ABSTRACT
Bangladesh is now hosting over 1.1 million Rohingyas mostly in the southeastern part of the country (Cox's Bazar district). More than 3years have passed and not a single Rohingya has returned home although Myanmar agreed to take them back. This chapter sets out to assess the livelihoods of the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh with particular reference to the 2020 pandemic. Findings are based on interviews with some NGO leaders, UN officials, and leaders from the Rohingya refugee groups and some neighboring community leaders. Some Rohingyas have started to move out of the camps and settled in some parts of Bangladesh. Some have also been engaged in crimes like the drug trade. There is a growing tension between the refugees and the local Bangladeshis. Apart from the uncertainty in returning to Myanmar, the lives and livelihoods of the refugees look difficult. The stress was aggravated by the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
For more than a decade, it is has been a key challenge among the policymakers of Thailand to transform its economy from a middle income to an upper-income one. Many factors worked as impediments to this transition. Then came the COVID-19 outbreak both globally including in Thailand. The crisis has exposed the structural problems of the Thai economy and society. The crisis not only affected the export and tourism-based economy, the lives and livelihoods of those dependent on these sectors have also been badly affected. As elsewhere, the crisis's worst victims are the Thai poor and the Thai state struggled to provide them assistance. Some possible measures to better protect the vulnerable in the crises are also discussed. © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
This research aims to identify the impact of COVID 19 and monsoon floods on rural Bangladesh communities and assess their coping behaviour. Data were collected through an in-depth study. The findings reveal that char(shoal) dwellers and riverbank communities were more affected due to unexpected floods than coronavirus infections with poor access to health, less knowledge of hygiene, no risk reduction measures, or any suitable coping strategies. Furthermore, the result shows that traditional livelihood sources like fishing, ferrying passengers by boat, borrowing money from affluent relatives, or food loans, selling livestock, etc., were usual. Local authorities were mostly inactive in alleviating suffering.
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Aim/Background: The present study was aimed at investigating the public perceptions about extended services by community pharmacists in Jouf region of Saudi Arabia during COVID-19 pandemic. Design: Institutional based cross sectional prospective survey. The sample size was calculated by an online sample size calculator named Raosoft®️. The calculated sample for this study was 945 with a 5% error margin, confidence interval of 95%, the population size fixed at 200000. Study instrument: A 34-item self-administered questionnaire developed by an in-depth literature review and approved by the subject experts (professor, associate professor, assistant professor and lecturer) after suggestions and modification in the questionnaire, pretested to a small sample of thirty participants. The reliability scale applied to determine the alpha value of pretested sample. Results: Majority of the participants 83.6% were females, the frequency (1-3 times) of visit is highest (52.4%) for the participants with the main reason for visiting a particular pharmacy is close location (52.3%). The participants had positive perceptions towards the role of the pharmacist regarding feeling comfortable asking advice from the pharmacist, getting comprehensive consultation, having sufficient discussion time, communication with the pharmacist, getting answers for their questions, medication labeling and information about medication interactions and side effects. However, the participants had negative attitudes towards the medications prices and the diagnostic services such as lab tests provided by the community pharmacists. Public are of the opinion that the pharmacists are well aware of the COVID-19 pandemic playing a good role in counselling about the COVID-19, without any change in their behavior in the current situation. Conclusion: The study showed that there was positive public perceptions about the role of the community pharmacists and the practices and services offered by them. The study recommended increasing the public awareness about the role of the community pharmacists and the range of the services offered in the community pharmacies.
ABSTRACT
Today Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) face global challenges and continuous change in consumer demands, most recently COVID-19 and the prospect of a future Serious Acute Respiratory (SARS) pandemic generating further challenges, thus SMEs require to be more flexible to respond quickly to these changes. This can be achieved by transformation into the digital economy, use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques, integrating business processes and to have real-time information which will enable senior management to make better, quicker informed decisions. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is one of the solutions for the SMEs to overcome these challenges and to obtain a competitive advantage. Subanidja, and Broto, 2019 stated that ERP systems are still not widely implemented by SMEs compared to their introduction in large businesses. However, the SME have a justifiable reputation for being proactive, open, willing and receptive to the adoption of new technologies, concepts and improvements. Also, SMEs differ in several inherent characteristics which are likely to impact on the ERP system implementations, hence it does not make sense to use the same frameworks that have been developed for large companies to implement ERP system within SMEs. One of the main risks of adopting ERP in SMEs is that SMEs have limited resources, so they cannot afford to fail to implement ERP system. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore ERP implementation process in SME context. The developed framework has been used to implement an ERP system in a SME. It highlighted the issues that need to be addressed while implementing ERP system in SMEs such as clearly defined scope of implementation procedure, suitable project planning and minimal customisation of the system selected for implementation. This study contributed to both research and practice and the research findings could aid practitioners and SMEs when embarking on ERP projects, as well as, to suggest future research avenues. © 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
ABSTRACT
COVID-19 spread worldwide after its outbreak in December 2019. This review paper aims to educate the readers regarding SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic and detection tools and the issues experienced by researchers. We identify on the-horizon point-of-care diagnostic tests and inspire scholars to develop their innovations past conception. It will also effectively avoid potential pandemics to establish plug-and-play diagnostic information to handle the SARS infection. The authors agree that arbitrary-access, interconnected systems with flexible functionality accessible at the point-of-care, would enable fast and precise diagnosis and tracking.