Five-years retrospective study on utilization and uptake pattern of family planning services in primary health centres in a peri-urban settlement in southwest Nigeria

Background: Family planning is one of the most basic and essential healthcare services that can promote and ensure women's reproductive health worldwide. However, there has been a low level of utilisation of family planning services by women in developing countries. Therefore, the paper documented the utilisation rate, the uptake pattern of family planning services, and the socio-demographic characteristics of the women who attended the selected primary health centres in the Ife-Central local government area. Method: A five-year retrospective review of primary health centre’s records of clients who attended selected health centres from January 2017-December 2021. Data was obtained from the client cards and the family planning record book. A total of 2572 clients’ records were evaluated. Results: the study revealed the modal age group of 25-34 (58%) and modal parity of 3-4 (51%) children. The most significant proportion of the women was married (94.6%), with a secondary level of education (89%). Injectables were the most utilized family planning services among women in primary health centres, followed by the uptake of condoms. The Implant was the only increasing uptake pattern of family planning services within 5 years in primary health centres. Conclusion: Injectable contraceptives have a higher utilization rate, and the uptake pattern of family planning services varied in selected PHCs. However, the uptake pattern of implants increased consistently. Therefore, there is a need for continuous awareness creation and advocacy for the uptake of family planning services to promote women’s health and well-being. Trial registration: It was not retrospectively registered

Producing Policy-relevant Science by Enhancing Robustness and Model Integration for the Assessment of Global Environmental Change

We use the flexible model coupling technology known as the bespoke framework generator to link established existing modules representing dynamics in the global economy (GEMINI_E3), the energy system (TIAM-WORLD), the global and regional climate system (MAGICC6, PLASIM-ENTS and ClimGEN), the agricultural system, the hydrological system and ecosystems (LPJmL), together in a single integrated assessment modelling (IAM) framework, building on the pre-existing framework of the Community Integrated Assessment System. Next, we demonstrate the application of the framework to produce policy-relevant scientific information. We use it to show that when using carbon price mechanisms to induce a transition from a high-carbon to a low-carbon economy, prices can be minimised if policy action is taken early, if burden sharing regimes are used, and if agriculture is intensified. Some of the coupled models have been made available for use at a secure and user-friendly web portal

Global patient outcomes after elective surgery: prospective cohort study in 27 low-, middle- and high-income countries.

BACKGROUND: As global initiatives increase patient access to surgical treatments, there remains a need to understand the adverse effects of surgery and define appropriate levels of perioperative care. METHODS: We designed a prospective international 7-day cohort study of outcomes following elective adult inpatient surgery in 27 countries. The primary outcome was in-hospital complications. Secondary outcomes were death following a complication (failure to rescue) and death in hospital. Process measures were admission to critical care immediately after surgery or to treat a complication and duration of hospital stay. A single definition of critical care was used for all countries. RESULTS: A total of 474 hospitals in 19 high-, 7 middle- and 1 low-income country were included in the primary analysis. Data included 44 814 patients with a median hospital stay of 4 (range 2-7) days. A total of 7508 patients (16.8%) developed one or more postoperative complication and 207 died (0.5%). The overall mortality among patients who developed complications was 2.8%. Mortality following complications ranged from 2.4% for pulmonary embolism to 43.9% for cardiac arrest. A total of 4360 (9.7%) patients were admitted to a critical care unit as routine immediately after surgery, of whom 2198 (50.4%) developed a complication, with 105 (2.4%) deaths. A total of 1233 patients (16.4%) were admitted to a critical care unit to treat complications, with 119 (9.7%) deaths. Despite lower baseline risk, outcomes were similar in low- and middle-income compared with high-income countries. CONCLUSIONS: Poor patient outcomes are common after inpatient surgery. Global initiatives to increase access to surgical treatments should also address the need for safe perioperative care. STUDY REGISTRATION: ISRCTN5181700

An Introduction to Seshat: Global History Databank

This article introduces the Seshat: Global History Databank, its potential, and its methodology. Seshat is a databank containing vast amounts of quantitative data buttressed by qualitative nuance for a large sample of historical and archaeological polities. Thee sample is global in scope and covers the period from the Neolithic Revolution to the Industrial Revolution. Seshat allows scholars to capture dynamic processes and to test theories about the co-evolution (or not) of social scale and complexity, agriculture, warfare, religion, and any number of such Big Questions. Seshat is rapidly becoming a massive resource for innovative cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary research. Seshat is part of a growing trend to use comparative historical data on a large scale and contributes as such to a growing consilience between the humanities and social sciences. Seshat is underpinned by a robust and transparent workflow to ensure the ever growing dataset is of high quality

