Silent voices, untold stories: women domestic workers in Pakistan and their struggle for empowerment

This is a socio-legal study about law, empowerment and access to justice for women domestic workers in Pakistan. There are no official statistics available on the number of women working in this informal employment sector, neither are there any in-depth research studies carried out on the subject of women in domestic service in Pakistan. Therefore this exploratory study attempts to fill the gap in existing literature by providing information about the profile, nature, working and living conditions of women domestic workers. It provides a starting point towards an understanding of the situation of women in domestic service by listening to their voices and lived experiences. By using feminist legal perspectives, Islamic perspectives on woinen's work and legal pluralism, the present study questions the efficacy of law as a tool for empowering women domestic workers in their struggle against exploitative treatment in the workplace. Grounded theory methodology is followed to collect empirical data about domestic service in Pakistan. Semi-structured group and individual interviews have been carried out at four sites in Karachi and Peshawar, Pakistan. A few case studies have also been included to substantiate some of the major themes arising during fieldwork. Listening to voices of women in domestic service has provided an opportunity to uncover the hidden lives of women domestic workers who work in the privacy of homes. The present study also explores the nature of domestic service, dynamics of employer-employee relations and complexities of class, gender and multiple identities impacting on these relationships. The study finally argues that in the presence of plural legal frameworks formal law alone cannot empower women in domestic service. Therefore for an effective implementation of law it is equally pertinent to look into non-legal strategies so that access to justice can be made possible for these women

Silent voices, untold stories : women domestic workers in Pakistan and their struggle for empowerment

This is a socio-legal study about law, empowerment and access to justice for women domestic workers in Pakistan. There are no official statistics available on the number of women working in this informal employment sector, neither are there any in-depth research studies carried out on the subject of women in domestic service in Pakistan. Therefore this exploratory study attempts to fill the gap in existing literature by providing information about the profile, nature, working and living conditions of women domestic workers. It provides a starting point towards an understanding of the situation of women in domestic service by listening to their voices and lived experiences. By using feminist legal perspectives, Islamic perspectives on woinen's work and legal pluralism, the present study questions the efficacy of law as a tool for empowering women domestic workers in their struggle against exploitative treatment in the workplace. Grounded theory methodology is followed to collect empirical data about domestic service in Pakistan. Semi-structured group and individual interviews have been carried out at four sites in Karachi and Peshawar, Pakistan. A few case studies have also been included to substantiate some of the major themes arising during fieldwork. Listening to voices of women in domestic service has provided an opportunity to uncover the hidden lives of women domestic workers who work in the privacy of homes. The present study also explores the nature of domestic service, dynamics of employer-employee relations and complexities of class, gender and multiple identities impacting on these relationships. The study finally argues that in the presence of plural legal frameworks formal law alone cannot empower women in domestic service. Therefore for an effective implementation of law it is equally pertinent to look into non-legal strategies so that access to justice can be made possible for these women.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceUniversity of Warwick (UoW)GBUnited Kingdo

Effects of Smartphone Usage on Social Wellbeing of School Going Children (5-16 years) in Lahore, Pakistan

The aim of this study was to analyze the effects of smartphone usage on social wellbeing of school going children (5-16 years). Descriptive cross sectional household survey was carried out in all ten towns of Lahore, Pakistan in five months duration from January 2017 to May 2017. The sampling technique was multistage cluster sampling. The school going smartphone users included in the study were 2889. The study tool was structured questionnaire. The gathered data was analyzed through IBM SPSS Statistics Version 21 in terms of Descriptive statistics and Bivariate logistic regression. Long term smartphone usage was found significantly associated with social networking among school going children. The p-value of hours spent by school going smartphone users with family per day was <0.01, smartphone use during breakfast, lunch & dinner was 0.011, smartphone use when family sitting closer to them was <0.001 and smartphone use to interact with friends and cousins was 0.0001. The study concluded that long term smartphone usage can result in decreased face-to-face communication and decreased interaction between family members living in one home and increased interaction with friends and people outside the home

Analysis of rule-based and shallow statistical models for COVID-19 cough detection for a preliminary diagnosis

Coronavirus pandemic that has spread all over the world, is one of its kind in the recent past, that has mobilized researchers in areas such as (not limited to) pre-screening solutions, contact tracing, vaccine developments, and crowd estimation. Pre-screening using symptoms identification, cough classification, and contact tracing mobile applications gained significant popularity during the initial outbreak of the pandemic. Audio recordings of coughing individuals are one of the sources that can help in the pre-screening of COVID-19 patients. This research focuses on quantitative analysis of covid cough classification using audio recordings of coughing individuals. For analysis, we used three different publicly available datasets i.e., COUGHVID, NoCoCoDa, and a self-collected dataset through a web application. We observed that wet cough has more correlation with covid cough as opposed to dry cough. However, the classification model trained with wet and dry coughs, both, has similar test performance as that of the model trained with wet cough samples only. We conclude that audio-signal recordings of coughing individuals have the potential as a pre-screening test for COVID-19

