An Investigation into Major Sheep Diseases and Management Practices in North Shewa Zone, Oromia, Ethiopia.

Sheep have many advantages over large ruminants for most smallholder farmers: lower feed costs, quicker turnover, easy management, and appropriate size at slaughter can be mentioned. They produce in a wide range of agroecologies, from arid lowlands to extremely cool highlands. However, their productivity is hindered by disease burden and poor management practices. In the study area, information on the disease of sheep and related management practices is lacking. Thus, the study aimed to determine the major sheep diseases and management practices in North Shewa Zone, Oromia, Ethiopia. A cross-sectional study design was used from October 2020 to July 2021 in the zone. A multistage sampling technique was used to select study districts and their respective kebeles, while the households were purposively selected. Questionnaire survey, in-depth interview, and physical clinical examination were conducted. A total of 400 households were involved in this study, a majority (32.8%) of whom were illiterates. Ovine pasteurellosis (55.8%) was the major bacterial disease in highlands, whereas sheep pox (54.5%) was the most challenging viral disease in the area. Mange mites (41.3%) were the major parasitic disease. The design of houses was medium (34.5%) which were bedded using sand floor (79.8%) and grass (5.75%), but the drainage system of the house was poorly designed (46.8%) in highlands. A majority of the owners (67.3%) used traditional medicines for the treatment of sheep disease. This study concluded that the burden of the diseases was higher and the management practices were poor in the area, deteriorating the economic benefit of farmers from sheep production. Thus, it urges for operating technical interventions.

Survey and Antimicrobial Activity Study of Ethnomedicinal Plants in Selected Districts of North Shewa Zone, Oromia, Ethiopia.

BACKGROUND: The emergency of multidrug resistance due to the global burden of infectious diseases and drug misuse leads to an urgent identification of new medicines from medicinal plants. The study was designed to perform the documentation of ethno-medicinal plants usage, extraction, phytochemical screening and antimicrobial activities of the herbal extracts. METHODS: A cross-sectional study design was conducted in this study. Maceration of plant extraction, phytochemical screening and disc diffusion method for antimicrobial activity tests were employed. RESULTS: The results of the study indicated that Euphorbiaceae, Lamiaceae and Sapindaceae plant families have commonly used for the treatment of infectious diseases in the study areas. The antimicrobial activity test results indicated that Ostegia integrifolia Benth which was extracted with chloroform solvent showed equivalent inhibition zone as compared to standard drug, gentamicin. All the extracts could be considered as broad spectrum, have strong inhibition against E. coli, K. pneumoniae, S. aureus, P. aeruginosa and C. albicans. All extracts against C. albicans were also revealed strong inhibition activity as compared to fungal standard drug, contamazole. CONCLUSION: Phytochemical screening showed the existence of secondary metabolites in the studied plants and thus, supports the traditional healers' claim of such plants use for the treatment of diseases. The study also concluded that chloroform extracts of all plants showed promising antimicrobial activities against K. pneumonia, and C. albicans. Therefore, further in vitro and vivo antimicrobial activity study of chloroform extracts against these bacterial and fungal strains were recommended. Moreover, isolation and structural elucidation of bioactive compounds from chloroform extracts were also recommended.

Occupational Health Safety of Health Professionals and Associated Factors During COVID-19 Pandemics at North Showa Zone, Oromia Regional State, Ethiopia.

BACKGROUND: Coronavirus disease 19 was observed as a pandemic and caused many community health problems that resulted in Global issues. It causes death for many individuals including health professionals. This study aimed to determine the occupational health safety of health professionals and associated factors during COVID-19 pandemic at North Showa. METHODS: Institutions-based Cross-sectional study was conducted using a simple random sampling technique from May 10 to June 15, 2020. Interviewer-administered questioners were used, and data were entered into Epi-data version 3.1 and exported to SPSS 23 for analysis. Bi-variable logistic regression was carried out to select candidate variables with a cutoff point < 0.2. Finally, multivariable logistic regression was conducted to identify significant variables. An adjusted odds ratio with 95% CI at a 5% level of significance was used to measure the strength of association. P-value <0.05 indicated a significant association between variables. RESULTS: A total of 280 health professionals participated with a 92.72% response rate. Of which 57.9% (n=162) were males while 42.1% (n=118) females. Of total 48.9% (n=137) (95% CI: 43.2, 55.0) health professionals had poor occupational health and safety. Availability of soap and bleach (AOR=2.50; 1.439, 4.356), Possibility of isolate COVID-19 suspected clients (AOR=2.525; 1.690, 5.062), Availability of infections prevention and control program standards and policy (AOR=2.329; 1.325, 4.092), Availability of policy and procedure to prevent COVID-19 (AOR= 2.427; 1.389, 4.240) were significantly associated. CONCLUSION: The result suggested that occupational health safety was generally low in the study area. Therefore, a preventive measure such as the use of personal protective equipment and adherence to hand hygiene practice and Infection prevention policy could reduce the spread of COVID-19 and further study should be conducted to generate more evidence on determinants of occupational health safety.

