215 research outputs found

    The Effect of Good Governance in Ensuring Quality Public Service Delivery: Case of Some Selected Public Institutions in Gida Ayana Woreda, East Wollega, Oromiya Region

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    The issue of service delivery is becoming a global concern that demands continuous reform to fit the turbulent environment and changing service user needs. Efficient and effective servicedelivery is now a prominent agenda of most countries including Ethiopia. This study aimed at finding out The Effect of Good Governance in Ensuring Quality Public Service Delivery: Case of Some Selected Public Institutions in Gida Ayana Woreda, East Wollega, Oromiya Region. publicinstitutions such as, Court Office, Woreda administration office, Gida Ayana electric utility service center, andMunicipality were purposely selected giving a due consideration to the availability of the large number of users as well as the magnitude and importance of thisinstitutions in serving the society and their relation with diverse stakeholders. The methodology used to conduct this study was mixed research design where purposive sampling technique was employed to select government institutions and the study used systematic random sampling methods to select service users and employee respondents.Both primary and secondary data was employed. Data was obtained bothfrom civil servants and service users together with the information obtained throughinterviews from selectedpublic officials.A total of 389service users and employees are taken as a sample and 389 questionnaires were distributed and 303 questionnaires were returned and 86 unreturned.This is because of many respondents are not volunteer to fill and return the questionnaires on time. The data gathered from both primary and secondary sources were analyzed and presented using descriptive and statistical methods such as frequencies, percentages, tables and charts. In this paper transparency, accountability, effectiveness and efficiency which are the core elements of good governance had selected to assess prevailing conditions in woreda court, municipal office, woreda administration and Gida Ayana electric utility service center. A conceptual Framework model of service quality dimensions was developed.The major challenges in service delivery were thoroughly identified. The findings of the study show that delivery of service quality in the selected public officials is below averageand service users are not satisfied with the service provided. The study recommended that, to improve quality public service delivery at the selected offices, the management of institutions should ensure that all the selected institutions are aware of the principles of good governance and adhere to them in their day to day activities

    Wheat rust epidemics damage Ethiopian wheat production: A decade of field disease surveillance reveals national-scale trends in past outbreaks.

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    Wheat rusts are the key biological constraint to wheat production in Ethiopia-one of Africa's largest wheat producing countries. The fungal diseases cause economic losses and threaten livelihoods of smallholder farmers. While it is known that wheat rust epidemics have occurred in Ethiopia, to date no systematic long-term analysis of past outbreaks has been available. We present results from one of the most comprehensive surveillance campaigns of wheat rusts in Africa. More than 13,000 fields have been surveyed during the last 13 years. Using a combination of spatial data-analysis and visualization, statistical tools, and empirical modelling, we identify trends in the distribution of wheat stem rust (Sr), stripe rust (Yr) and leaf rust (Lr). Results show very high infection levels (mean incidence for Yr: 44%; Sr: 34%; Lr: 18%). These recurrent rust outbreaks lead to substantial economic losses, which we estimate to be of the order of 10s of millions of US-D annually. On the widely adopted wheat variety, Digalu, there is a marked increase in disease prevalence following the incursion of new rust races into Ethiopia, which indicates a pronounced boom-and-bust cycle of major gene resistance. Using spatial analyses, we identify hotspots of disease risk for all three rusts, show a linear correlation between altitude and disease prevalence, and find a pronounced north-south trend in stem rust prevalence. Temporal analyses show a sigmoidal increase in disease levels during the wheat season and strong inter-annual variations. While a simple logistic curve performs satisfactorily in predicting stem rust in some years, it cannot account for the complex outbreak patterns in other years and fails to predict the occurrence of stripe and leaf rust. The empirical insights into wheat rust epidemiology in Ethiopia presented here provide a basis for improving future surveillance and to inform the development of mechanistic models to predict disease spread

    Prevalence of depression and anxiety symptoms and their determinant factors among patients with cancer in southern Ethiopia: a cross-sectional study

