Violence Against Drivers and Conductors in the Road Passenger Transport Sector in Maputo, Mozambique

This cross-sectional study examined the extent, nature and risk factors of workplace violence in the road passenger transport sector in Maputo, the capital city of Mozambique. A random sample of 504 participants was selected from a population of 2 618 registered bus, minibus, andtaxi drivers/conductors. The results indicated that workplace violence, psychological as well as physical, is highly prevalent among drivers/conductors, with 77% reporting ever being abusedand 64% reporting being abused during the past 12 months. Particularly vulnerable groups comprised illiterate employees, bus drivers/conductors, employees with long experience, and those holding a supervisory position. In addition, a high workload was associated with an increased likelihood of exposure to workplace violence in the road passenger transport sector. This article discusses the implications of the findings for possible interventions and further research

Violence Against Drivers and Conductors in the Road Passenger Transport Sector in Maputo, Mozambique

This cross-sectional study examined the extent, nature and risk factors of workplace violence in the road passenger transport sector in Maputo, the capital city of Mozambique. A random sample of 504 participants was selected from a population of 2 618 registered bus, minibus, and taxi drivers/conductors. The results indicated that workplace violence, psychological as well as physical, is highly prevalent among drivers/conductors, with 77% reporting ever being abused and 64% reporting being abused during the past 12 months. Particularly vulnerable groups comprised illiterate employees, bus drivers/conductors, employees with long experience, and those holding a supervisory position. In addition, a high workload was associated with an increased likelihood of exposure to workplace violence in the road passenger transport sector. This article discusses the implications of the findings for possible interventions and further research

Health seeking behaviour of parents of burned children in Bangladesh is related to family socioeconomics

Objective: The study was design to explore the health seeking behaviour of Bangladeshi parents for their children during burn injuries. Methods: A population-based cross-sectional survey was conducted between January and December 2003 in Bangladesh. Nationally representative data were collected from 171,366 rural and urban households comprising of a total population of 819,429, including 351,651 children of 0–18 years. Mothers or heads of households were interviewed with a structured questionnaire in obtaining the information. Results: About sixty percent parents seek health care from unqualified service providers for their children during a childhood burn injury. Educated and the higher income groups parents choose qualified service provider at significantly higher rate compared to illiterate and poor. Higher proportion of parents of urban residence chooses qualified service provider compared to rural. No significant difference of health seeking behaviour of parent in choosing care provider was found in relation to sex of the children. Conclusion: Education, economic condition and place of residence were found as the contributory factors in choosing service provider. Education to the parents can contribute in changes in health seeking behaviour which ultimately contribute in reducing morbidity and mortality from childhood burn injuries. Including parent's education a national burn prevention program needs to be developed to combat the devastating child injury, burn

The Horizon of Unintentional Injuries among Children in Low-Income Setting: An Overview from Bangladesh Health and Injury Survey

Introduction. The paper aims to explore the magnitude and distribution of unintentional injuries among Bangladeshi children (<18 years). Methodology. A cross sectional survey was conducted during 2003 (January to December) in 12 randomly selected districts and Dhaka Metropolitan City of Bangladesh. Nationally representative data were collected from 171 366 households comprising of 351 651 children of under 18 years. Information includes the number of deaths and illness at the household in the preceding year. Verbal autopsy and verbal diagnosis form was used to determine the cause of mortality and morbidity respectively. Results. There were 351651 children in the study, of which 5577 had one or more injuries in the past one year. Drowning and falls was the leading cause of injury mortality and morbidity in children over 1 year of age respectively. Incidence of unintentional injuries was significantly higher among boys (95% CI = −2157.8) than girls (95% CI = 968.7 − 1085.8) while rural children were the most vulnerable group. Home and its premises was the most common place for the injury incidence. Conclusion. The result of the study could be an insight to the policy makers to develop realistic and effective strategies to address the issue

Consequences of childhood burn: Findings from the largest community-based injury survey in Bangladesh

In terms of morbidity and disability, burn is a major public health problem throughout the world, especially in low-income countries. It causes long-term disability and remains as a health, social and economic burden. A population-based survey was conducted in Bangladesh between January and December 2003. Nationally representative data were collected from 171,366 rural and urban households comprising of a total 819,429 population, which included 351,651 children under 18 years of age. Mothers/head of households were interviewed with a structured instrument. The objective of this paper is to determine the consequences of childhood burn at social and economic levels in Bangladesh. In the survey, 1013 children were found with different degrees of burn in the preceding 1 year. Among them 20 children were permanently disabled. The rate of permanent disability was found to be 5.7 per 100,000. The average loss of school days was found to be about 21 days. More than two-thirds of the burn victims required assistance in their daily activities for different durations of time. More than 7% of the children required hospitalisation for their burns. The rate of hospitalisation was 21.9 per 100,000; the average duration of hospital stay was 13.4 days. The highest duration (40 days) of hospital stay was found among girls 10– 14 years old. The highest expenditure for the treatment was also found in this age group. The average direct expenditure incurred by a family for treatment of severe burn was determined to be $462. In this study it was found that more than 61$50 a month. Burn is a devastating injury among all childhood injuries with significant additional economic consequences beyond the medical, pain, and suffering issues. Developing a national prevention program should be an immediate public health priority