The level of risk, effects response to potential health emergencies, prevention and control method of COVID-19: A systematic review.

BACKGROUND: COVID-19 is currently the major public health burden in the world, with disease and death in the global community from COVID-19 increasing rapidly from time to time worldwide. However, there has been a lack of well-organized information about the level of risk, effects, prevention and control methods of the disease. Therefore the aim of this study is to identify and review a published level of risk, effects response to potential health emergencies, prevention, and control methods of COVID-19 at a global level. METHOD: A systematic review was performed after literatures were identified by searching the following online databases: medRxiv, Google scholar, PubMed, MEDLINE, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library with supplementary hand searching of conferences. The online databases contain archives of most English biomedical journals. Scientific papers published online by the Center for Disease Control and the World Health Organization were also included for this analysis. The scientific publications from 01 December, 2019 to 13 April 2020 were included. The 'COVID-19', '2019 novel coronavirus', '2019-nCoV', 'novel coronavirus', and 'Pneumonia' key search terms were used for this review.

Global public health significances, healthcare perceptions of communities, treatments, prevention and control methods of COVID-19.

BACKGROUND: The Novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has proved to be one of the most burdensome respiratory disease outbreaks ever. Moreover, the public health emergency of the COVID-19 outbreak has been seen by the World Health Organization (WHO) as global health concern since March 2020 and there has been a significantly increased morbidity and mortality in the community worldwide. The objective of this review is to describe and review the global public health significances and community and healthcare perception of features, treatments, prevention and control methods to slow the transmission of the outbreak. METHODS: For this review, the literature has been searched by following online databases, including medRxiv, pubmed, medline and Google scholar databases. The key search terms 'COVID-19', '2019 novel coronavirus', '2019-nCoV', 'novel coronavirus' and 'Pneumonia' were used to search the literature. Scientific papers published online by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the WHO from 01 January to 06 May 2020 in the English language were included for analysis. RESULTS: The results of this review indicated that COVID-19 is a serious global public health problem. It affects immune compromised individuals living with chronic diseases, the elderly and pregnant women more severely. The disease spread rapidly from one country to countries worldwide. In all, 212 countries highlighted the weakened state of essential public health and emergency services. The researchers addressed the lack of perception in communities, including health professionals, with regard to COVID-19. Healthcare settings were analyzed in terms of the pandemic nature of the virus, onset and the overall characteristics of disease outbreak. Microbiogists were also used to assess the daily cumulative index of COVID-19. With regard to treatment, chloroquine phosphate and herbal medicines were shown to be promising as supportive treatments to slow COVID-19 transmission, coupled with isolation and quarantine techniques. CONCLUSION: The review indicates that COVID-19 has a high global public health significance due to its high morbidity and mortality rates. Still, there was no specific or effective vaccine or treatment, moreover, the community, including health professionals, have a low perception as regards COVID-19, even though different prevention and control methods have been conducted. Thus, there is a need for awareness creation, alongside further research applied to finding effective vaccine and treatments.

Global burden of COVID-19: Situational analyis and review.

