Poverty and Health Issues in the Northern Part of Ghana

This paper examines the impact of poverty on health-related issues in the northern part of Ghana for the period between 1980 and 2017. A secondary data from Ghana Statistical Service Department and the World Bank database was use for the study and a Stata was used in estimating the impact.Results from the study show that, poverty has a great influence on health in the Northern part of Ghana.  The study also revealed that, health facilities available in the regions are not fully equipped to solve infant and maternal issues in the regions. Trained public health workers and health services providers are inadequate in the regions hence health education is lacking among pregnant and lactating mothers in the areas of nutrition and malaria prevention.The study, therefore, recommends that government should improve the standard of living among people in the northern regions by providing job opportunities for citizens. There should also be an enhancing health services in the regions, assisting peasants’ farmers with modern methods of crop production, and providing equal opportunities for men and women in the regions. Keywords: poverty; health; child mortality; climate DOI: 10.7176/RHSS/9-8-03 Publication date: April 30th 201

Why has the birth rate relatively increased in China's wealthy cities?

China’s wealthy cities tended to have low birth rates in past decades, but this relationship has disappeared in conjunction with the substantial relaxation of the one-child policy after 2011. This study develops a conceptual framework for the relationship between average household wealth and compliance with the one-child policy across cities and concludes that the compliance rate was greater in wealthier cities when above-quota births were fined according to household wealth and with limited liability. The relaxation of this policy has eliminated this inequality, leading to an increase in wealthy cities’ birth rates relative to those of other cities. A causal analysis exploiting variations in city-level birth rates and fertility policy compliance rates from 2008 to 2019 supports our hypotheses. Moreover, our results suggest that the fertility relaxation has resulted in a greater proportion of newborns in wealthy cities, which is expected to increase the next generation’s human capital

Flocculation performance of anionic starch in oil sand tailings

Abstract A series of carboxymethyl starches (CMSs), with various degrees of substitution from 0.1 to 0.79, were synthesized and selected as a model to study the feasibility of using natural polymers as flocculants for oil sand tailings treatment. The flocculation performance of modified CMS in kaolin clay suspensions and oil sand tailings was evaluated in terms of settling rate, solids content, capillary suction time, and specific resistance to filtration of the sediment phase. It was found that the synthesized CMS effectively accelerates settling of kaolin suspensions and oil sand fine tailings, thus demonstrating the feasibility of this application

Efficacy of combined nebulized aerosol inhalation and pulmicort respules in the treatment of emergency pediatric laryngitis, and its effect on adverse reactions

Purpose: To determine the efficacy of combined use of nebulized epinephrine inhalation and pulmicortrespules in the treatment of emergency pediatric laryngitis and, its impact on the incidence of adverse reactions.Methods: A total of 100 cases of pediatric laryngitis admitted in The People’s Hospital of Zhangqiu District between December 2018 and December 2020 were randomly assigned (1:1) to receive either pulmicort respules (control group) or pulmicort respules plus nebulized epinephrine inhalation treatment (study group).  Outcome measures included level of effectiveness and adverse reactions.Results: Pulmicort respules plus nebulized epinephrine inhalation treatment was associated with shorter remission time for dyspnea, wheeze, croup, and hoarseness versus pulmicort respules. The combination treatment produced higher total effectiveness of 96 % than pulmicort respules with total effectiveness of 82 % (p < 0.05). After treatment, both groups had decreased serum levels of interleukin-8 (IL-8), IL-6, C-reactive protein (CRP), and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α, with markedly lower levels in the group given nebulized epinephrine inhalation in combination with pulmicort respules (p < 0.05). Compared with patients given pulmicort respules only, those given combination treatments had a significantly shorter hospitalization time and a lower incidence of adverse reactions (4 vs 8 %; p < 0.05).Conclusion: Nebulized epinephrine inhalation in combination with pulmicort respules has high safety in the treatment of emergency pediatric laryngitis, and it significantly reduces clinical symptoms, inflammatory response, and hospital stay. However, further clinical trials are required prior to its use in clinical practice

Flexibility and coordination in a supply chain with bidirectional option contracts and service requirement

<p>Symbols: MD simulation results at <i>T</i>_<i>w</i> = 160<i>K</i> (triangles), <i>T</i>_<i>w</i> = 90<i>K</i> (circles) [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0165175#pone.0165175.ref015" target="_blank">15</a>]. Solid line: New temperature jump model from <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0165175#pone.0165175.e009" target="_blank">Eq 8</a> with <i>C</i>₁ = 2.348 × 10⁻⁹ and <i>C</i>₂ = 0.036 for <i>T</i>_<i>w</i> = 160<i>K</i>, <i>C</i>₁ = 2.121 × 10⁻⁹ and <i>C</i>₂ = 0.081 for <i>T</i>_<i>w</i> = 90<i>K</i>. Dashed line: Existing temperature jump model from <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0165175#pone.0165175.e016" target="_blank">Eq 11</a> with <i>C</i> = 1.623 × 10⁻⁹ for <i>T</i>_<i>w</i> = 160<i>K</i>, <i>C</i> = 1.207 × 10⁻⁹ for <i>T</i>_<i>w</i> = 90<i>K</i>.</p

Evaluate Public-Private-Partnership’s advancement using double hierarchy hesitant fuzzy linguistic PROMETHEE with subjective and objective information from stakeholder perspective

Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) as an efficient mode to provide public services through the government and social capital’s cooperation has been in China for more than 30 years. In this paper, we propose an approach to evaluate PPP’s advancement in different areas based on the subjective and objective information fusion. At first, we establish an index system from the perspective of the stakeholder. Then, considering that double hierarchy hesitant fuzzy linguistic term set (DHHFLTS) that has two hierarchies of linguistic term sets can describe the subjective linguistic information more accurately, it is applied in the paper to depict the subjective information. By applying the entropy of the DHHFLTS, a programming model is proposed to derive the attribute weight through combining subjective evaluation with objective data. In addition, we develop the double hierarchy hesitant fuzzy linguistic PROMETHEE combining the subjective and objective information (DHHFL-PROMETHEE-S&O) method. At last, we illustrate the index system and the method with the PPP’s advancement evaluation problem, and we can find the best choice based on the ranking result. Meanwhile, we also find that the objective information and the subjective information are complementary in the evaluation process. First published online 20 March 201

Diagnostic models of the pre-test probability of stable coronary artery disease: A systematic review

A comprehensive search of PubMed and Embase was performed in January 2015 to examine the available literature on validated diagnostic models of the pre-test probability of stable coronary artery disease and to describe the characteristics of the models. Studies that were designed to develop and validate diagnostic models of pre-test probability for stable coronary artery disease were included. Data regarding baseline patient characteristics, procedural characteristics, modeling methods, metrics of model performance, risk of bias, and clinical usefulness were extracted. Ten studies involving the development of 12 models and two studies focusing on external validation were identified. Seven models were validated internally, and seven models were validated externally. Discrimination varied between studies that were validated internally (C statistic 0.66-0.81) and externally (0.49-0.87). Only one study presented reclassification indices. The majority of better performing models included sex, age, symptoms, diabetes, smoking, and hyperlipidemia as variables. Only two diagnostic models evaluated the effects on clinical decision making processes or patient outcomes. Most diagnostic models of the pre-test probability of stable coronary artery disease have had modest success, and very few present data regarding the effects of these models on clinical decision making processes or patient outcomes