Terminology for future-oriented life cycle assessment: review and recommendations

PurposeSome future-oriented life cycle assessment (LCA) terms, particularly prospective and ex-ante, show notable increase in use in publications over the last decade. However, scholars have pointed out that it is currently unclear exactly what these terms mean and how they are related. This paper aims to explain defining differences between future-oriented LCA terms and provide terminology recommendations.MethodsExisting definitions of future-oriented LCA terms were reviewed and analyzed. Workshops were held where defining differences of future-oriented LCA terms were discussed.ResultsTemporal positionality and technology maturity appear to be two critical aspects of future-oriented LCA. Prospective and ex-ante LCA are similar, with the possible difference that ex-ante LCA always involves an increase in technology maturity in the future. Considering the notable similarities, it seems reasonable to converge terms to mitigate field fragmentation and avoid terminology confusion.ConclusionsTo denote LCA studies with a future temporal positionality, we recommend using the term prospective LCA, defined as “LCA that models the product system at a future point in time relative to the time at which the study is conducted”. Furthermore, since technology maturity is clearly a critical aspect for prospective LCA, we recommend prospective LCA studies to clearly define the maturity of the technologies modeled in the production system.Industrial Ecolog

The Complex Degradation Mechanism of Copper Electrodes on Lead Halide Perovskites

Lead halide perovskite solar cells have reached power conversion efficiencies during the past few years that rival those of crystalline silicon solar cells, and there is a concentrated effort to commercialize them. The use of gold electrodes, the current standard, is prohibitively costly for commercial application. Copper is a promising low cost electrode material that has shown good stability in perovskite solar cells with selective contacts. Furthermore, it has the potential to be self passivating through the formation of CuI, a copper salt which is also used as a hole selective material. Based on these opportunities, we investigated the interface reactions between lead halide perovskites and copper in this work. Specifically, copper was deposited on the perovskite surface, and the reactions were followed in detail using synchrotron based and in house photoelectron spectroscopy. The results show a rich interfacial chemistry with reactions starting upon deposition and, with the exposure to oxygen and moisture, progress over many weeks, resulting in significant degradation of both the copper and the perovskite. The degradation results not only in the formation of CuI, as expected, but also in the formation of two previously unreported degradation products. The hope is that a deeper understanding of these processes will aid in the design of corrosion resistant copper based electrode

Guillain-Barré syndrome and adjuvanted pandemic influenza A (H1N1) 2009 vaccines: A multinational self-controlled case series in Europe

BACKGROUND: The risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) following the United States' 1976 swine flu vaccination campaign in the USA led to enhanced active surveillance during the pandemic influenza (A(H1N1)pdm09) immunization campaign. This study aimed to estimate the risk of GBS following influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 vaccination. METHODS: A self-controlled case series (SCCS) analysis was performed in Denmark, Finland, France, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Information was collected according to a common protocol and standardised procedures. Cases classified at levels 1-4a of the Brighton Collaboration case definition were included. The risk window was 42 days starting the day after vaccination. Conditional Poisson regression and pooled random effects models estimated adjusted relative incidences (RI). Pseudo likelihood and vaccinated-only methods addressed the potential contraindication for vaccination following GBS. RESULTS: Three hundred and three (303) GBS and Miller Fisher syndrome cases were included. Ninety-nine (99) were exposed to A(H1N1)pdm09 vaccination, which was most frequently adjuvanted (Pandemrix and Focetria). The unadjusted pooled RI for A(H1N1)pdm09 vaccination and GBS was 3.5 (95% Confidence Interval (CI): 2.2-5.5), based on all countries. This lowered to 2.0 (95% CI: 1.2-3.1) after adjustment for calendartime and to 1.9 (95% CI: 1.1-3.2) when we accounted for contra-indications. In a subset (Netherlands, Norway, and United Kingdom) we further adjusted for other confounders and there the RI decreased from 1.7 (adjusted for calendar month) to 1.4 (95% CI: 0.7-2.8), which is the main finding. CONCLUSION: This study illustrates the potential of conducting European collaborative vaccine safety studies. The main, fully adjusted analysis, showed that the RI of GBS was not significantly elevated after influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 vaccination (RI = 1.4 (95% CI: 0.7-2.8). Based on the upper limits of the pooled estimate we can rule out with 95% certainty that the number of excess GBS cases after influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 vaccination would be more than 3 per million vaccinated