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    ObjectiveThe study was aimed to assess the prevalence of depression and anxiety symptoms and their determinant factors among patients with cancer attending follow-up at Hawassa University Comprehensive Specialized Hospital cancer treatment centre, Ethiopia.DesignInstitution-based cross-sectional study design was implemented.SettingPatients with cancer at Hawassa University Comprehensive Specialized Hospital cancer treatment centre from October 2019 to December 2019.ParticipantsRandomly selected 415 patients with cancer who had follow-up at cancer treatment centre.Main outcome measuresAnxiety and depression symptoms were assessed using Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale.ResultThe prevalence rates of depression and anxiety symptoms were found to be 244 (58.8%) and 249 (60.0%), respectively. Older age (&gt;50 years) (AOR (adjusted OR)=2.24, 95% CI=1.14 to 4.40), being unemployed (AOR=1.96, 95% CI=1.08 to 3.56), advanced stage of cancer such as stage III (AOR=5.37, 95% CI=1.34 to 21.45) and stage IV (AOR=4.55, 95% CI=1.12 to 18.44), comorbid psychotic symptoms (AOR=1.67, 95% CI=1.07 to 2.61) and eating problem in the past 2 weeks (AOR=6.16, 95% CI=1.98 to 19.11) were independent factors significantly associated with depressive symptoms. In addition, cancer stage such as stage II (AOR=3.92, 95% CI=1.07 to 14.36) and stage IV (AOR=5.04, 95% CI=1.44 to 17.59) and comorbid psychotic symptoms (AOR=1.73, 95% CI=1.12 to 2.66) were significantly associated with anxiety symptoms.ConclusionDepression and anxiety symptoms among patients with cancer were considerably high. Age, occupation, cancer stage, comorbid psychotic symptoms and eating problem were determinant factors of depressive symptoms among patients with cancer. Moreover, cancer stage and comorbid psychosis were determinants of anxiety symptoms. Healthcare professionals working in the oncology unity need to conduct routine screening and treatment of depression and anxiety symptoms for patients with cancer.</jats:sec

    Global, regional, and national under-5 mortality, adult mortality, age-specific mortality, and life expectancy, 1970–2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016

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    BACKGROUND: Detailed assessments of mortality patterns, particularly age-specific mortality, represent a crucial input that enables health systems to target interventions to specific populations. Understanding how all-cause mortality has changed with respect to development status can identify exemplars for best practice. To accomplish this, the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016 (GBD 2016) estimated age-specific and sex-specific all-cause mortality between 1970 and 2016 for 195 countries and territories and at the subnational level for the five countries with a population greater than 200 million in 2016. METHODS: We have evaluated how well civil registration systems captured deaths using a set of demographic methods called death distribution methods for adults and from consideration of survey and census data for children younger than 5 years. We generated an overall assessment of completeness of registration of deaths by dividing registered deaths in each location-year by our estimate of all-age deaths generated from our overall estimation process. For 163 locations, including subnational units in countries with a population greater than 200 million with complete vital registration (VR) systems, our estimates were largely driven by the observed data, with corrections for small fluctuations in numbers and estimation for recent years where there were lags in data reporting (lags were variable by location, generally between 1 year and 6 years). For other locations, we took advantage of different data sources available to measure under-5 mortality rates (U5MR) using complete birth histories, summary birth histories, and incomplete VR with adjustments; we measured adult mortality rate (the probability of death in individuals aged 15-60 years) using adjusted incomplete VR, sibling histories, and household death recall. We used the U5MR and adult mortality rate, together with crude death rate due to HIV in the GBD model life table system, to estimate age-specific and sex-specific death rates for each location-year. Using various international databases, we identified fatal discontinuities, which we defined as increases in the death rate of more than one death per million, resulting from conflict and terrorism, natural disasters, major transport or technological accidents, and a subset of epidemic infectious diseases; these were added to estimates in the relevant years. In 47 countries with an identified peak adult prevalence for HIV/AIDS of more than 0·5% and where VR systems were less than 65% complete, we informed our estimates of age-sex-specific mortality using the Estimation and Projection Package (EPP)-Spectrum model fitted to national HIV/AIDS prevalence surveys and antenatal clinic serosurveillance systems. We estimated stillbirths, early neonatal, late neonatal, and childhood mortality using both survey and VR data in spatiotemporal Gaussian process regression models. We estimated abridged life tables for all location-years using age-specific death rates. We grouped locations into development quintiles based on the Socio-demographic Index (SDI) and analysed mortality trends by quintile. Using spline regression, we estimated the expected mortality rate for each age-sex group as a function of SDI. We identified countries with higher life expectancy than expected by comparing observed life expectancy to anticipated life expectancy on the basis of development status alone. FINDINGS: Completeness in the registration of deaths increased from 28% in 1970 to a peak of 45% in 2013; completeness was lower after 2013 because of lags in reporting. Total deaths in children younger than 5 years decreased from 1970 to 2016, and slower decreases occurred at ages 5-24 years. By contrast, numbers of adult deaths increased in each 5-year age bracket above the age of 25 years. The distribution of annualised rates of change in age-specific mortality rate differed over the period 2000 to 2016 compared with earlier decades: increasing annualised rates of change were less frequent, although rising annualised rates of change still occurred in some locations, particularly for adolescent and younger adult age groups. Rates of stillbirths and under-5 mortality both decreased globally from 1970. Evidence for global convergence of death rates was mixed; although the absolute difference between age-standardised death rates narrowed between countries at the lowest and highest levels of SDI, the ratio of these death rates-a measure of relative inequality-increased slightly. There was a strong shift between 1970 and 2016 toward higher life expectancy, most noticeably at higher levels of SDI. Among countries with populations greater than 1 million in 2016, life expectancy at birth was highest for women in Japan, at 86·9 years (95% UI 86·7-87·2), and for men in Singapore, at 81·3 years (78·8-83·7) in 2016. Male life expectancy was generally lower than female life expectancy between 1970 and 2016, an

