual abuse directed to spouses. Globally it is the most pervasive yet underestimated human rights violation. This study was aimed at investigating the prevalence, patterns and associated factors of intimate partner violence against women in Western Ethiopia.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A cross-sectional, population based household survey was conducted from January to April, 2011 using standard WHO multi-country study questionnaire. A sample of 1540 ever married/cohabited women aged 15-49 years was randomly selected from urban and rural settings of East Wollega Zone, Western Ethiopia. Data were principally analyzed using logistic regression.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Lifetime and past 12 months prevalence of intimate partner violence against women showed 76.5% (95% CI: 74.4-78.6%) and 72.5% (95% CI: 70.3-74.7%), respectively. The overlap of psychological, physical, and sexual violence was 56.9%. The patterns of the three forms of violence are similar across the time periods. Rural residents (AOR 0.58, 95% CI 0.34-0.98), literates (AOR 0.65, 95% CI 0.48-0.88), female headed households <b>(</b>AOR 0.46, 95% CI 0.27-0.76) were at decreased likelihood to have lifetime intimate partner violence. Yet, older women were nearly four times (AOR 3.36, 95% CI 1.27-8.89) more likely to report the incident. On the other hand, abduction (AOR 3.71, 95% CI 1.01-13.63), polygamy (AOR 3.79, 95% CI 1.64-0.73), spousal alcoholic consumption (AOR 1.98, 95% CI 1.21-3.22), spousal hostility (AOR 3.96, 95% CI 2.52-6.20), and previous witnesses of parental violence (AOR 2.00, 95% CI 1.54-2.56) were factors associated with an increased likelihood of lifetime intimate partner violence against women.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>In their lifetime, three out of four women experienced at least one incident of intimate partner violence. This needs an urgent attention at all levels of societal hierarchy including policymakers, stakeholders and professionals to alleviate the situation.</p

MalView: Interactive Visual Analytics for Comprehending Malware Behavior

Malicious applications are usually comprehended through two major techniques, namely static and dynamic analyses. Through static analysis, a given malicious program is parsed, and some representative artifacts (e.g., control-flow graphs) are produced without any execution; whereas, the given malicious application needs to be executed when conducting dynamic analysis. These two mainstream techniques for analyzing the given software are effective in detecting certain classes of malware. More specifically, through static analysis, the patterns and signature of the malware are exposed, helping in detecting any known malicious payload hidden in or injected into the code. On the other hand, behavioral and run-time execution patterns of software are explored through dynamic analysis. To ease the analysis process, a third analysis approach, known as the visual representation of the artifacts created by both static and dynamic analysis tools, would also be a supplementary asset for malware experts. This paper introduces MalView, an interactive visualization platform, for malware analysis by which pattern matching techniques on both signature-based and behavioral analysis artifacts can be utilized to 1) classify malware, 2) identify the intention and location of the malicious payload in the artifacts, 3) analyze unknown malware (i.e., zero-day malware) by recognizing any unusual signature or behavior, and 4) explore the time dependencies and thus the system components affected or tampered by the underlying malware. The results of several case studies conducted in this work show that MalView offers more features and information compared to some other visualization tools, facilitating the malware analysis process

2The role of controlling behaviour in intimate partner violence and its health effects: a population based study from rural Vietnam

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Studies in North America and other high-income regions support the distinction between extreme "intimate terrorism" and occasional "situational couple violence", defined conceptually in terms of the presence or absence of controlling behaviour in the violent member of the couple. Relatively little research has been conducted on the different forms intimate partner violence may take in low-income countries. The aim of this study was to investigate whether these expressions of intimate partner violence in one low-income country, Vietnam, adhere to patterns observed in western industrialised countries as well as to investigate the resulting health effects.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>This cross-sectional study collected structured interview data from 883 married women aged 17–60, using the Women's Health and Life Experiences questionnaire developed by WHO. Intimate partner violence was assessed by past-year experience of physical or sexual violence and control tactics were assessed using six items combined into a scale. Three different health parameters constituted the dependent variables. Bi- and multivariate analyses, including effect modification analyses, were performed.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Of the participants, 81 (9.2%) had been exposed to physical or sexual violence during the past 12 months; of these, 26 (32.1%) had been subjected to one or more controlling behaviours by their partners. The risk of ill health associated with combined exposure was elevated eight to 15 times, compared to a two-fourfold risk increase after exposure to only one of the behaviours, i.e. violent acts or control tactics.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Physical or sexual violence combined with control tactics acted synergistically to worsen health in rural Vietnamese women. The occurrence of such violence calls for altered policies, increased research and implementation of preventive and curative strategies. The unacceptability of intimate partner violence as a part of normal Vietnamese family life must be recognised in the general debate.</p

Threshold level of Peptest in diagnosing gastroesophageal reflux disease with extraesophageal symptoms: Evidence from Vietnam

Abstract Background and Aim We aimed to evaluate the application of Peptest, a novel technique to detect pepsin in the saliva, and identify its threshold level for the diagnosis of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) with extraesophageal symptoms. Methods A cross‐sectional study was conducted in two groups: patients with extraesophageal GERD symptoms (symptomatic group divided into GERD and non‐GERD groups according to 24‐h esophageal pH‐impedance monitoring [pH‐I] results) and healthy controls. For the symptomatic group, endoscopy, pH 24 h, high‐resolution manometry (HRM), and salivary Peptest were performed. For the healthy control group, only Peptest was done. The accuracy of Peptest was compared with that of pH‐I by the Lyon consensus criteria. Results Chronic laryngitis was the most frequent extraesophageal symptom. On saliva testing, the GERD group had a higher prevalence of positive samples and pepsin concentration than the control group. Between GERD and non‐GERD groups, the optimal threshold level was 31.2 ng/mL, with a sensitivity of 86.7% and specificity of 27.5%. The optimal threshold level was 31.4 ng/mL to differentiate GERD from healthy controls, with a sensitivity of 86.7% and specificity of 66.0%. Age, number of total refluxes, DeMeester score, post‐reflux swallow‐induced peristaltic wave (PSPW) index, and mean nocturnal baseline impedence (MNBI) were associated with pepsin concentration. Regarding HRM metrics, there was no significant difference of pepsin concentration between low/normal upper esophageal sphincter (UES) resting pressure, low/normal lower esophageal sphincter (LES) resting pressure, low/normal 4‐s integrated relaxation pressure (IRP4s), and hypomotility/normal motility. Conclusion Patients with extraesophageal symptoms had a higher prevalence of positive Peptest. The optimum threshold level of 31.4 ng/mL had high sensitivity and moderate specificity to differentiate between patients with GERD and healthy controls