An integrative approach to estimating productivity in past societies using <i>Seshat: Global History Databank</i>

This article reports the results of a collaborative effort to estimate agricultural productivities in past societies using Seshat: Global History Databank. We focus on 30 Natural Geographic Areas (NGAs) distributed over 10 major world regions (Europe, Africa, Southwest Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia, Central Eurasia, North America, South America, and Oceania). The conceptual framework that we use to obtain these estimates combines the influences of the production technologies (and how they change with time), climate change, and effects of artificial selection into a Relative Yield Coefficient, indicating how agricultural productivity changed over time in each NGA between the Neolithic and the 20th century. We then use estimates of historical yield in each NGA to translate the Relative Yield Coefficient into an Estimated Yield (tonnes per hectare per year) trajectory. We tested the proposed methodology in two ways. For eight NGAs, in which we had more than one historical yield estimate, we used the earliest estimate to anchor the trajectory and compared the ensuing trajectory to the remaining estimates. We also compared the end points of the estimated NGA trajectories to the earliest (the 1960s decade) FAO data on crop productivities in the modern countries encompassing Seshat NGAs. We discuss the benefits of this methodology over previous efforts to estimate agricultural productivities in world history

Influence of substrates on the nutritional quality of Pleurotus pulmonarius and Pleurotus ostreatus

This investigation is aimed at determining the influence of agro-wastes as substrates on the nutritional quality of Pleurotus pulmonarius and Pleurotus ostreatus. Cassava peels, banana leaves and amended sawdust (sawdust mixed with rice bran in ratio 4:1) were used as growth substrates. Proximate and mineral analyses were carried out using DA 7250 NIR Analyzer and Atomic Absorption of Spectrophotometer machine (AA320N). Both species in amended sawdust had the highest stipe length and pileus diameter of the fruiting body. Starch was the most abundant proximate constituent in the two species. The starch was the most abundant proximate constituent in the two species but highest starch contents were observed in. P. pulmonarius grown in cassava peels substrate and P. ostreatus raised in banana leaves substrate. Fat appeared to be the lowest proximate constituent in the two species. Potassium was predominant among the minerals in both P. pulmonarius and P. ostreatus and the highest value (68.204 mg/L) was observed in P. ostreatus cultivated in amended sawdust. Other minerals varied considerably and as they were differential affected by the substrates. The mushrooms contained useful nutritional constituents however their quantities were influenced by the substrates used in raising them

Evaluation of knowledge of doctors in a Nigrian tertiary hospital of CPR

No Abstract. Nigerian Medical Practitioner Vol. 52 (1) 2007: pp. 16-1

Gaussian process emulation of an individual-based model simulation of microbial communities

The ability to make credible simulations of open engineered biological systems is an important step towards the application of scientific knowledge to solve real-world problems in this challenging, complex engineering domain. An important application of this type of knowledge is in the design and management of wastewater treatment systems. One of the crucial aspects of an engineering biology approach to wastewater treatment study is the ability to run a simulation of complex biological communities. However, the simulation of open biological systems is challenging because they often involve a large number of bacteria that ranges from order 1012 (a baby's microbiome) to 1018 (a wastewater treatment plant) individual particles, and are physically complex. Since the models are computationally expensive, and due to computing constraints, the consideration of only a limited set of scenarios is often possible. A simplified approach to this problem is to use a statistical approximation of the simulation ensembles derived from the complex models at a fine scale which will help in reducing the computational burden. Our aim in this paper is to build a cheaper surrogate of an individual-based (IB) model simulation of microbial communities. The paper focuses on how to use an emulator as an effective tool for studying and incorporating microscale processes in a computationally efficient way into macroscale models. The main issue we address is a strategy for emulating high-level summaries from the IB model simulation data. We use a Gaussian process regression model for the emulation. Under cross-validation, the percentage of variance explained for the univariate emulator ranges from 83–99% and 87–99% for the multivariate emulators, and for both biofilms and floc. Our emulators show an approximately 220-fold increase in computational efficiency. The sensitivity analyses indicated that substrate nutrient concentration for nitrate, carbon, nitrite and oxygen as well as the maximum growth rate for heterotrophic bacteria are the most important parameters for the predictions. We observe that the performance of the single step emulator depends hugely on the initial conditions and sample size taken for the normal approximation. We believe that the development of an emulator for an IB model is of strategic importance for using microscale understanding to enable macroscale problem solving