The Effect of Religious Conflicts in Northern Nigeria on Public Health Outcomes: A Case Study of Cholera Outbreak

Violent conflicts, in most cases, pose an unquantifiable challenge to human health and health systems especially in developing countries. Complex humanitarian emergencies as a result of conflicts could severely have negative consequences on public health. Nigeria has faced series of threatening security challenges, but the one caused by the activities of the socalled Islamist sect, the Boko Haram (BH), remains protracted, especially in Borno, a State in the north-eastern part of the country. The resultant outcome is the internally displaced persons (IDPs) who have suffered from many diseases especially cholera, which has continued to ravage these displaced populations. Conflict can contribute to water shortage through the destruction of water sources, such as wells, reservoirs and laid pipes, and its contamination. This is happening on an already weak health system. Though cholera is easily treatable, concerted efforts by government and medical humanitarian agencies are urgently required to ameliorate the situation of the IDPs. An appropriate strategy of control of the transmission of cholera and emergency medical intervention can help alleviate the devastating effects. The management of cholera transmission include the supply of sufficient water sources, adequate sanitation, and a public health campaign to maximize the effects of these measures. One key health system challenge that could limit the effectiveness of the interventions would be the people. This paper focuses on studying the resultant large numbers of IDPs from the BH conflict, discussing cholera outbreak as a specific health issue, and presenting a focused humanitarian intervention to address this health need

Terms interrelationship query expansion to improve accuracy of Quran search

Quran retrieval system is becoming an instrument for users to search for needed information. The search engine is one of the most popular search engines that successfully implemented for searching relevant verses queries. However, a major challenge to the Quran search engine is word ambiguities, specifically lexical ambiguities. With the advent of query expansion techniques for Quran retrieval systems, the performance of the Quran retrieval system has problem and issue in terms of retrieving users needed information. The results of the current semantic techniques still lack precision values without considering several semantic dictionaries. Therefore, this study proposes a stemmed terms interrelationship query expansion approach to improve Quran search results. More specifically, related terms were collected from different semantic dictionaries and then utilize to get roots of words using a stemming algorithm. To assess the performance of the stemmed terms interrelationship query expansion, experiments were conducted using eight Quran datasets from the Tanzil website. Overall, the results indicate that the stemmed terms interrelationship query expansion is superior to unstemmed terms interrelationship query expansion in Mean Average Precision with Yusuf Ali 68%, Sarawar 67%, Arberry 72%, Malay 65%, Hausa 62%, Urdu 62%, Modern Arabic 60% and Classical Arabic 59%

Emotional distress among caregivers of patients with epilepsy in Katsina State, Northern Nigeria

Objective: Caregivers of patients with epilepsy experience considerable emotional distress. The study aimed to assess the magnitude of the problem in a developing country. Method: A total 166 patients-caregivers were enrolled for the study. Theywere interviewed using a socio-demographic data collecting sheet and the Hospital Anxiety-Depression Scale (HADS). Data obtained were analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences Windows version 13. All statistical tests were carried out at a 5% level of probability. Results: The mean age of the caregivers was 45.44±6.67 years. Emotional distress was found among 109(65.7%) of the caregivers. This is was significantly associated with male gender of both care giver and patient as well as residing in a rural area.Conclusion: The study demonstrated a high level of emotional distress associated with caring for patients with epilepsy, which is comparable to other studies carried out in other parts of the world.Key words: Epilepsy; Caregivers; Emotions; Nigeri

PRONUNCIATION PROBLEMS AMONG JUKUN (WAPAN) ENGLISH SPEAKERS

ABSTRACT People learning a new language like English cannot use it effectively as a medium of communication; spoken or written unless they know and correctly use its components one of which is pronunciation. Poor communication distorts meaning. This paper therefore is primarily an investigation on pronunciation problems among Jukun (Wapan) speakers of English. It provides information on why these problems possibly occur and the specific English phonemes that Wapan speakers of English find difficult to pronounce or articulate. Only segmental phonology is considered and the model for the study is Received Pronunciation (RP). The study revealed that, pronunciation problems among the people are due to some extent at least, to mother-tongue influence. In spite of this, however, we cannot generalize because even among the people, ranging from the very highly educated to those with limited education we find a very great range of usage

Asymmetric co-integration analysis of exchange rates and crude oil prices: evidence from India

Using monthly data from January, 1980 to July 2013, the aim of the article is to find out whether there is cointegrating relationship between exchange rates and crude oil prices in India. The result indicates that there exists cointegration between the variables and speed of adjustment shows symmetric based on TAR model, while MTAR model exhibit asymmetric adjustment. The findings indicated that exchange rates have significant influence on crude oil prices in India and the adjustment to equilibrium when variables deviated is non-linear. The implication is that Indian policy makers should focus more on their exchange rates dynamics in line with the persistent rises of crude oil prices that affects other macroeconomic variables specifically exchange rates that have significant influence on international trade considering the relevance of India in the international export market

