Effectiveness of Health Education in Community-based Malaria Prevention and Control Interventions in sub-Saharan Africa: A Systematic Review

Objective: This review assessed the effectiveness of health education in community-based malaria prevention and control interventions in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Methods: We systematically reviewed published and unpublished literature, searching 7 databases and 3 websites namely Malaria Journal, World Health Organization and Centre for Disease Control and Prevention to find relevant studies. Study designs included were randomized controlled trials, non-randomized trials, quasi experiments, before and after studies, and surveys. A narrative synthesis was performed on the extracted data. Results: Seventeen studies were included in the review. Nine studies covered health education interventions on Insecticide Treated bet Nets (ITNs), three utilised health education to promote Intermittent Presumptive Treatment in pregnancy (IPTp), four reported on the effect of health education in home-based management of malaria whilst one study focused on environmental management in malaria control. Factors found to affect health education in malaria control and prevention interventions included educational level of participants, the nature of health messages and the level of community involvement. Conclusion: The results of the review suggest that health education interventions are effective and remain a valuable tool in community-based malaria prevention and control interventions in SSA. This review found moderate evidence that health education interventions influence the uptake of community-based malaria prevention and control interventions, enhance knowledge about malaria and generally improve malaria prevalence and mortality in children under five and pregnant women.   Key words Malaria, systematic review, health education, sub-Saharan Africa

Decentring Liverpool’s popular music heritage: Routes jukebox

This chapter takes as its focus a documentary film, Routes Jukebox (2015), as a ‘record’ of music, place and heritage. Commissioned by the Liverpool International Music Festival (LIMF), Routes Jukebox explores Liverpool’s musical heritage by (re)connecting the city to its cultural ‘roots and routes’ (Gilroy, 1993), including musical influences from Dublin, New York, Detroit, Nashville, Los Angeles and Kingston, Jamaica. Through these places, the filmmakers trace the arrival of early rock ʼn' roll, the influence of country music, the significance of soul, and reggae, ska and sound systems in Liverpool. Whilst offering a playlist of significant songs in the city’s past, the film also ‘changes the record’, decentring Liverpool’s musical heritage. By looking out across the Atlantic, rather than an assumed home-grown essentialism, Routes Jukebox explores a few records that form part of the global ‘mix’ that has shaped the city’s popular music heritage

North-SouthMigration and Remittances in Ghana

Migrant remittances play an important role in the economic development and the improvement of household welfare in Ghana. The movement of youth from rural Northern Ghana to the South has been a recurrent  research focus. This paper examines the dynamics of north-south  migration of the youth and resulting remittances in Ghana using Accra and Kumasi as study areas. The paper shows that the youth embark on the southward journey with the anticipation of getting employed so as to earn money to be able to remit to support and improve the wellbeing of relations back home. Also, the paper highlights that the young migrants remit varying amounts of money. These monies have been put to different uses, much of which is used in buying food for consumption, the  maintenance of the household and other ventures. The study notes that the mode of savings, the duration and place of stay, the level of income and sex to a larger extent determine the amount of money, frequency and the likelihood that a migrant will remit at any point in time. Most  importantly, the migration of the youth from Northern to Southern Ghana and the remittances sent, play an important role in improving household wellbeing.Keywords: Remittances, Northern Ghana, North-South Migration, Accra, Kumasi, Sus

Effects of Organizational Communication on Employee Performance: A Case of the Agricultural Development Bank, Tamale.

Whenever there is an aggregation of people, there is bound to be communication. Communication is the only way information can be passed on from one person to the other; through the use of both verbal and non-verbal means. The organization, like every other social group uses communication in their daily activities; in interactions between superiors and subordinates, as well as among colleagues, both formally and informally. The objective of this study was to identify the effect organizational communication has on the performance of employees and the Agricultural Development Bank; that is, the three branches in the Tamale Metropolis, Tamale Main, Aboabo and Kaladan were selected for the study.  The design used for this study was the case study. Employees of all three branches were sampled with the combination of both the simple random sampling and stratified sampling. The simple random sampling was used to acquire 30 respondents out of a population of 50 for the administering of interviews, while the stratified sampling was used to sample 6 respondents from among both senior level and junior level employees to be interviewed. Therefore a combination of questionnaires and interviews were used to collect data from employees of the bank. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used for analyzing the data that was collected, with the use of tables and figures to represent the data. The study showed that information about the bank is published on the website and so employees have a lot of knowledge about the performance of the bank. Results also showed that formal, top-down channel of communication, is predominantly used in the bank. Recommendations were therefore recommended that the bank also makes use of the bottom-up channel of communication. Key words: Communication, Organization, Performance, Information and Relationshi

Place of Residence, Environmental Characteristics and Child Mortality in the Princess Marie Louise Hospital Catchment Area

