Knowledge and public health practices during lockdown towards COVID-19 in Bangladesh

The study aimed to assess the role of having knowledge and essential hygiene practices to prevent coronavirus pandemic and to find out the relationship between people’s knowledge and good hygiene practices with socio-demographic variables during coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic situation. In this study, data were collected from 248 respondents for cross-sectional study using voluntary response sampling from April, 30 2020 to May, 30 2020, during lockdown situation in Bangladesh. Descriptive statistics were done to calculate the frequencies and percentages by using Stata SE 14.2 (StataCorp). Chi-square was performed at the significance level of 5% to find the factors which were associated with knowledge about COVID-19. After knowing about COVID-19, 86.29% respondents had taken preventive measures and 71.37% respondents had agreed to stay at home. Among the respondents, 47.98% were involved in services and were positively associated with good general knowledge of preventive practices. Our present findings indicated significant relationship between good general knowledge and practice of general people towards COVID-19 outbreak in Bangladesh. The findings of the study are helpful for the researchers and the population to follow all good promotional practices for preventive measures against coronavirus

Psychosocial impact of parenting children with intellectual disabilities in Bangladesh

It is well documented that raising a child with an intellectual disability negatively affects the mental health and marital relationships of the parents as they encounter additional social, psychological, financial, and physical burdens. But little is known about the phenomena from the context of Bangladesh. This study aimed to investigate the effect of having a child with an intellectual disability on marital satisfaction and the mental wellbeing of the parents. It assessed the depression and marital satisfaction of randomly selected 60 parents (both father and mother) having a child with an intellectual disability and compared with the same number of parents without a child of intellectual disability. It used an improvised Bangla version of the beck depression inventory (BDI-II) and a relationship assessment scale (RAS) to measure the severity of depression and the level of marital satisfaction among the participants. Most of the parents of children with intellectual disabilities suffer from moderate depression. Meanwhile, most of the parents of children without intellectual disabilities suffer from mild mood disturbance. Parents of children with intellectual disabilities suffer from a higher level of depression and have a higher level of marital satisfaction compared to the parents of children without intellectual disabilities in Bangladesh

Outcome of Pregnancy in Lupus

Background: Pregnancy in patients with SLE is associated with a high risk of maternal disease exacerbation in active disease state and adverse fetal outcome. Objective: To analyse maternal and fetal outcome in pregnant lupus patients as well as to identify influence of disease activity on it. Methods: This retrospective observational cross sectional study was done on 27 pregnant lupus patients in feto-maternal medicine wing of the department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, BSMMU from April 2007 to March 2011. For statistical analysis z test of proportion and students t test was used. Results: Mean age of the patients was 26.6 years. At booking, 8 (29.63%) had active lupus while 19 (70.37%) was in remission. As complications of SLE, lupus flare was found in 11.1%, lupus nephritis in 25.9% and skin rash in 7.4%. Regarding obstetric complications, PIH was developed in 3.7% and preeclampsia in 11.1% of the patients. Average gestational age at delivery was 34.8 weeks. Birth weight was <2.5kg in 45.8% of neonates. There was IUGR in 33.3% of the cases and 25% of the neonates needed admission in neonatal ICU. There was no neonatal death and none of the 24 neonates had neonatal lupus. In this study there was no maternal mortality. Patients who were in active disease state, most (55.5%) delivered preterm, spontaneous abortion occurred in two and IUD in one of the patients. Average birth weight was lower (1.9+.47kg) in patients with active SLE than those of with remission (2.3+.68kg). Lupus flare developed in 66.6% with active disease, while in 33.3% with remission. Conclusion: Pregnancy is relatively safe with SLE in remission but considered as high risk in terms of fetal loss and spontaneous abortion. Disease activity influences pregnancy outcome.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/bsmmuj.v5i1.10995 BSMMU J 2012; 5(1):18-2

Does asymmetry matter in the relationship between exchange rate and remittance? Evidence from a remittance recipient country based on ARDL and NARDL

The relationship between the exchange rate and remittance has been addressed in the literature. The results of these research papers, however, have been conflicting in terms of causal relationship between these variables. Even when some researches have proven the causality between them, they assume linear and symmetric relationship between them. In our paper, we first test their cointegrating relationship by using time series technique of Autoregressive Distributed Lags (ARDL) and then test the linear and symmetric assumption in their relationship based on Nonlinear AutoRegressive Distributed Lag (NARDL). We used 42 years of annual data from 1976 to 2017 of Bangladesh collected from the World Development Indicators database. We used Bangladesh, as it is one of the top ten remittance receiving country in the world. This paper finds that exchange rate significantly impacts remittance in the long run. It also finds that the relationship between the exchange rate and remittance is nonlinear and asymmetric in both long and short run. Policy makers may follow semi-fixed exchange rate policy to maximise the remittance income of the country, while managing exchange rate risk through other economic variables

Association between knowledge and depression at rising time of COVID-19 in Bangladesh

Novel coronavirus (nCoV) has created a new challenging situation all over the world. In Bangladesh, people are facing some difficulties to response the emergencies. There are so many people who are lacking of proper quarantine information and knowledge about prevention practices towards coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). COVID-19 has created an experience of mental disorder like depression, anxiety, and stress. Although social media, newspaper, news, television has focused on this issue, still there is to be needed to identify the psychological effects like negative impact on our mind and behavioral changes during lockdown. An online survey of 248 respondents was conducted between April, 15 2020 and May, 15 2020. The aim of this study was to assess the relationship between higher knowledge of public regarding safety measures and depression among the adult population of Bangladesh during lockdown. This study focused on correlation between knowledge level and mental health condition like depression. About 50% respondents were felt high depression after the first announcement of lockdown in Bangladesh. Approximately 50% respondents stated that people of their locality were panicked, not panicked were 26.21% and the probability of getting panic were 23.79% due to COVID-19 during lockdown in Bangladesh. The respondents who had gathered a higher knowledge about precautions were associated with depression