Effectiveness of Ivermectin among COVID-19 patients: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Objectives: To determine the effectiveness of Ivermectin among COVID-19 patients in terms of mortality and biochemical / hematological attributes. Materials and Methods:  A Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) was carried out in Department of Infectious Diseases (DID) of Holy Family Hospital Rawalpindi during March 2021 through concurrent parallel study design. Apart from seeking Ethical approval for this research, DID was also licensed from Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) for this trial. Total 90 PCR positive COVID-19 patients were enrolled in this study via 1:1 randomization in experimental and control group without blinding. The control group received Standard of Care (SOC) starting from day 1 while experimental group was given SOC along with Ivermectin (200µg/kg) for 5 days. Study participants were assessed on day 0, 4, 7 and 10 for general symptoms through physical examination, blood oxygen saturation and diverse hematological and biochemical indicators in addition to adverse events. Data analysis was done by means of SPSS version 25.0. and Microsoft Excel 2010. Mean ± SD for age, length of hospital stay and time to PCR negativity were calculated. Independent sample t-test was applied to determine the mean difference in age, duration of hospital stay, time to PCR negativity, SpO2, oxygen supply, serum Hemoglobin, TLC, platelet count, Clinical Severity Score (CSS), urea and creatinine levels of both groups. The difference in secondary outcome (expiry / discharge) of both groups was compared by means of chi-square test. P-value ≤ 0.05 was considered significant. 95% Confidence Interval was also computed. Relative Risk (RR) was also measured to verify the effectiveness of Ivermectin in COVID patients Results: Males constituted the majority (56.7%) of our study participants. Statistically insignificant difference in mean age (P = 0.42) and mean length of hospital stay (P= 0.32) between experimental and control group subjects was observed. Mean time to PCR negativity was reported to be significantly less (P= 0.002) in experimental group. Significant improvement was seen in PCR negativity (P<0.05), mean Clinical Severity Score (CSS) (P0.02), mean hemoglobin level (P=0.03) and mean platelet count (P=0.03). Difference in health outcome of both groups was determined to be statistically insignificant (P<0.2, 95% CI (-0.20 – 0.12)). Relative Risk of 0.8 proved the protective effect of Ivermectin in COVID. Conclusion: Ivermectin was quite effective in reducing mortality and improving the health outcome in COVID-19 patients

Effectiveness of Ivermectin among COVID-19 patients: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Objectives: To determine the effectiveness of Ivermectin among COVID-19 patients in terms of mortality and biochemical / hematological attributes. Materials and Methods:  A Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) was carried out in Department of Infectious Diseases (DID) of Holy Family Hospital Rawalpindi during March 2021 through concurrent parallel study design. Apart from seeking Ethical approval for this research, DID was also licensed from Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) for this trial. Total 90 PCR positive COVID-19 patients were enrolled in this study via 1:1 randomization in experimental and control group without blinding. The control group received Standard of Care (SOC) starting from day 1 while experimental group was given SOC along with Ivermectin (200µg/kg) for 5 days. Study participants were assessed on day 0, 4, 7 and 10 for general symptoms through physical examination, blood oxygen saturation and diverse hematological and biochemical indicators in addition to adverse events. Data analysis was done by means of SPSS version 25.0. and Microsoft Excel 2010. Mean ± SD for age, length of hospital stay and time to PCR negativity were calculated. Independent sample t-test was applied to determine the mean difference in age, duration of hospital stay, time to PCR negativity, SpO2, oxygen supply, serum Hemoglobin, TLC, platelet count, Clinical Severity Score (CSS), urea and creatinine levels of both groups. The difference in secondary outcome (expiry / discharge) of both groups was compared by means of chi-square test. P-value ≤ 0.05 was considered significant. 95% Confidence Interval was also computed. Relative Risk (RR) was also measured to verify the effectiveness of Ivermectin in COVID patients Results: Males constituted the majority (56.7%) of our study participants. Statistically insignificant difference in mean age (P = 0.42) and mean length of hospital stay (P= 0.32) between experimental and control group subjects was observed. Mean time to PCR negativity was reported to be significantly less (P= 0.002) in experimental group. Significant improvement was seen in PCR negativity (P<0.05), mean Clinical Severity Score (CSS) (P0.02), mean hemoglobin level (P=0.03) and mean platelet count (P=0.03). Difference in health outcome of both groups was determined to be statistically insignificant (P<0.2, 95% CI (-0.20 – 0.12)). Relative Risk of 0.8 proved the protective effect of Ivermectin in COVID. Conclusion: Ivermectin was quite effective in reducing mortality and improving the health outcome in COVID-19 patients