ghanaopendata/ghanaian-research-english huggingface dataset:
A Review Of Food And Nutrition Commuication And Promotion In Ghana

Dietary perception, behavior, and nutritional status can all be influenced by exposure to information. Behavior change communication that is appropriately designed and implemented is critical for motivating optimal dietary behavior. On the other hand, inadvertent or deliberate misinformation can drive unhealthy dietary behaviors. As part of the process to develop food-based dietary guidelines (FBDGs) for Ghana, this rapid evidence review examined the nature, extent, sources, and medium of food and nutrition information dissemination and promotion in Ghana. PubMed, Cochrane, Google Scholar, and Open Access Theses Dissertations (OATD) databases were searched systematically using keywords to identify relevant peer-reviewed and grey literature. The review included 31 documents, after excluding 1,302 documents for ineligibility (based on irrelevant title, abstract, and duplicates). Limited reporting of undernutrition was found in print and electronic media. Unhealthy foods, including sugar-sweetened beverages, snacks, yogurt, instant noodles, candy/chocolate, and ice cream were frequently advertised through various communication media. Children are highly exposed to food advertisements, which target them. Promotional characters, animation, billboards, and front-of-store displays; product-branded books, and toys are common strategies for food marketing and advertisement in Ghana. The most frequently reported sources of health and nutrition information were television, radio, social media, health professionals, families, and friends. Children and adults experienced changes in food preferences and choices as a result of exposure to food advertised on television. The commonly used traditional media were radio and television; printed newspaper use has declined tremendously in the past decade. Social media use (particularly WhatsApp, Facebook, and YouTube) is highest in urban areas, and is growing rapidly; young adults are the most active users of social media platforms. Experts recommend regulation as a mitigation for nutrition miscommunication and inaccurate promotion. The current review highlights the need for regulation of food marketing, and advertisement to safeguard a healthy food environment in Ghana.

Source: UG
A review of genitourinary cancers at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital Accra, Ghana

Objective: To determine the frequency and pattern of genitourinary malignancies seen at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, Accra, Ghana Materials and methods: A retrospective review of genitourinary malignancies seen at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital from 1980 to 1990 was undertaken. Data was obtained from the operating theatre register, histopathology reports, and patient case notes. Information retrieved included age and sex of patients, organ involved and laterality where appropriate and tumour type. Results: 548 genitourinary malignancies were seen, of which 479 (87.4%) were in males and 69 (12.6%) in females. Adults comprised 93.4% and children 6.6%. The organ-specific distribution was as follows - prostate 349 (63.7%), bladder 117 (21.3%), kidney 57 (10.4%), testis 13 (2.4%), penis 10 (1.8%) and one each of the ureter and urethra. The kidney tumours comprised nephroblatoma (56.1%), adenocarcinoma (35.1%) with the rest being of urothelial origin. Of the bladder tumours, 50.4% and 44.8% were transitional cell and squamous cell carcinoma respectively. Virtually all the prostatic cancers (99%) were adenocarcinomas. Of the testicular tumours 8(61.5%) were of germ cell and 5 (38.5%) non-germ cell origin. The penile cancers were all squamous. The ureteric and urethral tumours were due to transitional cell and squamous cell carcinomas respectively. Conclusion: Prostatic carcinoma was the predominant genitourinary tumour, accounting for nearly two-thirds of cases, followed by the bladder and the kidney. Other tumours were relatively uncommon. Transitional cell carcinoma of the bladder was seen a little more commonly than the squamous type.

Source: UG
A review of Ghana's 2009-2013 integrated strategic response plan for pandemic influenza: illustrative study of the perceived adequacy of preparedness for the pandemic influenza of sub-Sahara Africa

OBJECTIVES: To review the National Integrated Strategic Plan for Pandemic Influenza for 2009-2013 and assess whether it is in congruence with the nation's emergency preparedness status. METHOD: The authors examined the National Plan 'as is' and evaluated it against the 'State and Local Pandemic Influenza Planning Checklist' of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The authors matched the activities in the National Plan apropos the national emergency response capabilities. From the legal framework, published studies and other grey literature on the thematic areas of the Plan, the authors developed key items found in response programmes and drew a 5-point Likert-type scale for assessment. The authors analysed the results in relation to WHO's framework for hospital emergency preparedness, and conducted two-sample non-parametric Wilcoxon rank sum (Mann-Whitney) tests. RESULTS/DISCUSSION: The result showed that Ghana's health emergency preparedness is in disarray. About 75% of the health facilities lack emergency preparedness plans, surge capacity planning, triage for mass event and mutual aid agreements. CONCLUSIONS: The authors concluded that the Plan is incongruent with Ghana's public health emergency preparedness. The evaluation is important for Ghana and the subregion.

