ghanaopendata/ghanaian-research-english huggingface dataset:
Sample size calculation for multicentre efficacy trials of blood-stage malaria antigens

Abstract Background Sample size has increasingly become a prerequisite for grant approval. Study size calculations for multicentre trials are more complicated because these sites present different assumptions on incidence of disease expected in the control group; this then changes the mechanism of sample size determination. This paper suggested an alternative approach to estimating study size in multicentre vaccine efficacy trials. Methods The approach suggested in this paper was to determine the expected number of events for a given sample size under set of different assumptions. The power was then calculated given the expected number of events under the set of assumptions so as to assess the sensitivity of the sample size. The approach was then illustrated assuming a malaria vaccine efficacy trial planned in four centres. Results The approach showed that by assuming 30% cumulative incidence of malaria in three of the centres and 10% cumulative incidence in the other centre, a sample size of 460 children in each centre (total 1,840) corresponding to a total of 339 events gives 90% power to detect vaccine efficacy of 30% at 5% level of significance, allowing for 15% loss to follow-up. However, if the incidence is lower than anticipated or a centre drops out altogether the power will be low. But this would not have much effect if it were a low incidence centre. Rather, it might have major effect if it were a high incidence centre. Discussion Decision on recruitment depends on whether separate estimates of efficacy in each transmission level are reasonable. If not, equal numbers can be recruited, which then gives safety data for each site and overall efficacy. Recruiting all or most subjects in the highest transmission site can minimize sample size but may be better to spread the risk due to uncertainty about incidence due to year to year variation and also the possibility of a site dropping due to political or other unforeseen problems. Conclusion The approach demonstrated the potential of estimating the expected number of events required to give a specified power for multicentre efficacy trails of blood stage malaria antigens.

Source: UG
Sanderlings using African-Eurasian flyways: a review of current knowledge

Despite the worldwide occurrence of Sanderlings Calidris alba on popular beaches, strikingly little is known about their biology compared to other common waders. Here we review the limited available knowledge of Sanderlings that use African–Eurasian flyways. The basis for this review was a workshop on Sanderlings, held during the International Wader Study Group conference in Jastrzębia Góra, Poland in 2008. We focus on biogeography,trends, numbers, diet, migration patterns and reproduction. Gaps in our knowledge are identified and we discuss the evidence for a Siberian origin of Sanderlings wintering in NW Europe, and plead for more non-estuarine surveys and collaboration between colour-ring projects both in space and time to get a better understanding of population dynamics and migration phenology.

Source: UG
Sanitation investments in Ghana: An ethnographic investigation of the role of tenure security, land ownership and livelihoods

Background: Ghana's low investment in household sanitation is evident from the low rates of improved sanitation. This study analysed how land ownership, tenancy security and livelihood patterns are related to sanitation investments in three adjacent rural and peri-urban communities in a district close to Accra, Ghana's capital. Methods: Qualitative data was gathered for this comparative ethnographic study over seven months, (June, 2011-January, 2012) using an average of 43 (bi-weekly) participant observation per community and 56 in-depth interviews. Detailed observational data from study communities were triangulated with multiple interview material and contextual knowledge on social structures, history of settlement, land use, livelihoods, and access to and perceptions about sanitation. Results: This study shows that the history of settlement and land ownership issues are highly correlated with people's willingness and ability to invest in household sanitation across all communities. The status of being a stranger i.e. migrant in the area left some populations without rights over the land they occupied and with low incentives to invest in sanitation, while indigenous communities were challenged by the increasing appropriation of their land for commercial enterprises and for governmental development projects. Interview responses suggest that increasing migrant population and the high demand for housing in the face of limited available space has resulted in general unwillingness and inability to establish private sanitation facilities in the communities. The increasing population has also created high demand for cheap accommodation, pushing tenants to accept informal tenancy agreements that provided for poor sanitation facilities. In addition, poor knowledge of tenancy rights leaves tenants in no position to demand sanitation improvements and therefore landlords feel no obligation or motivation to provide and maintain domestic sanitation facilities. Conclusions: The study states that poor land rights, the history of settlements, in-migration and insecure tenancy are key components that are associated with local livelihoods and investments in private sanitation in rapidly changing rural and peri-urban communities of Ghana. Sanitation policy makers and programme managers must acknowledge that these profound local, ethnic and economic forces are shaping people's abilities and motivations for sanitation investments.

