Review of Oral Rabies Vaccination of Dogs and Its Application in India

Oral rabies vaccines (ORVs) have been in use to successfully control rabies in wildlife since 1978 across Europe and the USA. This review focuses on the potential and need for the use of ORVs in free-roaming dogs to control dog-transmitted rabies in India. Iterative work to improve ORVs over the past four decades has resulted in vaccines that have high safety profiles whilst generating a consistent protective immune response to the rabies virus. The available evidence for safety and efficacy of modern ORVs in dogs and the broad and outspoken support from prominent global public health institutions for their use provides confidence to national authorities considering their use in rabies-endemic regions. India is estimated to have the largest rabies burden of any country and, whilst considerable progress has been made to increase access to human rabies prophylaxis, examples of high-output mass dog vaccination campaigns to eliminate the virus at the source remain limited. Efficiently accessing a large proportion of the dog population through parenteral methods is a considerable challenge due to the large, evasive stray dog population in many settings. Existing parenteral approaches require large skilled dog-catching teams to reach these dogs, which present financial, operational and logistical limitations to achieve 70% dog vaccination coverage in urban settings in a short duration. ORV presents the potential to accelerate the development of approaches to eliminate rabies across large areas of the South Asia region. Here we review the use of ORVs in wildlife and dogs, with specific consideration of the India setting. We also present the results of a risk analysis for a hypothetical campaign using ORV for the vaccination of dogs in an Indian state.

Oral health-related knowledge and practices among a cohort of pregnant Portuguese women

Objectives: To assess the level of knowledge and attitudes regarding prenatal and infant oral health in a sample of pregnant women from Coimbra, Portugal. Methods: A self-applied questionnaire was administered to randomly selected pregnant women who attended prenatal check-ups at two public health institutions in Coimbra. Collected data included sociodemographic information, oral health knowledge and practices in pregnancy, and knowledge on oral health in children. All ethical requirements were met. Statistical analysis was conducted using descriptive and inferential methods. Variables were tested for independence using a chi-square test with a 95% confidence interval. Results: A total of 120 women enrolled in the study. Although 68.9% of participants brushed their teeth twice daily, 36.4% reported not using floss, with a statistically significant association with age (p=0.004). Half of the respondents had not attended a dental appointment before pregnancy, and 59.2% believed pregnancy could be harmful to oral health. Findings showed limited knowledge of the possible consequences of gingivitis and periodontitis to the course of pregnancy and the importance of diet in oral health. Moreover, a low level of understanding was noted regarding the existence and prevention of early childhood caries. Conclusions: Oral health-related knowledge and practices of surveyed women were in general deficient. Considering pregnancy is a period of particular interest for acquiring knowledge and good oral health practices, which are decisive for both the expectant mother and the child, our results highlight an urgent need to implement prenatal oral health care programs in this study population.

Sentiment analysis of Twitter posts related to the COVID-19 vaccines

A real threat to the people of the world has appeared as a result of the spread of the Coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) disease. A lot of scientific and financial support has been made to devote vaccines capable of ending this epidemic. However, these vaccines have become a subject of debate between individuals, as some people tend to support taking vaccines and others rejecting them. This paper aims to create a framework model to classify the sentiment and opinions of individuals that published in Twitter regarding the COVID-19 vaccines. Identify those opinions can help public health institutions to know public opinions and direct their efforts towards promoting taking vaccinations. Two of the machines learning classification models which are the support vector machine (SVM) and naive Bayes (NB) classifier are applied here. Other pre-processing methods were applied as well to filter unstructured tweets.

Knowledge Sharing, Individualism, Collectivism and Organizational Innovative Behaviour in the Public Health Organizations

<p>The purpose of this paper is to investigate that either individualists or collectivists employees are more innovative in the public sector concerning knowledge sharing and organizational culture. The study adopted quantitative research technique and data was collected through an online survey. We collected data from a field study of 480 employees working in Pakistan's two major public health institutions to test the study's hypotheses. The study adopted a hierarchical linear regression model to test the hypothesis. Our results show that there is a significant positive influence of organizational-based knowledge sharing, individual-based knowledge sharing, collectivism, and individualism on organizational innovative behavior in the organizations. Furthermore, this study also found a significant positive impact of collectivism and individualism as moderators on organizational innovative behavior. Finally, this study concluded that collectivism has a higher positive impact on organizational innovative behavior in comparison to individualism. </p>

Knowledge Sharing, Individualism, Collectivism and Organizational Innovative Behaviour in the Public Health Organizations

<p>The purpose of this paper is to investigate that either individualists or collectivists employees are more innovative in the public sector concerning knowledge sharing and organizational culture. The study adopted quantitative research technique and data was collected through an online survey. We collected data from a field study of 480 employees working in Pakistan's two major public health institutions to test the study's hypotheses. The study adopted a hierarchical linear regression model to test the hypothesis. Our results show that there is a significant positive influence of organizational-based knowledge sharing, individual-based knowledge sharing, collectivism, and individualism on organizational innovative behavior in the organizations. Furthermore, this study also found a significant positive impact of collectivism and individualism as moderators on organizational innovative behavior. Finally, this study concluded that collectivism has a higher positive impact on organizational innovative behavior in comparison to individualism. </p>

