A test-based strategy for early return to work for health-care workers with COVID-19 during the Omicron wave, Brunei Darussalam, 2022.

Objective: This paper summarizes and evaluates a test-based strategy for early return to work for health-care workers (HCWs) with mild coronavirus disease in Brunei Darussalam during the Omicron wave in February 2022 and compares the characteristics of HCWs by how long it took them to return to work. Methods: The early return-to-work strategy involved testing on day 3 of infection with reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction and with a rapid antigen test on days 5 and 6 or days 5 and 7. Data about infected HCWs were extracted from the Ministry of Health's public health surveillance database. Percentages and proportions were used for descriptive statistics, and Pearson's χ2 test and the paired t-test were used to compare return-to-work patterns with demographic factors and vaccination status of the HCWs, as well as between cycle threshold (Ct) values and occupational groups of HCWs. Results: From 15 February to 15 March 2022, a total of 1121 HCWs were notified as being infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Of these, 175 (15.6%) were able to return to work on day 4 of their infection, 153 (13.6%) on day 6 and 268 (23.9%) on day 7; 525 (46.8%) required 10 days of home isolation. Statistically significant associations were observed between return-to-work periods and occupational group (P < 0.01) and Ct value (P < 0.01), but not between return to work and age, sex or vaccination status. Discussion: This test-based strategy ensured a balance between mitigating a shortage of HCWs and enabling them to return to work early without compromising their safety and that of their patients.

Food and Alcohol Disturbance in High School Adolescents: Prevalence, Characteristics and Association with Problem Drinking and Eating Disorders.

Food and alcohol disturbance (FAD) is characterized by the association of alcohol use with compensatory behaviors such as restricting calories, physical activity and purging. Despite not being part of the current nosography, research has grown in the past 10 years, mostly on college students' samples. In this study, we aim to describe the prevalence, characteristics and association of FAD with problem drinking (PD) and eating disorder risk (EDR) in a sample of Italian high school students. Participants were 900 high school students (53.6% males; mean age = 16.22) that were administered standardized questionnaires. Students who screened positive for PD, EDR and both were, respectively, 17.3%, 5.9% and 1.3%. Approximately one out four students reported FAD behaviors, mostly to control weight and by restricting calories, with higher prevalence and severity among those who screened positive for PD. Purging behaviors were rare overall (15.5%), but significantly more frequent in participants who screened positive for both PD and EDR (41.7%). FAD was more strongly associated with alcohol use severity than with ED symptom severity across all subgroups. FAD behaviors appear to be common in the Italian high school population and more strongly associated with PD. Future studies should investigate FAD's impact on adolescents' functioning and possible early interventions.

SARS-COV-2 Screening of Health Care Workers in Brunei Darussalam.

BACKGROUND: Health care workers (HCWs) are at high risk of COVID-19 infection; therefore, screening is recommended for early detection and management to break the chain of transmission. Globally, multiple strategies have been utilized for the screening of HCWs. This article reports and evaluates an active surveillance and screening strategy for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-COV-2) among HCWs following work or nonwork exposures in Brunei Darussalam to prevent health care-associated COVID-19 transmission. METHODS: In March 2020, the Ministry of Health through the Occupational Health Division adopted an active screening strategy for symptomatic and asymptomatic HCWs, which involved symptom screening, risk assessment, SARS-COV-2 testing, and management following work/nonwork exposure and recent overseas travel, and those with influenza-like illness (ILI) symptoms. Screening frequency was based on the HCWs' symptoms and exposure, with the intent to evaluate all possible sources of exposure. FINDINGS: As of December 31, 2020, 821 HCWs were screened, of which 632 (77%) had ILI symptoms and 14 (1.7%) had high-risk occupational exposure. Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) swab testing was carried out on 577 (70.3%) HCWs, with the highest proportion of swabs done on doctors (85.1%; p < .01) due to their workplace exposure (34.3%) and overseas travel (38.7%). CONCLUSION: By July 2021, Brunei Darussalam had recorded zero cases of COVID-19 among HCWs from occupational exposure. Our strategy of active screening for SARS-COV-2 RT-PCR testing since early in the outbreak has proven to be successful, in combination with infection control practices and public health measures, in the prevention of occupational transmission, thereby facilitating early return to work for HCWs with low-risk exposure and without symptoms.

Non-fatal occupational accidents in Brunei Darussalam.

