சுகாதார கல்வி ஆராய்ச்சி மற்றும் மேம்பாட்டு இதழ்

Background: Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological disorders worldwide. More than 40 million people worldwide have been estimated to suffer from epilepsy, and an estimate 80% of those individuals are living in developing countries. Like other developing countries, the prevalence of epilepsy in Ethiopia is high, 5.2. Socio-cultural beliefs influence the nature of treatment and care received by people with epilepsy. Therefore, the aim of this study was to assess knowledge, attitude and practice of Wollega University student towards epilepsy.

Methods: Community-based cross-sectional study designs was used to assess the knowledge, attitude, and practice related to epilepsy by using a pretested, structured self-administered questionnaire on 369 Wollega University regular students. Consecutive sampling method was employed for sampling. Descriptive analysis was used to describe the percentages and number distributions of variables.

Result: The majority (88.8%) of respondents had awareness about the disease. A little more than half (53.5%) of the respondents believe epilepsy can be treated with modern medicine and religion. A little more than one third (34.2%) of the respondents said if they saw someone seizing, they would smell him/her something. Most of the respondents (61.9%) don`t think the society discriminates epileptics.

Conclusion: The study had indicated that students had awareness about the disease, yet there is still problem with unsafe practice related to epilepsy; but relatively promising knowledge about epilepsy.

Patients must be cared by nurses who are not only competent but also behave professionally. Nursing is considered as highly respected profession in Society. Nurse educators are in the unique position to inculcate professional values in the education, practice and also among students. A cross-sectional descriptive survey was planned to determine the predictive variables of professionalism among nurse educators working in selected northern Indian states. A total of 343 samples were recruited using maximum variation sampling from the 37 institutions of 23 districts of the selected states. Flexner criterion of professionalism was used to assess the professionalism of nurse educators. Likelihood ratio test (logistic regression analysis) revealed the predictive variables of professionalism that include professional experience, qualification, nature of college management and its duration of establishment, post graduate institutions and institutions attached with own medical college. The study was concluded that number of personal, professional and organizational variables determine the professionalism of the nurse educators.

Background: Ghana’s child immunization coverage is one of the highest in the West African Sub-region but since child immunization coverage highly depends on the knowledge, attitude and practices of mothers, it is important to assess these in a rapidly developing and changing society.

Objectives: The objectives of the study were to find out mothers knowledge on vaccines and vaccine-preventable diseases, determine the sources of information of mothers on immunization and immunization-related issues, assess the attitudes and practices of nursing mothers towards child immunization, investigate the attitude of nursing mothers on Child Welfare Clinic attendance and to assess the attitudes of mothers towards the quality of interaction at the child welfare clinic and satisfaction with service delivery.

Methods: Employing a quantitative method, the study selected 100 respondents for primary data collection and analysis at Madina Polyclinic, a suburb of Accra. These respondents were mothers coming for vaccination of their children at the child welfare clinic in a period from first to 31 April 2014.

Results: From a total of 100 studied mothers, it was established that Mothers have poor knowledge of vaccines and vaccine-related issues. Despite the poor knowledge of mothers, their attitude towards child immunization was very high. The health worker was found to be the main source of information on immunization and immunization-related issues followed by the media and the mother of the respondent. The health worker was also the most trusted source of information relating to immunization. The study found that despite the positive attitude towards immunization mothers had negative practices towards it (mothers afraid of vaccination, preferring a particular mode of vaccine delivery etc.). These negative attitudes could be related to that of poor knowledge. The mother’s work did not prevent the mother from bringing the child to the child welfare clinic for immunization. The mother’s ill health and forgetfulness were the most common causes for missing an immunization schedule at the child welfare clinic. Mothers reported problems with the point of immunization service delivery but nevertheless were satisfied with health care workers performance and felt comfortable coming for vaccines at the immunization clinic.

Conclusions: On the bases of the findings recommendations were made to stakeholders in the health sector to input extra effort to raise the knowledge and address the problem of misinformation of the people. Appropriate information dissemination, aggressive campaigning and family involvement are crucial to the success of the program. Emphasis by health professionals on parents with lower education should also be prioritized.

Background: The study investigated Awareness of health services among sexually abused secondary school teenagers. Teenage sexual abuse is a situation where a teenager suffers from serious mental and physical injury inflicted upon its victim by reason of sexual exploitation. The aim of this study was to establish a greater awareness of the association between sexual abuse and health care utilization.

Methods: The study was conducted in female secondary school students who are within the age range of 13-19 years in Kalabari Kingdom of Rivers State. The study adopted a descriptive survey and correlation research design. The population for the study comprises of 738 female secondary school students. A structured and self-administered questionnaire was the instrument used to collect data for the study. The reliability of the instrument was ascertained through test retest method, using Pearson product moment correlation to ascertain its reliability. Inferential statistics was used to analyze the variables at 0.05 level of significant.

Results: The findings showed that the respondents were aware of the general health services for the sexually abused teenagers with mean score of ͞x= 2.62 ± 0.54, the standard error was 0.020. The result showed that the Health services are not significantly been utilized by the sexually abused secondary school teenagers in Kalabari Kingdom of Rivers State (t_(725,0.025)=0.222, p>0.05). The R-square value of 0.144 showed roughly the contribution of 14.4% of awareness of healthcare service to the utilization. The R-square value of 0.355 showed roughly the contribution of 35.5% of availability of health service to the utilization.

Conclusion: The study concluded that awareness of health Services were relatively a significant predictor of utilization of health services. Awareness of the health services for the sexually abused teenagers was negatively related with the utilization of health services.

Background: Hemophilia is an inherited, lifelong, sex-linked bleeding disorders predominantly occurring in males. People with bleeding disorder face life-long physical, psychological, financial and employment challenges. This study aims to identify the quality of life of people with Hemophilia, who are clinically diagnosed with either Hemophilia A or B.

Methods and materials: A descriptive survey design was conducted among 16 years and above male hemophiliac of Bara and Parsa districts, Nepal. Altogether 61 respondents were selected by using convenient sampling technique. A valid tool (Haemo-A-QoL) after getting approval from Dr Sylvia von Mackenson was translated in Nepali and Bhojpuri language and was administered to collect the data. Data processing was done using a computer (SPSS version 20).

Results: This study showed that the maximum number of respondents was of age group 16-20 (32.8%) and mean age group and standard deviation were 21-25 and 1.382 respectively. Out of 61 respondents 86.1% of the respondents had hemophilia A and 13.9% had hemophilia B. Among them 75.4% respondent know their factor activity level and of which 24.6% had severe, 26.2% had moderate form and 24.6% had mild form of hemophilia. The average Haemo-A-QoL total mean score was 32.72.

Conclusion: The dimension “Physical Health”, Feelings”, “Sports and leisure”, has the highest averages (72.76, 62.09 and 68.5 respectively) indicating poorer quality of life whereas the dimension “future” and “partnership and sexuality” was least impaired dimension between the respondents.