Source: UG
Review Of Ghana’s Food Environment: Drivers Of Availability, Barriers To Healthy Food Access, And Impact Of Interventions And Policies

Food environments exert a significant effect on the population's dietary choices and health outcomes. Policies that influence the food environment, can have a significant impact on individual and population dietary choices. This rapid review assessed the nature and interaction within the Ghanaian food environment and the impact that existing school, workplace, and national food policies have on dietary intake and nutritional outcomes. Online databases and university repositories were searched for relevant articles and documents. A total of forty articles and documents were included in the review. The majority of the reviewed papers (85%) used a cross-sectional design. The findings show that traditional outlets (open markets) constitute the main food source in the Ghanaian populace, while convenience stores serve as an important source of processed foods. Prepared local foods are often consumed outside the home and are mainly sourced from street food vendors. Street foods are perceived as less expensive, convenient, and delicious. The food environment was found to influence dietary acquisition, intake, and nutritional outcomes. Although most nutrients provided by the School Feeding Programme (SFP) are below recommended intake standards, the SFP contributes positively to improved diets and nutrition status of school-age children. Children attending SFP-implementing schools experience higher intakes of protein, iron, zinc, calcium, vitamin A, and folate, and have higher hemoglobin, and lower prevalence of stunting, underweight, and thinness than children in non-SFP implementing schools. The availability of a private room for breastfeeding mothers improved breastfeeding frequency. Ghana’s fatty meat restriction policy has reduced the availability and sale of fatty meat on the Ghanaian market. Reported drivers and barriers to healthy food consumption include socio-economic factors, media information, food storage facilities, cultural perception, fruit seasonality, knowledge of the nutrient value of fruits and vegetables, safety profile of fruits and vegetables, and contribution of household production to dietary intake. In conclusion, the food environment review reveals the drivers of availability, barriers to healthy food access, and the impact of interventions and policies on the Ghanaian food environment.

Source: UG
Review of Governance of Welfare State Reform: A Cross National and Cross Sectoral Comparison of Policy and Politics: IRENE DINGELDEY and HEINZ ROTHGANG (eds)

The book departs from the conventional fixation on patterns of expenditure among OECD countries for explaining cross-national difference by showing how governance regimes and political processes can help explain differences and similarities in specific policies or among countries. It is both innovative and unique to use the concept of governance to investigate a variety of social policies under reform and the political processes that undergird them, as well as associated shifting models of interaction among actors. The book is not only empirically grounded but it also raises new questions about convergence and divergences of welfare policies in the wake of the reforms that started in the 1980s and points to alternative avenues for assessing and comparing changes in welfare states or programs. In all the countries and policy areas examined in the book, the authors are unanimous in concluding that significant changes have occurred both within and beyond the post-war consensus. Overall, Governance of Welfare State Reform contains well-researched and useful analyses for scholars and policy-makers who are interested in health care, pensions, labour markets, education, ideational analysis, politics of social policy reforms, and models of governing social programs across different national settings

Source: UG
Review of J.C. Vrooman’s “Rules of Relief: Institutions of Social Security and their Impact”

Rules of Relief is a comprehensive study, however, the analysis ignored the political processes involved in the creation of social security institutions investigated. For instance, for all the empirical cases in the study, who were the major institutional and individual actors? What were the modes of interaction among major actors in the creation of social security institutions? To what extent did patterns of interactions shape the design of existing institutions? What were the impact of political institutions (presidential, parliamentary, electoral politics, civil society, elected and unelected officials) as well as the role of veto players (Tsebelis 1995) in determining the outcome of social security institutions? In other word, this book prioritized the what aspects of the construction of institutions over the how dimension. Despite this omission, Vrooman’s book is a seminal contribution to the literature on institutional research and comparative welfare analysis. It is a contains a provocative analysis that will be useful for graduate students interested in social policy, institutional analysis and social security studies in general. Rules of Relief also stands to serve a great reference library for researchers interested in understanding welfare state development in the advanced industrialized countries

Source: UG
A Review of Leadership and Capacity Gaps in Nutrition Sensitive Agricultural Policies and Strategies for Selected Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia

