Unintended pregnancy and induced abortion in a town with accessible family planning services: The case of Harar in eastern Ethiopia

Introduction: It is a universally accepted fact that unintended pregnancy and births could have negative consequences for women, children, families and societies at large. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in Harrar town in southeast Ethiopia where family planning services are relatively easily accessible. The study was carried out in nine kebeles (smallest administrative units), selected from three woredas (districts). A multistage sampling technique was used to select females in the reproductive age group 15-49 years for interview. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data. Results: A total of 983 females aged 15-49 years were interviewed out of whom, 225 (33.3%) sexually active women reported that their most recent pregnancies were unintended. The prevalence of unintended childbirth among sexually active women constituted about 14.3% of the total while induced abortion was found to be 14.4 %. In multivariate analysis, teenagers (OR 4.2 95% CI 1.4,10, 5), those married at the age of less than 20 years (OR 2.1 95%CI 1.9, 4.7), and currently unmarried (OR 1.7 95% CI 1.2, 2.5) had a higher chance of experiencing unwanted pregnancy. Literate women were found to have a significantly higher chance of having induced abortion (OR 2.8, 95% CI 1.4, 6.4). Conclusions: Unintended pregnancy was found to be a major reproductive health problem in the study area showing the high unmet need for family planning and thus deserves priority attention. Expanding access to family planning without regard for the provision of effective IEC, counseling and quality care may not have the expected benefits in this context. The Ethiopian Journal of Health Development Vol. 20 (2) 2006: 79-8

Livelihood Strategies of Rural Women with Emphasis on Income Diversification and Demographic Adjustment in Central Ethiopia: The Case of Olonkomoi1, Oromia Region

This article explores some of the livelihood strategies of rural women with emphasis on an income diversification and demographic adjustment in Olonkomi locality in the context of rapid population growth. The data used in the study came from selected 150 households’ socio-economic and demographic survey, group discussions, and interview and other secondary sources. Results indicated that the population of Olonkomi and its locality was growing at a rate of about 2.4 percent per annum, which leads to limited access to the scarce land and other resources. As a result, many rural people in general and women in particular have adopted diversified livelihood strategies that could enable them partly cope with livelihood problems. Therefore, women have involved in casual and unregulated labor of income generating activities such as processing and selling local beverages, selling fire wood, making hand crafts, petty trading etc., although their impact on livelihood improvement was minimal due to poor access to credit from financial institutions, lack of skill and training, and scarce labor supplies in case of femaleheaded households. Observation of women, especially female-headed households who diversified their household income sources as a survival strategy were more notable. Fertility showed a declining trend though the change was small. The change emanated from the fact that considering adjustment of family size as a strategy to mitigate livelihood tragedy, about 27% of the rural women respondents began to limit the number of children they could bear in their reproductive age span of 15-49. Landless young people, especially females, used to move away from home to look for employment opportunities. However, migration could not bring significant change on the livelihood condition of thepeople. The small amount of remittance that the households received from migrants was an indicator of the situation that it could not make difference in the livelihood situation. Some of the rural households used to send grains to support some of the out-migrants. Despite the observed little improvements in rural livelihood situation, as a survival strategy and means of improving livelihood, the rural communities in general and female-headed households in particular engaged in various non-farm and off-farm activities, migrated to the closest towns and city and made demographic adjustment by limiting the number of new born children. The new strategies (non-farm activities and demographic adjustment) can bear fruits and improve rural livelihood situations provided the local and regional governments in collaboration with local communities and other stake holders manage to improve rural households’ access to land, physical and social infrastructure as well as provision of microfinance institutions.Key words: demographic adjustment, income diversification, livelihoodstrategies, Olonkom

Systematic properties of the Tsallis Distribution: Energy Dependence of Parameters in High-Energy p-p Collisions

