Knowledge and Perceptions of Maternal Health in Kaduna State, Northern Nigeria

This cross-sectional descriptive study explored knowledge and perceptions of maternal health and awareness of health services among women and men of reproductive age in rural communities in Zaria, Kaduna state Nigeria. Among the sample of 647 respondents, 72.6% of men and only 35.9% of women had received formal education. Knowledge of maternal health was very low. In a three point scale (poor, fair, good), only 3.1% of men and 1.2% of women had good knowledge of maternal health. The association between the respondents‟ educational level and their maternal health knowledge was statistically significant. Socio-economic barriers were identified as limiting this population‟s optimal utilization of maternal health services. Furthermore, some respondents‟ perceived available health care services to be of low quality. In order to improve reproductive health in rural northern Nigeria, it is imperative to improve access to formal education, increase knowledge about maternal health care, and improve the quality of care offered in health care facilities (Afr. J. Reprod. Health 2010; 14[3]: 71-76).Key words: Maternal health, reproductive health, knowledge, perception, health care utilization, rural, northern Nigeria

Case Report on Septate Uterus: An Incidental Finding in a Multiparous Woman who Had an Emergency Cesarean Section

Background: Septate uterus is caused by incomplete resorption of the Mullerian duct during embryogenesis which may alter the reproductive outcome of the patients. It is the commonest form of structural uterine anomaly and has the highest reproductive failure rate. Case Report: A 21-year-old booked G4P2 +1 woman with two living male children admitted into the Antenatal ward through the Accident and Emergency ward at 33 weeks gestation for conservative management of preterm premature rupture of membrane. She had a previous history of miscarriage, preterm delivery, and elective caesarean section due to breech presentation in her first, second, and third pregnancies in 2007, 2008, and 2009, respectively. She, however, had an emergency caesarean section due to fetal distress at 33 weeks plus 4 days with the delivery of a live female baby that weighed 2.0 kg with APGAR scores of 7 and 8 in the 1st and 5th minutes, respectively. There was intraoperative finding of septate uterus with dimple at the fundus. The other abdominal viscera were normal. Conclusion: congenital uterine anomalies especially septate uterus, though rare, should be suspected in women with positive history of miscarriage, preterm delivery and malpresentation.Keywords: Asia, fetal distress, multiparous, preterm, septate, uteru

Gynaecological bacterial infections: the physical and psychosocial consequences and challenges of management in resource-limited settings

Gynecological bacterial infections (GBIs) are prevalent in our environment and as a result pose a number of physical, social and psychological consequences. These infections are acquired through several ways. Treating GBIs is a daunting task making its control the most important strategy to alleviating its physical and psychosocial consequences. To highlight the physical, social, and psychological consequences of gynaecological bacterial infections in our resource limited setting. To highlight the hugely unresolved challenges associated with the management of gynecological bacterial infections in our resource-limited setting. Several databases (Medline, Google Scholar, Pubmed, WHO’s Hinari and Wikipedia) and some selected websites were searched using the following keywords: gynecological infections, vaginal infections and discharges, vaginal flora, sexually transmitted infections, pelvic inflammatory disease, syndromic management and challenges, psychosocial consequences, alternative medicine. A total of 5470 relevant articles were obtained between 1947 and 2018. Out of these only 256 relevant articles on the topic were reviewed. However, 213 were dropped for having an incomplete submission. Forty-three (43) articles were fully accessed and referenced. The high prevalence of GBIs poses a lot of burden on the reproductive and socio-economic lives of our women. This should be matched by behavioral changes, prompt diagnosis and early treatment; facilitated by accessible and affordable health care through improved government funding

Falls among pregnant women in Enugu, Southeast Nigeria

Background: Falls during pregnancy are major public health issues and a common cause of maternal injury during pregnancy. There is paucity of data on prevalence and risk factors of falls during pregnancy in African population including Nigeria.Objective: To determine the prevalence and risk factors associated with falls during pregnancy in Enugu, Nigeria.Materials and Methods: This was a cross.sectional study of 332 consecutive pregnant women presenting in labor for delivery at the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital Enugu, Nigeria between 1st May and 31st December, 2012.Results: The mean age of the women was 32.2 } 2.7 (range: 20.42) years. One hundred and eight women (32.5%) reported falling at least once during the index pregnancy. Women aged . 30 years had twofold risk of falling during pregnancy than women aged > 30 years [41.1% (69/168) vs. 23.8% (39/164); odds ratio (OR): 2.23; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.39.3.58; P < 0.001)]. Similarly, women . 160 cm in height had significantly higher risk of falling during pregnancy than women < 160 cm in height [43.5% (70/161) vs. 22.2% (38/171); OR: 0.37; 95% CI: 0.23.0.60; P < 0.0001)]. Furthermore, primigravidae had almost threefold risk of falling during pregnancy than multigravidae [45.3% (63/139) vs. 23.3% (45/193); OR: 2.73; 95% CI: 1.70.4.37; P < 0.0001)].Conclusion: Falls during pregnancy is common in Enugu, Nigeria. It is, therefore, recommended that women should be counseled during pregnancy on this public health problem and the above.identified risk factors emphasized in order to reduce the prevalence and morbidity.Key words: Enugu, falls, Nigeria, pregnant women, prevalence, risk factor