    Global, regional, and national disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) for 333 diseases and injuries and healthy life expectancy (HALE) for 195 countries and territories, 1990–2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016

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    BACKGROUND: Measurement of changes in health across locations is useful to compare and contrast changing epidemiological patterns against health system performance and identify specific needs for resource allocation in research, policy development, and programme decision making. Using the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016, we drew from two widely used summary measures to monitor such changes in population health: disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) and healthy life expectancy (HALE). We used these measures to track trends and benchmark progress compared with expected trends on the basis of the Socio-demographic Index (SDI). METHODS: We used results from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016 for all-cause mortality, cause-specific mortality, and non-fatal disease burden to derive HALE and DALYs by sex for 195 countries and territories from 1990 to 2016. We calculated DALYs by summing years of life lost and years of life lived with disability for each location, age group, sex, and year. We estimated HALE using age-specific death rates and years of life lived with disability per capita. We explored how DALYs and HALE differed from expected trends when compared with the SDI: the geometric mean of income per person, educational attainment in the population older than age 15 years, and total fertility rate. FINDINGS: The highest globally observed HALE at birth for both women and men was in Singapore, at 75·2 years (95% uncertainty interval 71·9-78·6) for females and 72·0 years (68·8-75·1) for males. The lowest for females was in the Central African Republic (45·6 years [42·0-49·5]) and for males was in Lesotho (41·5 years [39·0-44·0]). From 1990 to 2016, global HALE increased by an average of 6·24 years (5·97-6·48) for both sexes combined. Global HALE increased by 6·04 years (5·74-6·27) for males and 6·49 years (6·08-6·77) for females, whereas HALE at age 65 years increased by 1·78 years (1·61-1·93) for males and 1·96 years (1·69-2·13) for females. Total global DALYs remained largely unchanged from 1990 to 2016 (-2·3% [-5·9 to 0·9]), with decreases in communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional (CMNN) disease DALYs offset by increased DALYs due to non-communicable diseases (NCDs). The exemplars, calculated as the five lowest ratios of observed to expected age-standardised DALY rates in 2016, were Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Maldives, Peru, and Israel. The leading three causes of DALYs globally were ischaemic heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, and lower respiratory infections, comprising 16·1% of all DALYs. Total DALYs and age-standardised DALY rates due to most CMNN causes decreased from 1990 to 2016. Conversely, the total DALY burden rose for most NCDs; however, age-standardised DALY rates due to NCDs declined globally. INTERPRETATION: At a global level, DALYs and HALE continue to show improvements. At the same time, we observe that many populations are facing growing functional health loss. Rising SDI was associated with increases in cumulative years of life lived with disability and decreases in CMNN DALYs offset by increased NCD DALYs. Relative compression of morbidity highlights the importance of continued health interventions, which has changed in most locations in pace with the gross domestic product per person, education, and family planning. The analysis of DALYs and HALE and their relationship to SDI represents a robust framework with which to benchmark location-specific health performance. Country-specific drivers of disease burden, particularly for causes with higher-than-expected DALYs, should inform health policies, health system improvement initiatives, targeted prevention efforts, and development assistance for health, including financial and research investments for all countries, regardless of their level of sociodemographic development. The presence of countries that substantially outperform others suggests the need for increased scrutiny for proven examples of best practices, which can help to extend gains, whereas the presence of underperforming countries suggests the need for devotion of extra attention to health systems that need more robust support. FUNDING: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

    Global, regional, and national incidence, prevalence, and years lived with disability for 328 diseases and injuries for 195 countries, 1990–2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016

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    As mortality rates decline, life expectancy increases, and populations age, non-fatal outcomes of diseases and injuries are becoming a larger component of the global burden of disease. The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016 (GBD 2016) provides a comprehensive assessment of prevalence, incidence, and years lived with disability (YLDs) for 328 causes in 195 countries and territories from 1990 to 2016
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