No abstract

Background: Approximately 1.9 million people worldwide are blind or visually impaired due to trachoma, and trachoma remains endemic in 44 countries. Amhara in Ethiopia has the highest burden of trachoma in the world. A key indicator of whether active trachoma requires public health intervention is the incidence of trachomatous inflammation-follicular in children aged 1 to 9 years. However, limited study has been conducted on the determinants in rural communities. This study therefore aimed to fill this gap by identifying determinants in the Gozamn district of northwestern Ethiopia. Methods: A community-based case-control study was carried out between March 15 and April 30, 2021. Five or more follicles on the epitaxial conjunctivae that are larger than 0.5 mm were considered a case. Controls were free of any sign of trachoma. A semi-structured questionnaire and an observational checklist were used to gather the data, and STATA version 14 was used for the analysis. Using a 95% confidence interval, both bivariable and multivariable conditional logistic regression was performed. Results: A total of 726 mothers/caregivers participated in this study, with a participation rate of 98.4%. Children from poor families (mAOR = 4.68; CI: 2.80-6.21), households where the water source is far from home (>30 minutes) (mAOR = 4.91; KI: 1.37-12.56), mean daily water consumption (<20 l/c/d) (mAOR = 4.42; CI:1.71-11.39), face washing frequency less than once a day (mAOR = 10.64; CI: 2.58-18.84), cloth washing frequency once a month or less (mAOR = 9.18; CI: 2.20-18.62), and mothers or caregivers with poor knowledge of active trachoma (mAOR = 3.88; CI: 1.47-10.22) were determinants of trachomatous inflammation-follicular. Conclusions: We conclude that infrequent faces and clothes washing; unavailability of water, children in poor families, and poor knowledge of mothers/caregivers were risk factors. Health education initiatives about active trachoma, its prevention, and control methods focusing on personal hygiene are so required.

Background Musculoskeletal disorders are a major cause of occupational disability worldwide in computer users and impose a considerable burden on the individual, society, and industry in terms of absenteeism and cost of treatment. Studies on the risk of ergonomic exposure of computer users to the development of musculoskeletal disorder in banking industries are limited. Objective To determine the factors of musculoskeletal disorders and its prevalence among computer user bankers of Dessie city who regularly use computers at work. Methodology Institution based cross-sectional study was conducted among 269 bankers that use computer at work. They were selected from 21 bank branches by lottery method, and proportionally allocated. Then, the data was collected by self-administered questionnaire from each branch. After data clearance, data was entered into EPI software version 3.1 and exported to SPSS version 25.0. The data was analysed using descriptive statistical method and using bi-variable and multivariable logistic regression models. Variables with p-value < 0.05 with 95% CI was considered as statistically significant factor for developing musculoskeletal disorder. Result A total of 269 participants were included in this study with a response rate of 98.8%. The overall prevalence of musculoskeletal disorder was found to be 63.2% (95% CI: 56.8–68.8). factors like absence of display screen coverings (AOR = 1.96, 95% CI:1.01, 3.83), fixed type chair (AOR = 2.14, 95% CI: 1.02, 4.49), no enough working room (AOR = 2.59, 95% CI:1.47,4.58) and overtimes/unplanned work shifts (AOR = 1.85, 95% CI:1.06,3.25) were significantly associated factors to musculoskeletal disorder. Conclusions Based on our study, musculoskeletal disorder was a problem among computer user bankers, with an overall prevalence of 63.2%. We recommend that awareness creation through education and training on prevention and coping strategies for musculoskeletal disorders be made mandatory for bankers to reduce the occurrence of musculoskeletal disorders.

Precipitation and temperature are the most fundamental meteorological/weather parameters with high spatiotemporal variability over any region of the Globe. Over Ethiopia, Upper Blue Nile basin (UBNB) is the major water resources for irrigation and societal needs not only for Ethiopia but also for downstream countries. However, the exact mechanism to study climate change is not yet satisfactory. Climate variability over UBNB is too high due to its variable topographical features. Gravity wave is one of the most influencing factors to climate change. However, there is no study conducted by considering gravity wave activities on the effect of climate change over UBNB. Therefore, the attempt is made the influence of gravity waves on climate change and variability over UBNB. To this end, we inferred different data sources (reanalysis and ground based). Kinetic energy and momentum equations were used in this study. The results indicate that the reanalysis (ECMWF) precipitation and temperature data were well agreed to the ground based data with correlation coefficient of 0.83 and 0.41 respectively. Strong gravity wave takes tropospheric cloud to stratosphere which causes drought events, while weak gravity wave moves lower tropospheric cloud to tropopause which leads to the occurrence floods. Generally, gravity wave activities affected precipitation and temperature distribution during rainy season. Hence, future study is quite useful to investigate the frequency of high gravity wave occurrence in connection to Ethiopian drought events.