Source: UG
Sankofa pediatric HIV disclosure intervention cyber data management: building capacity in a resource-limited setting and ensuring data quality

Prevalence of pediatric HIV disclosure is low in resource-limited settings. Innovative, culturally sensitive, and patient-centered disclosure approaches are needed. Conducting such studies in resource-limited settings is not trivial considering the challenges of capturing, cleaning, and storing clinical research data. To overcome some of these challenges, the Sankofa pediatric disclosure intervention adopted an interactive cyber infrastructure for data capture and analysis. The Sankofa Project database system is built on the HUBzero cyber infrastructure (https://hubzero.org), an open source software platform. The hub database components support: (1) data management – the “databases” component creates, configures, and manages database access, backup, repositories, applications, and access control; (2) data collection – the “forms” component is used to build customized web case report forms that incorporate common data elements and include tailored form submit processing to handle error checking, data validation, and data linkage as the data are stored to the database; and (3) data exploration – the “dataviewer” component provides powerful methods for users to view, search, sort, navigate, explore, map, graph, visualize, aggregate, drill-down, compute, and export data from the database. The Sankofa cyber data management tool supports a user-friendly, secure, and systematic collection of all data. We have screened more than 400 child–caregiver dyads and enrolled nearly 300 dyads, with tens of thousands of data elements. The dataviews have successfully supported all data exploration and analysis needs of the Sankofa Project. Moreover, the ability of the sites to query and view data summaries has proven to be an incentive for collecting complete and accurate data. The data system has all the desirable attributes of an electronic data capture tool. It also provides an added advantage of building data management capacity in resource-limited settings due to its innovative data query and summary views and availability of real-time support by the data management team.

Source: UG
SANKOFA: a multisite collaboration on paediatric HIV disclosure in Ghana

With the scale-up of effective antiretroviral therapy in resource-limited settings, many HIV-infected children are now able to survive into adulthood. To achieve this potential, children must navigate normative developmental processes and challenges while living with an unusually complex, stigmatizing, potentially fatal chronic illness and meeting the demands of treatment. Yet many of these children, especially preadolescents, do not know they are HIV-infected. Despite compelling evidence supporting the merits of informing children of their HIV status, there has been little emphasis on equipping the child’s caregiver with information and skills to promote disclosure, particularly, when the caregiver faces a variety of sociocultural barriers and is reluctant to do so. In this study, we present the background, process and methods for a first of its kind collaboration that is examining the efficacy of an intervention developed to facilitate the engagement of caregivers in the process of disclosure in a manner suitable to the sociocultural context and developmental age and needs of the child in Ghana. We also report preliminary data that supported the design of the intervention approach and currently available domains of the data system. Finally, we discuss challenges and implications for future research.

Source: UG
Sargassum Biomass Movement and Proliferation in the Eastern Tropical Atlantic

Since 2011, pelagic sargassum blooms (S. fluitans and S. natans) have impacted coastal communities, aquaculture, tourism, and biodiversity across the Tropical Atlantic region. Whilst the initial event is generally attributed to an anomalous North Atlantic Oscillation (2009–2010), the drivers of sargassum movement and proliferation remain unclear. This research gap is particularly evident in West Africa, where annual and seasonal sargassum variability is under-researched, and a lack of consensus exists on seasonal and annual trends. This paper addresses these gaps by (1) providing a first attempt at characterising the seasonal and annual trends of sargassum biomass in the Eastern Tropical Atlantic, through using satellite imagery to create a time-series for 2011–2022; and (2) exploring the hypothetical drivers of movement and proliferation of sargassum for this area, through assessing its co-variation with potential drivers including atmospheric, oceanic, and policy, establishing a historical timeline of events. The time-series analysis reveals an annual biomass peak in September and a second peak between March and May. The exploration of potential drivers reveals that alongside sea surface temperature there are multiple factors that could be influencing sargassum biomass, and that further research is necessary to clarify primary and secondary drivers. The results contribute to understanding drivers, impacts, and predictions of sargassum blooms in the Eastern Tropical Atlantic. We anticipate that our findings will enable sargassum-affected areas to better anticipate the size and timing of sargassum events in West Africa and offer researchers a new perspective on possible drivers of proliferation within the wider Tropical Atlantic region.

Source: UG
SARS-CoV-2 detection among international air travellers to Ghana during mandatory quarantine

The Department of Immunology conducts research in the field of immunology of infectious and non-infectious diseases. The Department has the overall goal of contributing knowledge to better diagnosis, management, control and prevention of infectious and non-infectious diseases in Ghana and worldwide. This is consistent with the overall strategy of the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR) and in line with the strategy of the College of Health Sciences of the University of Ghana.

