ABSTRACT
Purpose - The recent pandemic caused by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has significantly impacted the operational performances of pharmaceutical supply chains (SCs), especially in emerging economies that are critically vulnerable due to their inadequate resources. Finding the possible barriers that continue to impede the sustainable performance of SCs in the post-COVID-19 era has become essential. This study aims to investigate and analyze the barriers to achieving sustainability in the pharmaceutical SC of an emerging economy in a bid to help decision-makers recognize the most influential barriers. Design/methodology/approach - To achieve the goals, two decision-making tools are integrated to analyze the most critical barriers: interpretive structural modeling (ISM) and the matrix of cross-impact multiplications applied to classification (MICMAC). In contrast to other multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approaches, ISM develops a hierarchical decision tool for decision-makers and cluster analysis of the barriers using the MICMAC method based on their driving and dependency powers. Findings - The findings reveal that the major barriers are in a four-level hierarchical relationship where "Insufficient SC strategic plans to ensure agility during crisis" acts as the most critical barrier, followed by "Poor information structure among SC contributors," and "Inadequate risk management policy under pandemic." Finally, the MICMAC analysis validates the findings from the ISM approach. Originality/value - This study provides meaningful insights into barriers to achieving sustainability in pharmaceutical SCs in the post-COVID-19 era. The study can help pharmaceutical SC practitioners to better understand what can go wrong in post-COVID-19, and develop actionable strategies to ensure sustainability and resilience in practitioners' SCs.
ABSTRACT
Since 2019, the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic has hit the whole world significantly and has been one of the worst nightmares for us. Single mother entrepreneurs have been one of the most affected groups due to COVID-19, and this group's gradual implementation of technology is called for. This article aims to determine the pandemic's implications for SMPs and whether they have taken any new strategies or changes for the survival of their business. Adopting a qualitative research approach, an open group discussion has been conducted at Padang Jawa, Klang. A total of seven SMPs have been interviewed. The COVID-19 Movement Control Order (MCO) impacts on single mother entrepreneurs and strategies have been divided into two sections: the entrepreneur's perspective on COVID-19 and their current view and approach to facing the pandemic. © School of Engineering, Taylor's University.
ABSTRACT
Bangladesh is an agrarian country with almost 80% of the population living in rural areas and depending on agriculture. With the increase in population and decrease in cultivable land, there is an increasing demand in nutritionally rich high value fruit crops. Although Bangladesh is self-sufficient in grains, there are still about 40 million people suffering from malnutrition i.e. deficient in vitamins and minerals (hidden hunger). The fruit production scenario of Bangladesh in 2016-2017 was 83.31 lakh tons production in an area of 7.20 lakh hectares (8.57% of total land), while demand was about 129.48 lakh tons (HW, DAE, BBS 2017) resulting in a deficit of 46.17 lakh tons. Bangladesh produces 64% of the total demand for fruits. The rest of the 36% fruits are imported using huge foreign currency. Nevertheless, the fruit production scenario is rapidly changing with fruit growers coming forward in this sector to improve production of the most common fruits such as mango, jackfruit, litchi, blackberry, pineapple, banana, palm fruit, coconut, guava, Burmese grape, and watermelon. After meeting local demands, Bangladesh is now exporting some of its most popular fruits, mostly to countries that have large numbers of Bangladeshi expatriates. Some fruits are in a better position for export, attributed to their quality and production. Bangladesh is the seventh largest mango producer, and third producer for guava in the world. Sustainable Agro technology, GAP and GPHP applied in fruits crops are now improving nutrition intake, household food security and household income. Moreover, fruit production also creates employment, reduces poverty, and protects the environment. About 20% women, especially in the rural areas are involved in fruit production. Incorporating modern fruit production technology in the 24 million homesteads enriches nutrition intake, provides all year and sustainable income. It has been reported that income from fruit production was five to six fold more than income from agronomical crops. Fruit crops also act as windbreak in rural villages/houses, and as shelter belt in coastal areas of Bangladesh. Evergreen horticultural plants sink abundance of CO2 and releases significant amounts of oxygen, consequently resulting in cleaner air and environment.
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The business resort owner is one of the groups hugely impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. This article aims to determine the pandemic's implications for business resort owners and whether they have taken any new strategies or changes for the survival of their business. A total of seven business resort owners in Pulau Pangkor have been interviewed via focus group discussion as a pilot study. The paper also aims to discover their current view and approach to facing the pandemic to ensure their survival in business.