Changes in the transverse momentum distributions with beam energy are studied using the Tsallis distribution as a parameterization. The dependence of the Tsallis parameters q, T and the volume are determined as a function of beam energy. The Tsallis parameter q shows a weak but clear increase with beam energy with the highest value being approximately 1.15. The Tsallis temperature and volume are consistent with being independent of beam energy within experimental uncertainties.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Five Years Experience of Ureterovaginal Fistulae Following Obstetric or Gynecological Intervention in Ethiopia

Objectives: To study the etiology, presentation and outcome of women presenting to the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital with an ureterovaginal fistula.Patients and Methods: Women presenting with ureterovaginal fistulae following obstetric or gynecological intervention. The operating register from June 2004 to July 2009 was studied to identify women who had undergone ureteric re-implantation. Patient files were reviewed and onlywomen with fistulae resulting from iatrogenic injury were included.Results: Ureterovaginal fistulae were found in 89 women, 64 after Caesarean section, of which 43 were for a stillborn baby, 12 women have uterine rupture, 6 with instrumental delivery and only 7 with abdominal hysterectomy. The left ureter was most frequently injured (54). The number of patients seen has doubled over the past two years. Using one of four methods of repair, 88 women were continent at discharge from hospital. One died from a suspected pulmonary embolism.Conclusion: The incidence of iatrogenic ureteric injury is increasing in Ethiopia and most result from Caesarean section. The reasons should be studied. Using a variety of repair techniques, all patients can be cured. However, surgeons undertaking this surgery should have a wide range of urological training.Key Words : Ureter, vagina, fistula, latrogenic, caesarean section, hysterectomy, complicatio

Soil Transmitted Helminths and Associated Factors among Schoolchildren in Government and Private Primary School in Jimma Town, Southwest Ethiopia

Background: Soil transmitted helminth infections are among the most common human infections. They are distributed throughout the world with high prevalence rates in tropical and sub-tropical countries mainly because of lack of adequate sanitary facilities, inappropriate waste disposal systems, lack of safe water supply, and low socio- economic status.Methods: A comparative cross sectional study was conducted from December 2011 to June 2012 to determine and assess the prevalence of soil transmitted helminths and their associated factors among government and private primary school children. Stool samples were collected from 369 randomly selected children and examined microscopically for eggs of soil transmitted helminth following McMaster techniques. Soil samples were collected from different parts of the school compound and microscopic examination was performed for eggs of the helminths using sodium nitrate flotation technique.Results: The overall prevalence rate of soil transmitted helminth infections in private and government schools was 20.9% and 53.5% respectively. T. trichiura was the most common soil transmitted helminth in both schools while hookworm infections were identified in government school students only. Type of school and sex were significantly associated with soil transmitted helminth. Soil contamination rate of the school compounds was 11.25% with predominant parasites of A. lumbricoides.Conclusion: Higher prevalence of soil transmitted helminth infection was found among government school students. Thus, more focus, on personal hygiene and sanitary facilities, should be given to children going to government schools.Keywords: Soil transmitted helminths, school children, government and private school

The Hagedorn temperature Revisited

The Hagedorn temperature, T_H is determined from the number of hadronic resonances including all mesons and baryons. This leads to a stable result T_H = 174 MeV consistent with the critical and the chemical freeze-out temperatures at zero chemical potential. We use this result to calculate the speed of sound and other thermodynamic quantities in the resonance hadron gas model for a wide range of baryon chemical potentials following the chemical freeze-out curve. We compare some of our results to those obtained previously in other papers.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure

Predicting Users’ Responses of Public Utility Services - Multivariate and Neural Network Analysis - A Case Study

This research addresses the problem of predicting the user’s responses through multivariate choice (MVC) and neural network (NN) frameworks for predicting quality, quantity and overall User satisfaction of public water supply organization, BWSSB (Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board) in Bangalore - India for policy initiatives. The MVC study identifies statistically significant factors that explain users’ loyalty to express satisfaction and voice to express dissatisfaction. The MVC model correctly predicts 85% of satisfied customers across satisfaction dimensions.  Wald test on 1940 responses confirms that there exits cross equation correlation across quality, quantity and overall Users’ satisfaction dimensions and thus appropriateness of MVC framework over traditional logit for predicting the user responses. NN framework outperforms the econometric model with 94% correct classification of user responses. The study opens up potential research opportunities for applying the advanced analytical frameworks for predicting user responses in various public and private settings for Policy initiatives so that the service providers could improve their service delivery