Smart Health Internet of Thing for Continuous Glucose Monitoring: a Survey

Health monitoring system allows patients to monitor the health-related problem to avoid further complications which could result in loss of life. Smart health is one of the categories of a health monitoring system that uses Smartphone’s and sensors to effectively monitor patient health status. However, the smart health internet of thing methods for glucose monitoring still does not provide accurate glucose reading. Hence, diabetes patient can easily loss life. To help understand this challenge, a comprehensive survey focused on smart health internet of thing methods for continuous glucose monitoring was conducted. The paper discusses the benefit and challenge of each method applicable to glucose monitoring. It was observed that several smart health methods required sensor to function. Smart vehicles and remote monitoring have less attention. However, when accommodates can provide future opportunities

Health facility-based survey of poliovirus antibody prevalence amongst children in Kebbi state, North west, Nigeria.

Background: High level of Poliovirus protective antibodies, must at all times be sustained in a community if poliomyelitis eradication is to be achieved. For some time now children have been vaccinated against poliomyelitis through various means in Northern Nigeria without authorities taking steps to evaluate the effectiveness of such activities. Aim: This research was focused on assessing the overall success of the Immunization programme using children whose mothers have access to immunization facilities. Materials and methods: A cross sectional survey was designed to enroll children whose mothers had access to Health Facilities across the state. Eighty blood samples of under - five years old children in Kebbi state were collected and tested for the presence of poliovirus antibodies. Indirect ELISA was used to detect for the presence of the antibodies. Results: Out of these samples collected, 65 (81.3%) have antibodies to all the serotypes. While 75 (93.8%), 71 (88.8%) and 74 (92.5%) have antibodies to poliovirus serotypes 1, 2 and 3 respectively. Older children 48 – 59 month had the highest poliovirus antibody prevalence 21 (95.5%). Female children had higher prevalence than males. Children who have not received any vaccination against Poliovirus had lowest antibody prevalence 9 (64.3%). Children who had more than four doses of the vaccine had the highest prevalence of Poliovirus antibodies. Urban children had higher Poliovirus antibody prevalence than their rural counterparts. Children whose fathers educational were up to tertiary level had higher antibody prevalence than those with either primary or secondary school level. Conclusion: This study found out that age of the children and educational level of the children fathers had a significant effect on the prevalence of antibodies at P = 0.05. More work needs to be done in order to sustain the apparent success achieved in stopping the poliovirus circulation and outbreaks within the populace in Kebbi state Nigeria.Keywords: Antibodies, Children, Kebbi State and Prevalence

The burden experienced by family caregivers of patients with epilepsy attending the government psychiatric hospital, Kaduna, Nigeria

BACKGROUND: Caring for patients with chronic medical and psychiatric disorders is associated with significant burden. However little is known about the burden experience by caregivers of patients with epilepsy in Nigeria. The objective of this study, therefore, was to assess the level and correlates of burden among caregivers of patients with epilepsy. METHODS: It was a cross-sectional study carried out among 231 eligible caregivers of patients with epilepsy attending the psychiatric clinic of government psychiatric hospital in Kaduna, Northern Nigeria. Socio demographic/clinical characteristics of patients and sociodemographic characteristics of caregivers were recorded, and the Zarit Burden Interview administered to caregivers to assess their experience of burden. RESULTS: The mean age of the caregivers was 43.6 ±9.5 years, 52.4% lived outside Kaduna and the mean seizure-free period for the patients was 26.4 ±36.5 weeks. One hundred and twenty (51.9%) caregivers had high burden. High burden was significantly associated with patients aged less than20 years, patient’s unemployment, long duration of epilepsy, short seizure-free period, family history of epilepsy and living outside Kaduna (p valu

On the use of electrical resistivity method in mapping potential sources and extent of pollution of groundwater systems in Lapai Town, Niger State, Nigeria

Electrical resistivity method employing the Schlumberger array was used to occupy forty four (44) vertical electrical sounding points in Lapai town with the aim of determining the depth to aquifers, aquifer thicknesses and aquifer protective capacity. The G41 Geotron resistivity meter was used in obtaining the apparent resistivity data which was processed using Interpex 1XD resistivity interpretation software. The results revealed four lithologic sections which include top lateritic soil, sandy clay, fractured basement and fresh basement. Both confined and unconfined aquifers were identified within the area, with four classes of aquifer proactive capacities as high, moderate, weak and poor. While the aquifer at VES 20 was highly protected, twenty other aquifers were moderately protected, eight others had weak protection and fifteen aquifers were poorly protected. The aquifers were generally of good thicknesses and at varying reasonable depths, making them good reservoirs of water in appreciable quantity. The average aquifer thickness was estimated to be 48.36m while the average depth to aquifers was estimated to be 56.68m