ABSTRACT
The most recent crisis that has put businesses and people under threat is the emergence of Covid-19. The purpose of the study is to review articles on the company strategies for social well-being to cope with the Covid-19 pandemic. This article is a review paper via the systematic literature review (SLR) method. The PRISMA is a review protocol that will be used as a basis to retrieve main themes and sub-themes. The contribution of this review should be in offering gaps in what should be ready and prepared next by the company if facing any crisis or pandemic.
ABSTRACT
COVID-19 has caused a global health crisis that has infected millions of people across the globe. Currently, the fourth wave of COVID-19 is about to be declared as Omicron. The new variant of COVID-19 has caused an unprecedented increase in cases. According to World Health Organization, safety measures must be adopted in public places to prevent the spread of the virus. One effective safety measure is to wear face masks in crowded places. To create a safe environment, government agencies adopt strict rules to ensure adherence to safety measures. However, it is difficult to manually analyze the crowded scenes and identify people violating the safety measures. This paper proposed an automated approach based on a deep learning framework that automatically analyses the complex scenes and identifies people with face masks or without facemasks. The proposed framework consists of two sequential parts. In the first part, we generate scale aware proposal to cover scale variations, and in the second part, the framework classifies each proposal. We evaluate the performance of the proposed framework on a challenging benchmark data set. We demonstrate that the proposed framework achieves high performance and outperforms other reference methods by a considerable margin from experimental results. © 2022, IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.
ABSTRACT
In the competitive world of business, companies need to always be prepared in facing external threats that could put their sustainability in danger. The most recent crisis that had put businesses in a threat is the emergence of Covid-19 pandemic on December 2019. The purpose of the systematic review is to analyse the measures or strategies adopted by companies in order to cope with Covid-19 crisis. Based on the review conducted, several recommendations are highlighted to ensure in the future, company are more ready to face any crises beforehand.
ABSTRACT
The pandemic, COVID 19, has affected global economy severely which caused an outbreak of crisis in all sectors of business. Firms are struggling to keep up with the normal functions in different stages of supply chain which brought sustainability under a big risk. Concerned by the COVID-19 outbreak, the main aim of this paper is to determine the threatening barriers to supply chain sustainability in the pharmaceutical industry of the South Asian region. This industry is one of the most pivotal and developing sectors in the south Asian region with respect to other industries in this region. Although economic growth is noticeable in this sector, many questions are arising about its sustainability and resilience in a true sense amidst the global pandemic. To establish the sustainability of this sector under a pandemic scenario, the major barriers in terms of social, economic, and environmental perspectives have been identified and analysed in this research. Twenty crucial constraints have been identified and classified in five categories through an extensive study of literature and opinion of industry expert. This paper uses, Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) approach to develop the hierarchical structure and connection between these obstacles. ISM presents the interdependency of the driving and driven power of these barriers. Another modernistic approach, Matrix of Cross-Impact Multiplications Applied to Classification (MICMAC), has been used to recognize the barriers as driving factors, dependent variables, and link variables using. The modelling of this study provides companies insight into obstacles and the efficient and effective management of their resources while making their supply chains sustainable. The study closes by discussing findings and future area of the research. © IEOM Society International.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Similar to other coronaviruses, COVID-19 is transmitted mainly by droplets and is highly transmissible through close proximity or physical contact with an infected person. Countries across the globe have implemented public health control measures to prevent onward transmission and reduce burden on health care settings. Social or physical distancing was found to be one of appropriate measure based on previous experience with epidemic and pandemic contagious diseases. AIM: This study aims to review the latest evidence of the impact of social or physical distancing implemented during COVID-19 pandemic toward COVID-19 and other related infectious disease transmission. METHODOLOGY: The study uses PRISMA review protocol and formulation of research question was based on PICO. The selected databases include Ovid MEDLINE and Scopus. Thorough identification, screening and eligibility process were done, revealed selected 8 articles. The articles then ranked in quality through Mixed Method Appraisal Tool. RESULTS: A total of eight papers included in this analysis. Five studies (USA, Canada, South Korea and the United Kingdom) showed physical distancing had resulted in a reduction in Covid-19 transmission. In comparison, three other studies (Australia, South Korea and Finland) showed a similar decline on other infectious diseases (Human Immunodeficiency Virus, other sexually transmitted infections, influenza, respiratory syncytial virus, and Vaccine-Preventive Disease. The degree of the distancing policy implemented differs between strict and lenient, with both result in effectiveness in reducing transmission