BACKGROUND: The novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is the major public health burden in the world. The morbidity and mortality of the global community due to this disease is dramatically increasing from time to time. OBJECTIVE: This situational analysis is aimed to analyse prevalence and incidence of COVID-19 and to provide clear information about this disease for the scientific community, stakeholders, healthcare practitioners and decision-makers. METHODS: The literatures were identified by searching the key relevant and officially known online databases: medRxiv, Google scholar and PubMed. The online databases contain archives of most English biomedical journals and scientific papers published online from 31 December to 3 April 2020 were included. After the literature search, articles were screened independently by two reviewers for eligibility. RESULTS: The world continents have confirmed a total of 1,202,320 confirmed COVID-19 cases: (51.2%) in Europe, (27.7%) in North America, (17.9%) in Asia, (1.96%) in South America and at less number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Africa and Australia which was accounted 0.8% and 0.5%, respectively. However, this review showed that there was a significant increase in the confirmed COVID-19 cases by 109,555 in Asia, 8,658 in Africa, 332,866 in North America, 20,269 in South America, 568,894 in Europe, 5,051 in Australia and 1,045,403 in the whole world, with the exception of Antartica, during the review period. The overall results showed that there were 1,098,762 cases and 59,172 deaths recorded during the review period. The result zero number of deaths with COVID-19 was observed in 66 countries. CONCLUSION: The review concluded that COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2 is the major public health burden in the world, the morbidity and mortality of global community is dramatically increasing from time to time. Strong collaboration among all sectors and the design of effective prevention and control strategies which include staying home, social/physical distancing, quarantine, testing of suspected patients, isolation and managing of the confirmed cases. Therefore, all countries should implement five major COVID-19 prevention and control programmes as soon as possible at community level.

COVID-19 Pandemic Preparedness and Response of Chronic Disease Patients in Public Health Facilities.

BACKGROUND: The Coronavirus Diseases 2019 (COVID-19) causes a unique threat and a great challenge to chronic disease patients. Apart from its severity for all communities, a chronic disease patient is highly vulnerable to the current COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, this study aimed to assess preparedness and response against the COVID-19 among chronic diseases patients who had follow-up at healthcare facilities. METHODS: An institutional-based cross-sectional study was conducted in the North Shoa Zone from May 5, 2020, to June 5/2020. A pre-tested and semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect data. The study participants were selected by simple random sampling technique. The data were entered into the Epi-data and exported to SPSS for cleaning and analysis. Bivariable and multivariable logistic regressions were used to identify the factors associated with the COVID-19 preparedness and response. RESULTS: A total of 410 (97%) patients were responded to face to face interview administered questionnaire. Nearly two-thirds of the respondents had good knowledge, 54% were well prepared, and 63% had a good response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Male participants, news media (TV & Radio), social media, tuberculosis, hypertension, and diabetes mellitus were significantly associated with a good preparedness. Informal education, news media (TV & Radio), and having hypertension were significantly associated with good response to the COVID-19 pandemic. CONCLUSION: The prevalence of preparedness and response to the COVID-19 pandemic among chronic disease patients was low. Male participants, source of information, educational status, and having chronic diseases were significantly associated with the COVID-19 prevention preparedness and response. It should be continued to provide awareness creation for chronic patients through news media (TV and radio) and social media to increasing the preparedness and response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Outcome of tuberculosis patients under directly observed short course treatment in western Ethiopia.

INTRODUCTION: Treatment outcome is an important indicator of tuberculosis control programs, as suggested by the World Health Organization. However, this has not been well documented in the study area. This work contributes to a better understanding this issue. METHODOLOGY: A five-year (2009-2013) retrospective cohort study was conducted between April and May 2014, in six randomly selected health institutions providing tuberculosis treatment in western Ethiopia. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were used to assess the association between treatment outcomes and predictor variables. RESULTS: A total of 1,175 tuberculosis patients with a mean (standard deviation) age of 29.91 (13.99) were involved in the study. The majority of the study participants had smear-negative pulmonary tuberculosis (39.7%) and extrapulmonary tuberculosis (39.7%). Of all the study participants, 14.5% were cured, 56.3% completed treatment, 0.2% had treatment failure, 8.1% died during follow-up, 7.1% were reported as defaulters, and 13.8% were transferred out to another health institution. The overall treatment success rate was 70.8% and show progressive increases over the course of the study. The associated predictors were enrollment years, HIV co-infection, and sputum smear follow-up in the second, fifth, and seven months. CONCLUSIONS: The treatment success rate was unsatisfactory in spite of improvement seen over the study period. Thus, continued follow-up of patients, with frequent supportive supervision during the course of treatment, and provision of early detection and follow-up for HIV infection need to be strengthened to achieve an effective treatment outcome.