Background: Agriculture policies and strategies designed, purposefully, to address malnutrition are considered nutrition-sensitive and are a critical component of global efforts to address malnutrition in all its forms. However, limited evidence exists on extent and how nutrition is being integrated into agriculture sector policies, strategies, and programs. A review was conducted to address 2 questions: How nutrition-sensitive are agriculture policies, plans, and investments in selected Sub-Saharan African (SSA) and Asian countries? and Which capacity and leadership gaps limit scale up of nutrition-sensitive agriculture policy and programs? Methods: The review of existing policies was conducted for 11 selected focus countries (9 in SSA and 2 from Asia) of the CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) Collaborative Research Programme on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health led by the IFPRI (International Food Policy Research Institute). The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)’s 10-point key recom mendations for designing nutrition-sensitive agricultural interventions was used as an analytical framework. Additionally, a rapid systematic review of published peer-reviewed and grey literature was carried out to identify capacity gaps based on the United Nations Development Program’s capacity assessment framework. Results: We found that there is nutrition sensitivity of the policies and strategies but to varying degrees. There is limited capacity for optimum implementation of these policies, programs, and strategies. For most of the countries, there is capacity to articulate what needs to happen, but there are important capacity limitations to translate the given policy/program instruments into effective action.Conclusions: The gaps identified constitute important evidence to inform capacity strengthening of nutrition-sensitive actions for desired nutrition and health outcomes in Africa and Asia.

Source: UG
A review of machine learning and satellite imagery for poverty prediction: Implications for development research and applications

The field of artificial intelligence is seeing the increased application of satellite imagery to analyse poverty in its various manifestations. This nascent but rapidly grow ing intersection of scholarship holds the potential to help us better understand poverty by leveraging big data and recent advances in machine vision. In this study, we statisti cally analyse the literature in the expanding field of welfare and poverty predictions from the combination of machine learning and satellite imagery. Here, we apply an integra tive review method to extract key data on factors related to the predictive power of welfare. We found that the most important factors correlated to the predictive power of welfare are the number of pre-processing steps employed, the number of datasets used, the type of welfare indica tor targeted and the choice of AI model. Studies that used stock measure indicators (assets) as targets achieved better performance—17 percentage points higher—in predicting welfare than those that targeted flow measures (income and consumption) ones. Additionally, we found that the combi nation of machine learning and deep learning significantly increases predictive power—by as much as 15 percentage points—compared to using either alone. Surprisingly, we found that the spatial resolution of the satellite imagery used is important but not critical to the performance as the relationship is positive but not statistically significant. These findings have important implications for future research in this domain and for anyone aspiring to use the methodology.

Source: UG
Review of MDA registers for Lymphatic Filariasis: Findings, and potential uses in addressing the endgame elimination challenges

The Department of Parasitology conducts research into parasitic diseases of public health importance with the overall goal of reducing their transmission and the heavy disease burden that they impose on affected populations. The Department maintains focus on parasitic diseases in general. These include major diseases such as malaria, and others listed under the Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD) control initiative such as, lymphatic filariasis, onchocerciasis, schistosomiasis, soil-transmitted helminthiasis, trypanosomiasis and leishmaniasis.

Source: UG
A Review of Non-Invasive Methods of Monitoring Intracranial Pressure

Intracranial pressure (ICP) monitoring is an important aspect of neuro-medicine. ICP is the pressure created by the presence of cerebrospinal fluid. ICP monitoring techniques consist of invasive (in vivo) and non-invasive methods (in vitro). Modern research aims to eliminate invasive monitoring of ICP and promote non-invasive methods of monitoring ICP. This review aims to assess the current methods and research related to non-invasive monitoring of ICP. Invasive methods of monitoring ICP remain the most accurate methods of measuring ICP but are associated with many complications. This review discusses the current approaches, advantages and disadvantages of these approaches in ICP monitoring. A critical study of the literature review demonstrates that for accuracy and precision, an innovative non-invasive method for ICP monitoring is needed. There is more room for further research and development in ICP monitoring. A universal method of ICP monitoring is needed and not for a class or group of patients.

Source: UG
Review of nursing and midwifery programmes in Africa

Background: This article describes an action research project to develop and test a process of Internal and external review of health professionals' education in Africa, with special reference to nursing. Objectives: The objectives were to develop and validate the process and instrument used to establish the current benchmark of nursing education in Africa. This article reports only on the internal and external evaluation of some nursing programmes in Africa. Settings and participants: The setting was the African Region of the World Health Organization, involving different nursing schools in the different cycles of the process. Methods: Guidelines for internal and external review of nursing schools and programmes were drafted, tested and refined through a process of consultation, workshops, testing and amending. The last test involved the internal review of five African nursing schools and the external review of four of these. Results: The external reviews led to seven changes being made to the process and to the instrument to enhance clarity and quality of information gathered. The external reviewers evaluated the process concluding that both the schools and individuals benefited from their involvement in the process. Conclusions: Having processes and structures in place to make the review of health professional education programmes possible should enhance regional benchmarking and local quality improvement. © Unisa Press.

