Putting Cyber Weddings and Aquatic Nuptials in their Wider Context

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To Be or Not To Be: Recognition of Same-sex Partnerships in Hong Kong

The primary aim of this article is to provide a background study and analysis of same-sex partnerships in the hope that it may assist the debate and contribute to policymaking. This article begins by looking at the events that led to the 1991 decriminalisation of homosexual conduct between consenting adults in private. This is followed by a summary and analysis of the gay and lesbian rights movement as a global force. It is argued that the recent success of gay and lesbian groups, especially in the liberal West, is closely related to a larger movement for equality and nondiscrimination. The author argues that the demands of same-sex couples in Hong Kong are also part of this wider movement for equality and non-discrimination and deserve to be debated and addressed without undue delay.published_or_final_versio

The Integration of Personal Laws: Tanzania’s Experience

A ZLRev article on family law in Tanzania.Tanzania’s endeavors to find an appropriate law of marriage and divorce began immediately after independence in 1961 when President Nyerere sanctioned the recording of the personal law of various communities throughout the country. In 1963 the codification team produced a comprehensive draft code which was applicable to the Bantu patri-lineal groups. It was published that year as Government Notice No. 279 of 1963.1 It may be recalled that during the early 1960s some other African states which had recently become-independent were actively involved in critically evaluating their legal systems which they had inherited from the previous colonial administration. At the Dar es Salaam Conference of 1963 for example, a number of speakers argued for the unification of customary laws noting that such a step would lead towards national unification

Home Based Care Services as Strategy to Support Anti-Retroviral Adherence: The Case of Musoma Municipal, Mara region

A descriptive qualitative study was conducted to assess whether Home Based Care services can be used as a strategy to support Anti-retroviral adherence for People living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) in Musoma Municipality, Mara region in March 2012. Six public health facilities that are providing ARVs were included in the study; this included the regional hospital, two dispensaries and three health centers. With the national ART scale up, the poor health infrastructures are faced with poor retention of patients into care, as a result maintaining adherence becomes a problem due to a lack of follow up. The goal of the study was to assess the use of home based care services as a strategy to support Anti-retroviral treatment adherence among PLWHA. A total of five Focused Group Discussions (FGDs) were conducted with 30 home based care providers to find out from them whether the HBC intervention had experienced any changes since the advent of ARV scale up in the region, and whether their roles had changed in the delivery of services to PLWHA to include adherence support and management. Key Informant Interviews were conducted with 13 health care providers including the facility in-charges, CTC in-charges, hospital pharmacist and HBC Supervisor from the six health facilities that were included in the study to find out their perceptions towards home based care services and whether HBC is providing support to the formal health care systems in ensuring clients adhere to their ART regimen. Whereas in-depth interviews were conducted with 14 PLWHA who are taking ARTs to find out their perceptions towards home based care services and whether they support them with ART adherence. The study findings revealed that HBC services support the formal health care systems with community care support services such as patient tracking and monitoring clients’ adherence to ARTs. Health care providers revealed that the success of ART up in the region is faced with many obstacles including the poor rates of patient retention due to high rates of patients who miss appointments and those who default on their treatments. They revealed that this obstacle is being tackled by HBC providers who assist them to do the patient tracking and returning defaulters back into care, also they provide community supportive services including ART adherence and patient follow up. PLWHA who were interviewed attributed their good adherence to the contribution of community support programmes such as HBC. They acknowledged the regular follow up visits, provision of counseling and monitoring that HBC providers conducted has helped them to maintain good adherence. This is because HBC has \ud evolved in response to the roll-out of ARVs, where it has become more medicalised as a result of the drive to sustain PLWHA on ART to adhere to their treatment regimen. It was concluded that HBC services are a key attribute that provides can be used to provide facility-community linkage which will ensure patients receive community care services as well as facility care and at the same time bridging the gap between formal health services and community care. Therefore further studies should be done on adherence interventions in order to develop evidence based strategies that can promote sustained adherence. In order for the national scale up efforts of ARV to be successful, it is important to assess the component of adherence as a contributing factor in ensuring the effectiveness or ARVs in achieving the desired results.\u

Modelling the Impact of Undetected Cases on the Transmission Dynamics of COVID-19

The spread of COVID-19 globally has caused negative impacts to the public, making understanding the dynamics of transmission a necessity. Essential factors such as undetected cases, asymptomatic cases, and several non-pharmaceutical interventions have played significant roles in the spreading mechanism of COVID-19 in the human population. It is imperative to understand the significance of these factors in order to determine whether COVID-19 will be eradicated or will continue to persist in the population. A mathematical model is formulated to investigate the impacts of vaccination and several non-pharmaceutical interventions on the dynamics of a COVID-19 accounting for asymptomatic cases, detected (identified) and undetected (unidentified) symptomatic infected cases. Results show that vaccination at higher rate, infection detection and immediate quarantine or isolation of infected individuals have the potential to eradicate COVID-19 from the population. It is recommended that individuals should be encouraged to get vaccinated while the government should encourage (or enforce through persuasive communication) the use of non-pharmaceutical interventions such as face masks wearing.   Keywords: COVID-19, undetected, vaccination, vaccine efficacy, stabilit

Birth in or out of wedlock: does it matter anymore? - The Parent and Child Ordinance 1993

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Mitigating the Spread of Measles under Constrained Health Care Resources in Tanzania using Social Contact Network Models

Tanzania revaccinates individuals during measles outbreaks, despite having scant healthcare resources. We construct epidemiological models of measles spread by employing a hybrid of existing social contact networks models to develop SEIR simulation model. Using demographic and measles surveillance data from three rural villages in Tanzania, we simulate the spread of measles and examine which vaccination strategies can effectively control outbreaks. Results strongly indicate the spread of measles largely depends on contact rates among infected individuals within a population. Findings indicate a need for targeted vaccination for children of 6 months to 15 years of age, but equally for unvaccinated older age groups who were born before 1957 or missed the second dose. This work contributes theoretically and methodologically to existing applications of social contact network models for airborne infectious diseases in areas with health system constraints. It sets out implications for the design of effective vaccination programs for control of measles in Tanzania and in other developing countries. Keywords: Vaccination strategies, Control strategies, Social contact network models, Airborne infectious diseases, Measles

Recent developments in the divorce law of Hong Kong: towards minimal adjudication and consensual divorce

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Family law in Hong Kong

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Constraining factors of the adoption of Kiswahili as a language of the law in Tanzania

The political and economic problems of language policy in modern Africa have continued to remind us of the unforgettable historical fact of European colonialism. Today there are two major regions of Africa known as Anglo-phone and Franco-phone Africa. Much as many African leaders would have wished to discard the language of the former colonial power and substitute an indigenous language, this was problematic because in many cases there was not a single widely-spoken local language In some cases any attempt to raise the status of one indigenous language into a national language might have provoked wasteful inter-ethnic conflict