Use of fetal biometry in the assessment of gestational age in South East Nigeria: Femur length and biparietal diameter

Background: Fetal growth is influenced by many factors such as race, socioeconomic status, genetics, geographical location, maternal diseases, and number of babies. Consequent upon these, fetal growth charts may vary from one location to another even within the same geographical entity.Objective: This study was designed to establish the fetal growth chart in antenatal women who had ultrasound scanning at the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, Enugu, South East Nigeria.Patients and Methods: This is a descriptive analysis of fetal biometric measurement of antenatal women. Four hundred and seventy pregnant women were studied.Results: The nomogram for the femur length (FL) and biparietal diameter (BPD) for the different weeks of gestation (from 13th to the 40th week) were established. Correlation coefficients between gestational age and the various fetal parameters were also reported. Growth charts using both FL and BPD were plotted. A regression model for prediction of fetal age using the fetal biometry was also deduced for the studied population.Conclusion: The fetal parameters used in this study were consistently smaller than reported values from European studies up to the 34th week of gestation after which a catch‑up growth till the 40 weeks was observed. Fetal parameters observed in this study were larger than most of the reported Asian values.Keywords: Fetal biometry, gestational age, intrauterine growth curve, South East Nigeria, ultrasoun

Zika virus and birth defects: an obstetric issue

Zika virus is an emerging mosquito-borne virus that is relatively unknown, unstudied and under-diagnosed, but has potentials to spread to new geographical areas that favour survival of Aedes mosquitoes. It is associated with an alarming rise in babies with microcephaly that require much care and support with a lot of financial assistance. This is a review article on Zika virus and birth defects; a worrisome issue in today’s obstetric and medical practices. Since Zika’s discovery in Uganda, the virus was known to occur within a narrow equatorial belt from Africa to Asia with no or mild symptoms. It has emerged as a global public health threat over the last decade with accelerated geographic spread of the virus in the last nine years. The risk of Zika virus to the fetus is poorly understood, difficult to quantify and problematic. The causal link between Zika virus and microcephaly was initially speculative, strongly suspected and scientifically unproven. However, on 13th April, 2016, it was concluded that Zika virus is the cause of microcephaly and other severe fetal brain defects. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) authors reviewed and weighed evidences using established scientific criteria to conclude after a careful review of the report published in the New England Journal of Medicine. There is no prophylaxis, treatment or vaccine to protect against Zika virus infection. However, preventive personal measures are highly recommended to avoid mosquito bites

Community-level Distribution of Misoprostol to Prevent Postpartum Hemorrhage at Home Births in Northern Nigeria

In Nigeria, most deaths due to postpartum hemorrhage (PPH) occur in the absence of skilled birth attendants. A study using community mobilization and the training of community drug keepers to increase access to  misoprostol for PPH prevention was conducted in five communities around Zaria in Kaduna State, Nigeria. Community-oriented resource persons (CORPs) and traditional birth attendants (TBAs) recruited and counseled pregnant women on bleeding after delivery, the importance of delivery at a health facility, and the role of misoprostol. Drug keepers stored and dispensed misoprostol during a woman’s third trimester of pregnancy. TBAs and CORPs enrolled 1,875 women from January through December 2009. These results are based on 1,577 completed postpartum interviews. Almost all women delivered at home (95%) and skilled attendance at delivery was low (7%). The availability of misoprostol protected 83% of women who delivered at home against PPH who otherwise would not have been protected. Policymakers working in similar contexts should consider utilizing commuity-level distribution models to reach women with this life-saving intervention. Afr J Reprod Health 2014; 18[2]: 166-175).Keywords: misoprostol, community-level distribution, Nigeria, maternal mortality Au Nigeria, la plupart des décès dus à une hémorragie du post-partum (HPP) se produisent en l'absence d'accoucheuses qualifiées. Une étude à travers la mobilisation communautaire et la formation des gardiens de drogues dans la communauté pour améliorer l'accès à misoprostol pour la prévention de l'HPP a été menée dans cinq communautés à l’alentour de Zaria dans l'État de Kaduna, au Nigeria. Les experts orientés vers les communautés (EOVC) et les accoucheuses traditionnelles (AT) ont été recrutés et ont conseillés aux femmes enceintes sur les saignements après l'accouchement, l'importance de l’accouchement dans un établissement de santé, et le rôle de misoprostol. Les gardiens de médicaments ont stocké et distribué misoprostol au cours du troisième trimestre de la grossesse de la femme. Les et les accoucheuses traditionnelles et les EOVC ont inscrit 1875 femmes de janvier à décembre 2009. Ces résultats sont basés sur 1 577 entrevues post-partum déjà terminées. Presque toutes les femmes ont accouché à domicile (95%) et l'assistance à l’accouchement par le personnel qualifié était faible (7%). La disponibilité de misoprostol a protégé 83% des femmes qui ont accouché à domicile contre l’HPP qui, autrement, n'auraient pas été protégées. Les décideurs qui travaillent dans des contextes similaires devraient envisager d'utiliser des modèles de distribution au niveau de la communauté pour atteindre les femmes à travers cette intervention de sauvetage. Afr J Reprod Health 2014; 18[2]: 166-175).Mots clés: misoprostol, distribution au niveau de la communauté, Nigeria, mortalité maternelle