Communicating health and risk information among senior citizens in Bangladesh

The coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has affected human being in multiple ways all over the world. Senior citizens are more likely to get sick from COVID-19 compared to other age groups. Little is known about ways to deliver the messages to adult people to get the best outcome. We conducted a direct telephone/mobile phone-based cross-sectional survey among individuals who were aged >60 years old in Bangladesh. Verbal consent was taken and the snowball sampling method was used to reach the participants. This study showed that the most common sources of information about COVID-19 were family members, relatives, friends, and electronic media. Hence, 36.8% participants perceived that the media massages about COVID-19 were difficult to understand. Meanwhile, 53% participants could not understand the meanings news and information as those were presented using unknown terminologies. From the findings it can be concluded that the media messages should be communicated in a way that are context-specific and understandable, especially using more convenient terminology for better understanding for all levels of people

Does Entitlement Card ensure Utilization of Urban Primary Healthcare Clinic in Bangladesh?

Background: Although Bangladesh substantial­ly reduced 40% maternal death in the last deca­des, it is still challenging, especially among the ur­ban poor. The achievements are not equitable bet­ween different economic quintiles and bet­ween the rich and the urban poor. This study aims to examine the extent to which the entitle­ment card affects the utilization of maternal and child health care and identifies other factors that influence MCH services.Subjects and Method: This cross-sectional study was carried out in the working areas of the Ur­ban Primary Healthcare Project (UPHCP) in Bang­ladesh. A two-stage cluster sampling tech­ni­que was used to select the participants. A total of 3,949 women aged 15-49 years, having at least one child aged two years or less were selected for this study. The data were collected through face-to-face inter­views. The data were analyzed using multinomial logistic regression.Results: The proportion of utilization of UPH­CC was 49.9%. One-fourth (26.6%) of them fully utilized it and another 23.3% utilized it partially. Stepwise multinomial logistic regression analysis revealed that those who had an Entitlement Card from the UPHC project were 11.75 times (95% CI= 9.481, 14.549; p= 0.001) more likely to fully Utilized and 3.64 times (95% CI= 3.643, 2.911; p= 0.001) likely be utilized partially compared to non-utilizer. Respondents having no formal edu­cation utilized UPHCC fully (AOR=2.32; 95% CI= 1.46, 3.68; p= 0.001) and partially (AOR= 1.76; 95% CI= 1.12, 2.77; p= 0.014) used UPHCC. It was 3.08 (95% CI= 2.03, 4.67; p= 0.001) times for fully and 2.71 (95% CI= 1.82, 4.04; p= 0.001) times for partially utilized UPHCC compared to non-users among the primary level of education. Small family size (≤4) and monthly family in­come in the range of BDT 10,000 above were likely to utilise UPHCC. However, non-Muslims were less likely to Utilized UPHCC.Conclusion: Apart from the entitlement card, other factors such as monthly income BDT> 10,000, small family size, no formal educated mo­ther appeared to be potential predictors for utilization of the Urban Primary Health care clinic.Keywords: entitlement card, maternal care, Utilization, urban primary healthcareCorrespondence: Md Mizanur Rahman. Department of Community Medicine and Public Health, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Malaysia Sa­rawak. Email: [email protected], [email protected] of Maternal and Child Health (2020), 5(2): 213-225https://doi.org/10.26911/thejmch.2020.05.02.1

Ovarian function following intra-ovarian injection of platelet rich plasma in premature ovarian aging

Background: Premature ovarian aging as evidenced by AMH levels less than 0.5 ng/ml is predictive of reduced success in management of infertility. The most effective treatment is in vitro fertilization which is not affordable or acceptable to most of our patients with low socioeconomic background. Intra-ovarian injection of autologous platelet rich plasma (PRP) improves the ovarian reserve markers but it remains to be seen whether it improves the pregnancy rate.Methods: This was a prospective study of 29 patients with poor ovarian reserve (age between 30-40 years, AMH<0.5 ng/ml), AFC<4 in both ovaries) who received intra ovarian injection of platelet rich plasma. The patients were followed up for one year and data was collected about clinically relevant outcomes like pregnancy.Results: Four women (13.8%) had pregnancy, of which 3 were spontaneous and one was following ovarian stimulation and intrauterine insemination. All had diagnosed clinical pregnancy, of which two women had live birth.Conclusions: Given the 13.8% rate of pregnancy within one year we can speculate that PRP injection may be a reasonable alternative to in vitro fertilization in women with diminished ovarian reserve.

In Vitro Propagation of Eggplant through Meristem Culture

Meristem culture was done for developing an efficient protocol of production of eggplant clones. Shoot tips of 30-35 days old field grown eggplants were used for meristem isolation. Three cultivars viz. ‘Islampuri’, ‘Khatkhatia’ and ‘Katabegun’ were used in the present investigation as explants source. Surface sterilization of shoot tips was found to be the best in 0.1% HgCl2 solution for 3 minutes. For primary establishment of isolated apical meristem in MS liquid medium containing 2.0 mg l-1 BAP was found the best in cv Islampuri. BAP was also proved to be best for the primary establishment of isolated apical meristem in all the cultivars. Subsequent development of meristem derived shoot was achieved in MS semisolid medium containing either 2.0 mg l-1 BAP and 1.0 mg l-1 NAA or 1.0 mg l-1 BAP. For root development from meristem derived shoots, 1.0 mg l-1 IBA was found most responsive in cv. ‘Islampuri’ and ‘Khatkhatia’. Aft er transplantation, the in vitro plants showed normal growth