Comparative Analysis of V-Akt Murine Thymoma Viral Oncogene Homolog 3 (AKT3) Gene between Cow and Buffalo Reveals Substantial Differences for Mastitis

AKT3 gene is a constituent of the serine/threonine protein kinase family and plays a crucial role in synthesis of milk fats and cholesterol by regulating activity of the sterol regulatory element binding protein (SREBP). AKT3 is highly conserved in mammals and its expression levels during the lactation periods of cattle are markedly increased. AKT3 is highly expressed in the intestine followed by mammary gland and it is also expressed in immune cells. It is involved in the TLR pathways as effectively as proinflammatory cytokines. The aims of this study were to investigate the sequences differences between buffalo and cow. Our results showed that there were substantial differences between buffalo and cow in some exons and noteworthy differences of the gene size in different regions. We also identified the important consensus sequence motifs, variation in 2000 upstream of ATG, substantial difference in the “3′UTR” region, and miRNA association in the buffalo sequences compared with the cow. In addition, genetic analyses, such as gene structure, phylogenetic tree, position of different motifs, and functional domains, were performed to establish their correlation with other species. This may indicate that a buffalo breed has potential resistance to disease, environment changes, and airborne microorganisms and some good production and reproductive traits

A comparison of existing risk prediction models in patients undergoing venoarterial extracorporeal membrane oxygenation

© 2020 The Author(s) Background: Patients undergoing consideration for venoarterial extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (VA-ECMO) require an immediate risk profile assessment in the setting of incomplete information. A number of survival prediction models for critically ill patients and patients undergoing elective cardiac surgery or institution of VA-ECMO support have been designed. We assess the ability of these models to predict outcomes in a cohort of patients undergoing institution of VA-ECMO for cardiogenic shock or cardiac arrest. Methods: Fifty-one patients undergoing institution of VA-ECMO support were retrospectively analyzed. APACHE II, SOFA, SAPS II, Encourage, SAVE, and ACEF scores were calculated. Their ability to predict outcomes were assessed. Results: Indications for ECMO support included postcardiotomy shock (25%), ischemic etiologies (39%), and other etiologies (36%). Pre-ECMO arrest occurred in 73% and 41% of patients underwent cannulation during arrest. Survival to discharge was 39%. Three survival prediction model scores were significantly higher in nonsurvivors to discharge than surivors; the Encourage score (25.4 vs 20; p =.04), the APACHE II score (23.6 vs 19.2; p =.05), and the ACEF score (3.1 vs 1.8; p =.03). In ROC analysis, the ACEF score demonstrated the greatest predictive ability with an AUC of 0.7. Conclusions: A variety of survival prediction model scores designed for critically ill ICU and VA-ECMO patients demonstrated modest discriminatory ability in the current cohort of patients. The ACEF score, while not designed to predict survival in critically ill patients, demonstrated the best discriminatory ability. Furthermore, it is the simplest to calculate, an advantage in the emergent setting

The Tsallis Distribution in Proton-Proton Collisions at s\sqrt{s} = 0.9 TeV at the LHC

The Tsallis distribution has been used recently to fit the transverse momentum distributions of identified particles by the STAR and PHENIX collaborations at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and by the ALICE and CMS collaborations at the Large Hadron Collider. Theoretical issues are clarified concerning the thermodynamic consistency of the Tsallis distribution in the particular case of relativistic high energy quantum distributions. An improved form is proposed for describing the transverse momentum distribution and fits are presented together with estimates of the parameter $q$ and the temperature $T$.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1106.340