Source: UG
SARS‑CoV‑2 incidence monitoring and statistical estimation of the basic and time‑varying reproduction number at the early onset of the pandemic in 45 sub‑Saharan African countries

The world battled to defeat a novel coronavirus 2019 (SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19), a respiratory illness that is transmitted from person to person through contacts with droplets from infected persons. Despite efforts to disseminate preventable messages and adoption of mitigation strategies by governments and the World Health Organization (WHO), transmission spread globally. An accurate assessment of the transmissibility of the coronavirus remained a public health priority for many countries across the world to fight this pandemic, especially at the early onset. In this paper, we estimated the transmission potential of COVID-19 across 45 countries in sub-Saharan Africa using three approaches, namely, R0 based on (i) an exponential growth model (ii) maximum likelihood (ML) estimation and (iii) a time-varying basic reproduction number at the early onset of the pandemic. Using data from March 14, 2020, to May 10, 2020, sub-Saharan African countries were still grappling with COVID-19 at that point in the pandemic. The region’s basic reproduction number ( R0 ) was 1.89 (95% CI: 1.767 to 2.026) using the growth model and 1.513 (95% CI: 1.491 to 1.535) with the maximum likelihood method, indicating that, on average, infected individuals transmitted the virus to less than two secondary persons. Several countries, including Sudan ( R0 : 2.03), Ghana ( R0 : 1.87), and Somalia ( R0 : 1.85), exhibited high transmission rates. These findings highlighted the need for continued vigilance and the implementation of effective control measures to combat the pandemic in the region. It is anticipated that the findings in this study would not only function as a historical record of reproduction numbers during the COVID-19 pandemic in African countries, but can serve as a blueprint for addressing future pandemics of a similar nature.

Source: UG
Satellite observations of upwelling in the gulf of Guinea

The classical case of favorable winds driving coastal upwelling does not adequately account for the upwelling observed along the northwestern Gulf of Guinea (GoG) coast, which is the area of focus in this letter. Herein, we used mainly satellite-derived data to examine the dynamics of upwelling in the study area. Upwelling indexes are derived from sea surface temperature (SST) and wind influences. Low SST, which is a characteristic of upwelling, is observed mainly along the entire coastal region from July to September. The relative contributions of local wind forcing are quantified; the wind-stress-driven Ekman transport was more important than the wind-stress-curl-driven Ekman pumping in affecting changes in SST. They both however do not entirely explain the upwelling that is observed along the entire coast. It is shown that winds in the western equatorial Atlantic force eastward propagating upwelling Kelvin waves that lead to lowering of sea level and SST along the northwestern GoG coast. ï¿½ 2014 IEEE.

Source: UG
Satisfaction with life and psychological symptoms among international students in Ghana and their correlates

The goal of this study was to understand the adaptation of international students in Ghana focusing on correlates of satisfaction with life and psychological symptoms. The sample for the study was 151 international students, of which 97 originated from West Africa and 54 from Western countries, mostly from North America. Participants responded to a questionnaire with scales accessing satisfaction with life, psychological symptoms as outcomes and a number of psychosocial factors and academic related issues. Results indicated that on the, the students were satisfied with their life and had few psychological symptoms. However, students from West Africa reported poorer satisfaction with life, contrary to our expectations. Satisfaction with life and psychological symptoms were unrelated, and these two outcomes were predicted by different factors. Hierarchical multiple regressions indicated that our predictors could account for 30% of the explained variance in psychological symptoms and 42% in satisfaction with life. In spite of the fact that our participants were students, academic related factors did not contribute significantly to the students’ psychological symptoms, except for academic strain which accounted for about 17% of the explain variance in satisfaction with life. Contrary to our expectation, English language proficiency was related to more psychological symptoms, and this relationship was partially mediated by perceived discrimination. The results are discussed in the light of general acculturation theory on sojourners within the Ghanaian cultural context.

Source: UG
Satisfactory safety and immunogenicity of MSP3 malaria vaccine candidate in tanzanian children aged 12-24 months.

Background: Development and deployment of an effective malaria vaccine would complement existing malaria control measures. A blood stage malaria vaccine candidate, Merozoite Surface Protein-3 (MSP3), produced as a long synthetic peptide, has been shown to be safe in non-immune and semi-immune adults. A phase Ib dose-escalating study was conducted to assess the vaccine's safety and immunogenicity in children aged 12 to 24 months in Korogwe, Tanzania (ClinicalTrials.gov number: NCT00469651). Methods: This was a double-blind, randomized, controlled, dose escalation phase Ib trial, in which children were given one of two different doses of the MSP3 antigen (15 g or 30 g) or a control vaccine (Engerix B). Children were randomly allocated either to the MSP3 candidate malaria vaccine or the control vaccine administered at a schedule of 0, 1, and 2 months. Immunization with lower and higher doses was staggered for safety reasons starting with the lower dose. The primary endpoint was safety and reactogenicity within 28 days post-vaccination. Blood samples were obtained at different time points to measure immunological responses. Results are presented up to 84 days post-vaccination. Results: A total of 45 children were enrolled, 15 in each of the two MSP3 dose groups and 15 in the Engerix B group. There were no important differences in reactogenicity between the two MSP3 groups and Engerix B. Grade 3 adverse events were infrequent; only five were detected throughout the study, all of which were transient and resolved without sequelae. No serious adverse event reported was considered to be related to MSP3 vaccine. Both MSP3 dose regimens elicited strong cytophilic IgG responses (subclasses IgG1 and IgG3), the isotypes involved in the monocyte-dependant mechanism of Plasmodium falciparum parasite-killing. The titers reached are similar to those from African adults having reached a state of premunition. Furthermore, vaccination induced seroconversion in all vaccinees. Conclusion: The MSP3 malaria vaccine candidate was safe, well tolerated and immunogenic in children aged 12-24 months living in a malaria endemic community. Given the vaccine's safety and its induction of cytophilic IgG responses, its efficacy against P. falciparum infection and disease needs to be evaluated in Phase 2 studies. © 2009 Lusingu et al.