Prognostic Factors for Survival in Patients with Gastric Cancer Treated at Two Public Health Institutions in Mexico

Objective: To analyze the clinical records of patients with gastric adenocarcinoma, treated at two different public health institutions in Mexico to determine survival rates. Methods: Cox proportional-hazards model was fitted to identify the factors involved in survival of patients. Result: The results show that subjects aged 41 to 50 years of age had a 56% lower risk of death from gastric cancer compared to those <40 years of age. Asthenia and/or adynamia, weight loss and leukocytosis increased the risk of dying. The incidence of melena was found to be a protective factor for mortality. Conclusion: At age <40 years, symptoms such as asthenia, adynamia and weight loss and leukocytosis are poor prognosis predictors in patients with gastric cancer. Melena seems to be a protective sign of gastric cancer mortality in Mexico. Given the low 5-year survival rate in patients with gastric cancer, further studies are necessary to explore the factors associated with survival to contribute to effective intervention.

Japanese newspaper advertisements for dietary supplements before and after COVID-19: a content analysis

ObjectivesPublic health institutions have alerted consumers about advertising for dietary supplements with false claims of preventing or treating COVID-19. We quantitatively and qualitatively examined newspaper advertisements for dietary supplements before and after the COVID-19 spread.DesignContent analysis.ParticipantsWe analysed advertisements for dietary supplements in two major Japanese newspapers in February–July 2019 and February–July 2020. Our analysis covered 2167 advertisements.ResultsThe number of advertisements for dietary supplements that claimed to be effective in infection prevention (p=0.009) and improving joint (p=0.002) and digestive functions (p=0.002) significantly increased after the spread of COVID-19 compared with before. Dietary supplements that claimed to be effective in preventing infection were advertised in combination with recommendations for gargling and handwashing. Such terms as ‘defence’ and ‘prevent’ were used to promote the preventive effect.ConclusionsFalse and misleading claims in advertising for dietary supplements may result in consumer harm, such as overdosing and failure to take preventive behaviour. While the pandemic continues, there will be an increasing need for disseminating accessible information about the appropriate use of dietary supplements, consumer education and warnings to manufacturers.

Exploring and Monitoring the Reasons for Hesitation with COVID-19 Vaccine Based on Social-Platform Text and Classification Algorithms

(1) Background: The COVID-19 pandemic is globally rampant, and it is the common goal of all countries to eliminate hesitation in taking the COVID-19 vaccine and achieve herd immunity as soon as possible. However, people are generally more hesitant about the COVID-19 vaccine than about other conventional vaccines, and exploring the specific reasons for hesitation with the COVID-19 vaccine is crucial. (2) Methods: this paper selected text data from a social platform to conduct qualitative analysis of the text to structure COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy reasons, and then conducted semiautomatic quantitative content analysis of the text through a supervised machine-learning method to classify them. (3) Results: on the basis of a large number of studies and news reports on vaccine hesitancy, we structured 12 types of the COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy reasons. Then, in the experiment, we conducted comparative analysis of three classifiers: support vector machine (SVM), logistic regression (LR), and naive Bayes classifier (NBC). Results show that the SVM classification model with TF-IDF and SMOTE had the best performance. (4) Conclusions: our study structured 12 types of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy reasons through qualitative analysis, filling in the gaps of previous studies. At the same time, this work provides public health institutions with a monitoring tool to support efforts to mitigate and eliminate COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy.

Trust in Institutions, Not in Political Leaders, Determines Covid-19 Public Health Compliance in Societies across the Globe

A core assumption often heard in public health discourse is that increasing trust in national political leaders is essential for securing public health compliance during crises like the Covid-19 pandemic (2019-ongoing). However, studies of national government trust typically are too coarse-grained to differentiate between the trust in institutions versus more interpersonal trust in political leaders. Here, we present multiscale trust measurements for twelve countries and territories across the West, Oceania and East Asia. These trust results are used to identify which specific domains of government and social trust were most crucial for securing public health compliance (frequency of mask wearing and social distancing), and understanding the reasons for following the health measures (belief in effectiveness of public health measures). Our cross-cultural survey-based analysis (12 countries/territories, N=3369 subjects) reveals that higher trust in national and local public health institutions were a universally consistent predictor of public health compliance, while trust in national political leaders was actually not predictive of compliance across cultures and geographical regions. Institutional trust was mediated by multiple types of transparency, including providing rationale, securing public feedback, and honestly expressing uncertainty. These measures of transparency in public health communications, in turn, influence the public’s compliance behavior and beliefs. In total, these results highlight the importance of distinguishing between components of government trust, to better understand which entities the public give the most attention to during crises. Our findings may contribute to better planning and improvement of society-level cooperation, especially under highly uncertain disaster contexts.

Application Notes: APD Handwash Android App – A tool for evaluating the effectiveness of handwashing

Handwashing is a basic infection control practice that needs to be performed correctly to be effective. In the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, its correct practice is emphasized by public health institutions. However, turning a practice into a habit requires acceptance for adoption of the twenty-second proper procedure to which difficulty remains. To promote and convince the average user, we developed the “APD Handwash app” as a home-use demonstration/education tool to the pitfalls and need of proper handwashing practices through the detection of assigned clean or dirty areas on the hand in a quantitative manner to provide a gauge to the effectiveness of washing when used before and after washing.