Consistently studies have shown that proximity to health services has a bearing on infant and child mortality. They commonly cite a distance of 4km beyond which the risk of under five death risks increase by four-fold. Princess Marie Louise Children’s Hospital is located at the heart of Accra Metropolitan Area serving a catchment area of about 35km2. Using geographic information system’s spatial analytical tools, this study analyzed spatial clustering of under five deaths reported at PML and compared that to distance travel to access service from PML. The study also compared under five deaths in a community to three environmental risk factors including access to improved toilet facility, access to potable water and the use of unimproved cooking methods. The study finds that high under five deaths occurred in communities closer to PML in similar frequency as they occur in distances further away. Similarly communities with high under five deaths are not necessarily the communities with more people with poor environmental characterization such as unimproved toilet facility, no access to potable water and the use of unimproved cooking methods. The study recommends that future studies may look deep into other factors contributing to under five mortality such as availability of intervening health facility, mothers’ education, income and distance accessible roads. Keywords: Child Mortality, Under 5 deaths, spatial patter

Land Use Land Cover Change within Kakum Conservation Area in the Assin South District of Ghana, 1991-2015

Kakum Conservation Area is roughly 1187km2, extending over large portions of forest reserves in the Assin South District of Ghana. The district hosts the remaining biodiversity hotspots within highly fragmented rainforest of West Africa. Although the conservation has been gazetted as protected area, it has since been impacted by illegal chainsaw logging, expanding agricultural land use and built construction to meet the housing needs of the rapidly growing population of the district. However, there is paucity of data on the magnitude, rate and types of land cover change occurring in the district. This study seeks to address these by examining the magnitude, the rate and direction of change in land cover between 1991 and 2015. The study objective was achieved using supervised classification and post classification change detection of remotely sensed Landsat satellite imagery of the district taken in 1991, 2001 and 2015. The results show that, within the study period, the population of the area increased by 2.9%, thick forest decreased by 8.2km2, light forest increased by 5.3km2 and built environment increased by 2.9km2 per annum. These results are considered potential hindrance to sustainable development, including biodiversity conservation in the forest reserves and climate change mitigation in general. There is therefore need for measures to end deforestation and stimulate reforestation of the lost forest cover. The district needs to initiate an enquiry into the effectiveness of the current forest reserve management practices and sustainability of land use systems in the district

Diversity of accounting practices in the extractive industries listed on London Stock Exchange: standardisation pathways

Even though extractive industries (EI) play key roles in the global economy, financial reporting of their activities has been a subject of deep controversy for some decades now. In the absence of adequate regulation, several accounting methods have evolved which are used to account for pre-development costs which has been argued to impede comparability of accounts. With comparability being one of the key qualitative characteristics of accounting information, it is surprising that much attention has not been given to the extractive project even though there has been numerous calls for standardisation of practices. In response to these calls, this study seeks to examine the extent of diversity of accounting treatments for pre-development costs among extractive companies and explore the need and pathways for standardisation. The research is underpinned by positivist research philosophy and employs quantitative methods to address the research aim and objectives. The study involves 256 extractive companies listed on the London Stock Exchange and focuses on eight pre-development cost components. Data on accounting policies and treatments of the cost components are collected from 2018 annual reports of companies and these data are used in constructing harmony and comparability indices. This research adopts the van der Tas (1988) H-index and Archer, Delvaille and McLeay (1995) disclosure-adjusted C-index to measure the level of harmony. It also uses Archer, Delvaille and McLeay (1995) decomposed C-index, van der Tas (1988) I-index and Archer and McLeay (1995) I-index to measure the extent of intra- and inter-method comparability in treatment. The results confirm the diversity of accounting methods in the industries and find that for each of the eight (8) pre-development cost components analysed, there were some diversities in treatments even among users of the same accounting method. Apart from pre-licencing costs which the study finds greater tendency for them to be fully expensed by users of the different methods, for the other cost components the most common treatment is for them to be initially capitalised pending decision. The study finds that the level of harmony among users of each of the methods as measured by the H-index ranges from low to high. However, the harmony levels as measured by the disclosure-adjusted C-index are relatively lower. Full cost users exhibit the lowest level of harmony for most of the cost components. Additionally, this study identifies geological and geophysical costs, general administrative and overhead costs, licencing and other acquisition costs, and other exploration costs as “controversial” cost components because there is less harmony in their treatments. Even though the intra-method comparability ranges between moderate to high levels, the inter-method comparabilities are rather low between pairs of different accounting methods and across all four methods. These highlight the adverse effects the choice of diverse accounting practices has on the extent of comparability in the treatment of pre-development costs. The findings underscore the need for efforts to harmonise diverse practices and to achieve standardisation in the extractive industries. For cost components identified by this study as controversial, it is recommended that clear guidance on how they should be treated are provided by the Board to reduce the exercise of discretion in their treatments