Globally, ILO estimates 374 million non-fatal and 380,500 fatal by occupational accidents annually. Slips, trips, falls and contact with objects are the leading mode of injury, with extremities being the most common body part involved. Occupational accidents are of major concern for high risk occupational groups such as migrant workers, or work areas e.g. construction, manufacturing, wholesale, and retail industries. This study was aimed to determine the prevalence of non-fatal occupational injuries and its trends among industry workers in Brunei Darussalam. A retrospective cross-sectional review of occupational accidents notified to the Occupational Health Division, Ministry of Health, over a five-year period from January 2014 until December 2018 was conducted. A total of 424 non-fatal occupational accidents were notified, with increasing trend from 44 in 2014 to 132 in 2018. Accidents were more common in males (98%), migrant workers (86%), in the 30-39 age group (42.5%), and in the construction industry (56.4%). Struck by object (37.7%) was the commonest cause and upper limb (43.9%) was the commonest body part involved. There is a need for workplaces to develop capabilities and support mechanisms for risk assessments, as well as auditing and reviewing performances to minimize occurrence of preventable occupational injuries.

Self-Reported Skin Disorders Among Health Care Workers.

This study aimed to estimate the point prevalence and 1-year period prevalence of skin disorder symptoms (SDS) among health care workers (HCWs) and to explore the possible risk factors. A random sample of 400 HCWs from 13 government health centers in Brunei Darussalam self-administered an adapted Nordic Occupational Skin Questionnaire (NOSQ-2002/SHORT). The point and 1-year prevalence of SDS were 12% and 19%, respectively. Having a history of SDS before the current job, exposure to SDS-exacerbating materials at the workplace, and having clinical roles were correlated for both prevalence estimates. Frequent handwashing and moderate use of latex gloves were associated with higher risk of SDS at 1-year. Female HCWs were more likely to report SDS. In multivariate analyses, only contact with SDS-exacerbating materials at the workplace, prejob SDS, and moderate glove usage were significant predictors of SDS.

Workplace fatalities in Brunei Darussalam.

In 2012, there were about 2.3 million deaths worldwide attributed to work. The highest workplace fatality rate (WFR) was reported on construction sites due to high risk activities. Globally, fall from height is the leading cause of fatal injuries for construction workers. The objectives are to determine Brunei Darussalam's demographic distribution of occupational fatality; identify causal agents and industry where occupational fatalities commonly occur; and determine WFR by year. This cross-sectional study retrospectively reviewed records of occupational fatality which were notified to the Occupational Health Division, Ministry of Health, from January 2012 until December 2016. Notified occupational fatalities in Brunei over a five-year period was 50. Most of the cases were in 31-40 age group. 38% of fatality cases occurred in Indonesian workers. 60% were from the Construction industry. 38% were due to fall from height. WFR averaged 5.28 and the highest industry-specific fatality rate was seen in the Construction industry, ranging from 27.94 to 56.45 per 100,000 workers. WFR for Brunei Darussalam from 2012 to 2016 was similar to that of Malaysia, but higher than Singapore and the UK. Industry-specific fatality rate for the Construction and Manufacturing industries were higher than those of Singapore and the UK.

Validation of the Italian version of the Compensatory Eating and Behaviors in Response to Alcohol Consumption Scale (CEBRACS).

The aim of the study was to evaluate, in a representative sample of high school students, the psychometric characteristics of the Italian version of the CEBRACS scale (Rahal et al., 2011), a questionnaire investigating compensatory eating behaviors correlated with alcohol consumption. These behaviors are adopted to make up for calories consumed through the drinking of alcohol and/or to enhance the intoxicative effects of alcohol. Study participants were selected from an initial sample of 965 students. Out of the 965 youths originally recruited, 640 (376 males and 264 females) reported drinking alcohol over the previous 3 months, and were considered eligible for the purpose of the study. The following questionnaires were administered: CEBRACS, Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) (Saunders, 1993), and the Eating Disorder Inventory-3 (EDI-3) (Garner, 2004). Test/retest reproducibility was evaluated on a subgroup of 189 youths. The factorial structure, internal consistency, test­retest reliability and concurrent validity of CEBRACS were evaluated. Factor analysis of inter-item correlation indicated 5 factors as being better suited to describe data, with an estimated 68.85% variance: "Alcohol Effect, "Laxative Use", "Dietary Restraint and Exercise", "Diuretic Use", "Restriction and Vomiting". A high degree of reproducibility and homogeneity (ICC = 0.806; Cronbach's Alpha = 0.886) of the scale was detected. A significant correlation was revealed between CEBRACS, the three eating disorder risk scales comprised in EDI-3 and scores and clinical risk yielded by AUDIT. The overall reliability and validity of the CEBRACS scale was confirmed in an extensive sample of Italian students, highlighting a satisfactory construct validity, good internal consistency and good degree of reproducibility. In view of the relevance of the problem, associated with serious health risks, a more widespread investigation of the phenomenon should be conducted using evaluation tools of proven validity and reliability on both representative samples of the general population and clinical samples.