Sequence-based typing of genetic targets encoded outside of the O-antigen gene cluster is indicative of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli serogroup lineages

Serogroup classifications based upon the O-somatic antigen of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) provide significant epidemiological information on clinical isolates. Each O-antigen determinant is encoded by a unique cluster of genes present between the gnd and galF chromosomal genes. Alternatively, serogroup-specific polymorphisms might be encoded in loci that are encoded outside of the O-antigen gene cluster. Segments of the core bacterial loci mdh, gnd, gcl, ppk, metA, ftsZ, relA and metG for 30 O26 STEC strains have previously been sequenced, and comparative analyses to O157 distinguished these two serogroups. To screen these loci for serogroup-specific traits within a broader range of clinically significant serogroups, DNA sequences were obtained for 19 strains of 10 additional STEC serogroups. Unique alleles were observed at the gnd locus for each examined STEC serogroup, and this correlation persisted when comparative analyses were extended to 144 gnd sequences from 26 O-serogroups (comprising 42 O : H-serotypes). These included O157, O121, O103, O26, O5 : non-motile (NM), O145 : NM, O113 : H21, O111 : NM and O117 : H7 STEC; and furthermore, non-toxin encoding O157, O26, O55, O6 and O117 strains encoded distinct gnd alleles compared to STEC strains of the same serogroup. DNA sequencing of a 643 bp region of gnd was, therefore, sufficient to minimally determine the O-antigen of STEC through molecular means, and the location of gnd next to the O-antigen gene cluster offered additional support for the co-inheritance of these determinants. The gnd DNA sequence-based serogrouping method could improve the typing capabilities for STEC in clinical laboratories, and was used successfully to characterize O121 : H19, O26 : H11 and O177 : NM clinical isolates prior to serological confirmation during outbreak investigations

An effective iterated greedy algorithm for the mixed no-idle flowshop scheduling problem

In the no-idle flowshop, machines cannot be idle after finishing one job and before starting the next one. Therefore, start times of jobs must be delayed to guarantee this constraint. In practice machines show this behavior as it might be technically unfeasible or uneconomical to stop a machine in between jobs. This has important ramifications in the modern industry including fiber glass processing, foundries, production of integrated circuits and the steel making industry, among others. However, to assume that all machines in the shop have this no-idle constraint is not realistic. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to study the mixed no-idle extension where only some machines have the no-idle constraint. We present a mixed integer programming model for this new problem and the equations to calculate the makespan. We also propose a set of formulas to accelerate the calculation of insertions that is used both in heuristics as well as in the local search procedures. An effective iterated greedy (IG) algorithm is proposed. We use an NEH-based heuristic to construct a high quality initial solution. A local search using the proposed accelerations is employed to emphasize intensification and exploration in the IG. A new destruction and construction procedure is also shown. To evaluate the proposed algorithm, we present several adaptations of other well-known and recent metaheuristics for the problem and conduct a comprehensive set of computational and statistical experiments with a total of 1750 instances. The results show that the proposed IG algorithm outperforms existing methods in the no-idle and in the mixed no-idle scenarios by a significant margin.Quan-Ke Pan is partially supported by the National Science Foundation of China 61174187, Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-13-0106), Science Foundation of Liaoning Province in China (2013020016), Basic scientific research foundation of Northeast University under Grant N110208001, Starting foundation of Northeast University under Grant 29321006, and Shandong Province Key Laboratory of Intelligent Information Processing and Network Security (Liaocheng University). Ruben Ruiz is partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, under the project "RESULT - Realistic Extended Scheduling Using Light Techniques" with reference DPI2012-36243-C02-01 co-financed by the European Union and FEDER funds and by the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, for the project MRPIV with reference PAID/2012/202.Pan, Q.; Ruiz García, R. (2014). An effective iterated greedy algorithm for the mixed no-idle flowshop scheduling problem. Omega. 44:41-50. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.omega.2013.10.002S41504

Flow shop rescheduling under different types of disruption

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in International Journal of Production Research on 2013, available online:http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/00207543.2012.666856Almost all manufacturing facilities need to use production planning and scheduling systems to increase productivity and to reduce production costs. Real-life production operations are subject to a large number of unexpected disruptions that may invalidate the original schedules. In these cases, rescheduling is essential to minimise the impact on the performance of the system. In this work we consider flow shop layouts that have seldom been studied in the rescheduling literature. We generate and employ three types of disruption that interrupt the original schedules simultaneously. 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