of infectious disease. CONCLUSION: Physical or social distancing may come in the form of extreme or lenient measure in effectively containing contagious disease such as COVID-19, however the stricter the measure will give more proportionate impact toward the economy, education, mental health issues, morbidity and mortality of non-COVID-19 diseases. Since we need this measure to ensure the reduction of infectious diseases transmission to help flattening the curve which allow much needed time for healthcare system to prepare adequately to response, “Precision physical distancing” can be implemented which will have more benefit toward the survival of the community as a whole. © 2021 Nor Rumaizah Mohd Nordin, Fadly Syah Arsad, Puteri Sofia Nadira Megat Kamaruddin, Muhammad Hilmi, Mohd Faizal Madrim, Mohd Rohaizat Hassan, Syed Sharizman Syed Abdul Rahim, Mohammad Saffree Jeffree, Abdul Rahman Ramdzan, Azman Atil, Khalid Mokti, Muhammad Aklil Abd. Rahim, Zulkhairul Naim Sidek Ahmad.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections emerged in Wuhan, China in December 2019 and rapidly became pandemic. Unfortunately, there is lack of evidence about the optimal management of corona virus disease-2019 (COVID-19) and even less is available in patients on maintenance haemodialysis. Patient receiving maintenance haemodialysis are at increased risk for infection by SARS-CoV-2 with poor outcome. So, the purpose of this study was to identify the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection among end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) patients on maintenance haemodialysis. METHOD: A cross-sectional study was conducted at a haemodialysis unit of tertiary care hospital of Bangladesh from April to August 2020. All patients, who were on maintenance haemodialysis, twice or thrice weekly, were screened by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) for SARS-CoV-2, irrespective of symptoms. All data were collected in case record forms and patients were followed-up over phone. RESULTS: During the study period, a total of 133 patients (males 70, 52.6%) were on regular maintenance haemodialysis in the study centre. Most patients were in 5th and 6th decades of life. Twenty-one (15.8%) patients tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 by RT-PCR with female (16, 76.2%) predominance. Eighteen (18/21, 85.7%) patients had symptoms suggestive of SARS-CoV-2 infection and rest three (3/21, 14.3%) patients were diagnosed during routine screening. Common presentations were fever (42.9%), cough (66.7%) and respiratory distress (66.7%) and most had multiple symptoms. The incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in blood group A was 8(38%) and blood group O was 8(38%). There were no significant differences of mortality rate among blood groups. Most patients (16/21, 76.2%) infected by SARS-CoV-2 were referred to COVID-dedicated hospitals, five (5/21, 23.8%) were shifted to intensive care unit (ICU). Outcome was poor;17 (17/21, 89%) patients died in hospitals and four (4/21, 19%) patients became free of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Caregivers/relative of our patients acquired COVID-19 in course of disease. CONCLUSION: One-sixth of patients on maintenance haemodialysis acquired SARSCoV-2 infection with nearly ninety percent fatality rates. Despite having risk factors for severe infection by SARS-CoV-2, patients on dialysis must visit health care facilities. So, utmost care should be taken to reduce risk of COVID-19 among such vulnerable group of patients.
ABSTRACT
Background: Cornonavirus disease (COVID-19) has been declared pandemic by the World Health Organization on the 11th March 2020. The knowledge, attitudes and practices of the population towards the COVID-19, play an integral role in determining community’s readiness to engage themselves in government measures including behavioural change in prevention and control of the disease. Objectives: The study was aimed to determine the knowledge levels, attitudes and practices towards the COVID-19 among the Bangladeshi population. Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted among 1549 adult population across Bangladesh including Dhaka city and rural areas during March-April 2020. Data were collected using a structured and pretested questionnaire through online, self-administered and face to face interview. The study instrument consisted of 7 items on socio-demographic characteristics, 12 items on knowledge, 4 items on attitudes and 5 items on practices related to COVID-19. Independent sample t-tests, chi-square tests, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and binary logistic regression were performed to assess the attitudes and practices in relation to knowledge. Results: Of the total 1549 study population, 1249 were interviewed online, 194 were self-administered and 106 were through face to face interview. The lowest level of knowledge prevailed among the above 50 years’ age group regarding the disease, which was higher among female (p=0.03), and more among the respondents having education level below graduation (p=0.000;OR=1.6, χ2=17.6). Of the total respondents, 73.5% having negative attitude towards use of face mask, though 69.8% having the appropriate knowledge on mode of transmission of the virus (p=0.000). Though, 51.6% of the study population, having adequate knowledge, but only 52.1% using face mask (p>0.05) and 51.8% practicing hand washing (p>0.05). More than 70.0% respondents having knowledge on social distancing, but only 50.0% was practicing it. Male respondents had 1.5 times more knowledge about the social distancing than the female counterpart (p=0.000). Conclusion: Public awareness campaign should be enhanced critically focusing the target audience covering the knowledge gaps, motivation for appropriate practices and further improvement of attitudes towards prevention and control of COVID-19 in Bangladesh thus suggested. © 2020 Bangladesh Medical Research Council. All rights reserved.