Noise-Induced Hearing Loss in the Police Force.

BACKGROUND: Noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) is a major preventable occupational health problem with 250 million people worldwide known to have disabling impairment of moderate to greater severity. The aims of the study are to estimate the prevalence of NIHL in the police force; and study its association with age, sex, duration of service (years), smoking and alcohol habits, use of hearing protective devices, as well as preexisting chronic diseases. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted on 543 police personnel who had undergone periodic medical examination over a 12-month period. The diagnostic criteria for NIHL were (1) history of occupational noise exposure, (2) bilateral hearing loss, (3) hearing loss of ≥ 25 dBA at 4,000 Hz in two consecutive audiograms, and (4) no significant medical history affecting hearing. Severity of NIHL was based on the World Health Organization grading. RESULTS: Males (74.8%) made up the majority of the police force. The mean age for police personnel was 35.55 ± 9.57 years, and the mean duration of service was 14.75 ± 9.39 years. Compliance with the usage of hearing protective devices was seen in 64.4%. The prevalence of NIHL in this study population was 34.2%, with a higher prevalence in males (37.7%) than in females (23.9%). The study also showed strong associations between NIHL and male sex (odds ratio, 1.9; P < 0.05), and hypertension (odds ratio, 3.3; P < 0.001). Overall, 93% were found to have mild NIHL, 3.5% had moderate NIHL, and 3.5% had severe NIHL. No police personnel were found to have profound hearing loss. CONCLUSION: The prevalence of NIHL in this study is high compared to other similar studies among police personnel. This study shows that increasing age, male, presence of hypertension, diabetes, and longer duration of service are significant associated factors for NIHL. Preventative strategies include health surveillance, implementation of a hearing conservation program, and legislation.

A perceptual learning deficit in Chinese developmental dyslexia as revealed by visual texture discrimination training.

Learning to read involves discriminating between different written forms and establishing connections with phonology and semantics. This process may be partially built upon visual perceptual learning, during which the ability to process the attributes of visual stimuli progressively improves with practice. The present study investigated to what extent Chinese children with developmental dyslexia have deficits in perceptual learning by using a texture discrimination task, in which participants were asked to discriminate the orientation of target bars. Experiment l demonstrated that, when all of the participants started with the same initial stimulus-to-mask onset asynchrony (SOA) at 300 ms, the threshold SOA, adjusted according to response accuracy for reaching 80% accuracy, did not show a decrement over 5 days of training for children with dyslexia, whereas this threshold SOA steadily decreased over the training for the control group. Experiment 2 used an adaptive procedure to determine the threshold SOA for each participant during training. Results showed that both the group of dyslexia and the control group attained perceptual learning over the sessions in 5 days, although the threshold SOAs were significantly higher for the group of dyslexia than for the control group; moreover, over individual participants, the threshold SOA negatively correlated with their performance in Chinese character recognition. These findings suggest that deficits in visual perceptual processing and learning might, in part, underpin difficulty in reading Chinese.

Writing to dictation and handwriting performance among Chinese children with dyslexia: relationships with orthographic knowledge and perceptual-motor skills.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between writing to dictation, handwriting, orthographic, and perceptual-motor skills among Chinese children with dyslexia. A cross-sectional design was used. A total of 45 third graders with dyslexia were assessed. Results of stepwise multiple regression models showed that Chinese character naming was the only predictor associated with word dictation (ß=.32); handwriting speed was related to deficits in rapid automatic naming (ß=-.36) and saccadic efficiency (ß=-.29), and visual-motor integration predicted both of the number of characters exceeded grid (ß=-.41) and variability of character size (ß=-.38). The findings provided support to a multi-stage working memory model of writing for explaining the possible underlying mechanism of writing to dictation and handwriting difficulties.

Dynamic visual perception and reading development in Chinese school children.