Source: UG
Review of orbital exenterations in Korle-Bu teaching hospital

Orbital exenteration (OE) is a disfiguring procedure which typically involves removal of the entire contents of the orbit including the periorbita, appendages, eyelids and, sometimes, a varying amount of surrounding skin and bone. It results in devastating functional, aesthetic and psychological losses. This study reports an experience of OE in a Teaching Hospital in Accra Ghana. The records of all patients who underwent OE between November 2005 and October 2009 were reviewed retrospectively. These were cases seen at the orbit and oculoplastic clinic of the eye unit. A total of 25 patients underwent OE. Nineteen (76%) of these were for invasive orbital squamous cell carcinomas and six (24%) were for other cases. Only one patient had OE for a benign condition (orbital haemangioma). Four patients had lid sparing procedures. One of these was for a patient with extensive ocular surface squamous cell carcinoma. Five patients had recurrent tumours. Among those patients with squamous cell carcinoma, seven had previous procedures, sometimes multiple before reporting to our clinic. Orbital exenterations in developing countries are mostly for neglected periorbital and ocular surface malignancies. Educating patients to seek medical attention as soon as they notice a persistent conjunctival growth could prevent this.

Source: UG
Review of policy action for healthy environmentally sustainable food systems in sub-Saharan Africa

Many sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries are experiencing multiple burdens of malnutrition. Rising overweight/obesity coexist alongside persistent burdens of under-nutrition and multiple micronutrient deficiencies. Poverty and social inequity remain key drivers of unhealthy diets and malnutrition. Diets in SSA are increasingly transitioning towards unhealthy (energy dense, nutrient-poor and unsafe) and environmentally unsustainable diets. Healthy, sustainable food systems are required to deal with these considerable challenges equitably, so policy action needs to balance the health, environmental and economic dimensions of diets and food systems. We review evidence in recent literature for which policy actions have the best chance of success in SSA by appraising their likely impact, relevance, cost/affordability and feasibility to help guide policymakers and researchers in their development and evaluation.

Source: UG
A review of prospects and challenges of photocatalytic decomposition of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) under humid environment

Abstract Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are harmful for humans and the surrounding ecosystem. Emissions from these pollutants have caused a signifi cant reduction in air quality, which has an effect on people’s health. Alkanes, alkenes, alcohols, aromatics, and other VOC pollutants have all been broken down by TiO2 photocatalytic processes. Due to several operating inefficiencies and deactivation issues in humid environments, the practical application of photocatalysis has not been realized on a broader scale. The effectiveness of photo-oxidation of VOCs is impacted by a variety of environmental conditions. In the photocatalytic oxidation of the VOCs, relative humidity (RH) is critical. Therefore, it is important to review the recent findings on how humidity affects the photocatalytic breakdown of VOCs in air. To satisfy this need, this work provides a critical review of the related literature with focus on the fun damentals of photocatalysis, photocatalytic degradation of air pollutants, and the influence of humidity on the photocatalytic process degradation for selected air pollutants. It also highlights the kinetic models and typical photocatalytic reactor and supports for VOC removal.

Source: UG
A review of salmonella group G septicaemia in children at the korle bu teaching hospital (1973-1978).

The Bacteriology Department aims to improve the quality of life first for Ghanaians and the world at large by conducting research into bacterial diseases of public health importance to Ghana and globally. In addition to working on enteric pathogens and sexually transmitted diseases, the department’s current main focus is on the two most important mycobacterial diseases of public health importance to Ghana, namely Buruli ulcer (BU) and tuberculosis (TB).

Source: UG
A review of soil fertility management communication in sub-Saharan Africa

In sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), declining soil fertility is among the factors affecting optimal food production. Although a number of interventions have been implemented to improve soil fertility management (SFM) in SSA, their adoption especially among small scale farmers has been low. Although the literature provides considerable evidence of socio economic factors which influence adoption, the subject of how communication influences adoption of SFM remains under-explored. This paper therefore reviewed studies on SFM communication in SSA. The objectives were to identify the current focus of studies on SFM communication, the current definitions of communication which informed such studies, and the type of SFM practices being communicated in the SSA region. Using specific search terms, articles were collected from various databases and content analysed. The review revealed five main themes as the focus of current studies on SFM. The study also revealed two main interpretations of communication which in turn influence the use of either diffusion or participatory communication strategies for SFM communication. The review also showed a focus on integrated soil fertility management (ISFM) messages in the SSA area. The study concludes that while each of the two communication strategies has their individual strengths, farmers prefer participatory strategies. This is because participatory strategies foster interaction and greater understanding; thereby, increasing the likelihood of farmer adoption of SFM practices in SSA. The review concludes by calling for further research on the use of participatory communication to engage farmers about various SFM practices in SSA.

Source: UG