The development of reading skills may depend to a certain extent on the development of basic visual perception. The magnocellular theory of developmental dyslexia assumes that deficits in the magnocellular pathway, indicated by less sensitivity in perceiving dynamic sensory stimuli, are responsible for a proportion of reading difficulties experienced by dyslexics. Using a task that measures coherent motion detection threshold, this study examined the relationship between dynamic visual perception and reading development in Chinese children. Experiment 1 compared the performance of 27 dyslexics and their age- and IQ-matched controls in the coherent motion detection task and in a static pattern perception task. Results showed that only in the former task did the dyslexics have a significantly higher threshold than the controls, suggesting that Chinese dyslexics, like some of their Western counterparts, may have deficits in magnocellular pathway. Experiment 2 examined whether dynamic visual processing affects specific cognitive processes in reading. One hundred fifth-grade children were tested on visual perception and reading-related tasks. Regression analyses found that the motion detection threshold accounted for 11% and 12%, respectively, variance in the speed of orthographic similarity judgment and in the accuracy of picture naming after IQ and vocabulary size were controlled. The static pattern detection threshold could not account for any variance. It is concluded that reading development in Chinese depends to a certain extent on the development of dynamic visual perception and its underlying neural pathway and that the impact of visual development can be specifically related to orthographic processing in reading Chinese.

Neural deficits in second language reading: fMRI evidence from Chinese children with English reading impairment.

In alphabetic language systems, converging evidence indicates that developmental dyslexia represents a disorder of phonological processing both behaviorally and neurobiologically. However, it is still unknown whether, impaired phonological processing remains the core deficit of impaired English reading in individuals with English as their second language and how it is represented in the neural cortex. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, the present study investigated the neural responses to letter rhyming judgment (phonological task) and letter same/different judgment (orthographic task) in Chinese school children with English and Chinese reading impairment compared to typically developing children. Whole brain analyses with multiple comparison correction revealed reduced activation within the left lingual/calcarine gyrus during orthographic processing in children with reading impairment compared to typical readers. An independent region of interest analysis showed reduced activation in occipitotemporal regions during orthographic processing, and reduced activation in parietotemporal regions during phonological processing, consistent with previous studies in English native speakers. These results suggest that similar neural deficits are involved for impaired phonological processing in English as both the first and the second language acquired. These findings pose implications for reading remediation, educational curriculum design, and educational policy for second language learners.

Effects of an education programme on family participation in the rehabilitation of children with developmental disability.

The growth and development of children with developmental disability depend very much on the parents. The present study was designed to examine whether family-focused education could enhance parental skills, knowledge and competency. The enhancement would in turn result in greater parental participation in the rehabilitation process of these children. The parental needs of Chinese parents were reviewed for the formulation of the Family-Focused Education Programme, which was then implemented, and evaluated using a pre-test/post-test control group design. Forty parents were invited to participate in the study using a convenience sampling technique. The mean scores of these variables were in the direction of increasing after the programme, though repeated measures ANOVA did not indicate any statistically significant changes in parenting knowledge, attitude and stress. It was apparent that the Family-Focused Education Programme enhanced parental competence. Undoubtedly, the family-focused approach is crucial for enhancing parenting competency, and education is fundamental to enabling parents.

The validity and reliability of the World Health Organization Mental Disorders Checklist for use in a telehealth clinic in Hong Kong.

This research aimed to test the validity and reliability of the 'World Health Organization Mental Disorders Checklist' for use in a telehealth clinic in Hong Kong. The Checklist adopted four subscales: (i) depression; (ii) anxiety; (iii) alcohol use disorders; and (vi) functioning and disablement, and was translated from English into Chinese. It was validated by a panel of five experts to confirm its content validity (content validity index = 0.98) and cultural appropriateness in Hong Kong. The reliability of the checklist was supported by the findings of a test-retest procedure (Pearson correlation = 0.66-0.88, P < 0.01), internal consistency reliability (Cronbach's alpha = 0.54-0.83), and interrater reliability (Kendall's coefficient of concordance = 0.58-1.00, P < 0.01) involving a sample of 197 subjects from one telehealth clinic in Hong Kong.

A Comparison of Assessment on Symptoms of ADHD By Elementary Teachers and Child Psychiatrisis in Guangzhou / 中国心理卫生杂志

Objective:To compare the assessments on hyperkinetic syndrome of ADHD between teachers and psychiatrists,in order to determine their roles in our later study about ADHD.Method:Pediatric psychiatrists from Guangzhou psychiatric hospital and pre-occupational or experienced teachers from Fangcun elementary school(30 in each group)rated the presence and degree of hyperactive-disruptive behaviors in a standardized videotape,showing one 7-year-old boy who participated in individual and group activities.The results were compared between each group.Results:There was no significant difference on most of the assessments between psychiatrists and experienced teachers.The assessments of pre-occupational teachers had significant differences to the results of the above two groups.Conclusion:The assessments of experienced teachers may be used as very important information on the early diagnosis and the assessments of effectiveness of medical intervention for ADHD children.