Source: UG
Savannah fires and local resistance to transnational land deals: The Case of Organic Mango Farming in Dipale, Northern Ghana

Recent interest in investments in land in Africa targets the supposed ‘abundant and wasting’ fire-prone savannah woodlands. Outgrower models are becoming the recommended business model for transnational investments as they are argued to guarantee a win–win outcome for both trans-national companies and local farmers. Using qualitative interviews in the village of Dipale, we investigate one such project, the Integrated Tamale Fruit Company (ITFC). All outgrowers lost their investments to savannah fires and consequently abandoned or converted the mango farms into food crop farms. The political ecology of the area, manifested in the human-environmental conditions and land management practices confounded the business model of land acquisitions thus threatening their profitability for the investors and reducing their contribution to local livelihood outcomes. The savannah fires represent an instrumentalized form of local resistance against the expropriation of their livelihood resources without their full cooperation and consent.

Source: UG
Saving Ghana from Its Oil: A Critical Assessment of Preparations so Far Made

Oil discoveries in many countries have led to the erosion of democratic processes and institutional structures. The “resource curse” syndrome manifests itself not only through the technical challenges of monetary and fiscal policy decisions, but also through the disregard of governments for collective decision-making in a participatory democracy. This paper assesses the preparations so far made in Ghana toward her oil production. It highlights the threats of oil to Ghana’s democracy and argues that even though Ghana is expected to start its first commercial oil production by the late 2010, the country is not ready to do so. To save the country from its oil, it recommends the need for inclusivity and transparency in the preparatory processes toward oil production to prevent cover-ups for corruption and unaccountable governance and conflict

Source: UG
SAVVYÂ® (C31G) gel for prevention of HIV infection in women: A phase 3, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial in Ghana

Objective. The objective of this trial was to determine the effectiveness of 1.0% C31G (SAVVY) in preventing male-to-female vaginal transmission of HIV infection among women at high risk. Methodology/Principal Findings. This was a Phase 3, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial. Participants made up to 12 monthly visits for HIV testing, adverse event reporting, and study product supply. The study was conducted between March 2004 and February 2006 in Accra and Kumasi, Ghana. We enrolled 2142 HIV-negative women at high risk of HIV infection, and randomized them to SAVVY or placebo gel. Main outcome measures were the incidence of HIV-1 and HIV-2 infection as determined by detection of HIV antibodies from oral mucosal transudate specimens and adverse events. We accrued 790 person-years of follow-up in the SAVVY group and 772 person-years in the placebo group. No clinically significant differences in the overall frequency of adverse events, abnormal pelvic examination findings, or abnormal laboratory results were seen between treatment groups. However, more participants in the SAVVY group reported reproductive tract adverse events than in the placebo group (13.0% versus 9.4%). Seventeen HIV seroconversions occurred; eight in participants randomized to SAVVY and nine in participants receiving placebo. The Kaplan- Meier estimates of the cumulative probability of HIV infection through 12 months were 0.010 in the SAVVY group and 0.011 in the placebo group (p = 0.731), with a hazard ratio (SAVVY versus placebo) of 0.88 (95% confidence interval 0.33, 2.27). Because of a lower-than-expected HIV incidence, we were unable to achieve the required number of HIV infections (66) to obtain the desired study power. Conclusions/Significance. SAVVY was not associated with increased adverse events overall, but was associated with higher reporting of reproductive adverse events. Our data are insufficient to conclude whether SAVVY is effective at preventing HIV infection relative to placebo.

Source: UG
SAVVY® (C31G) Gel for prevention of HIV infection in women: a phase 3, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial in Ghana

Most research activities involve the use of molecular methods such as regular PCR (PCR), quantitative PCR (Q-PCR), genomic sequence and analysis using different software, genetic engineering, probe hybridization techniques, biological and molecular cloning, evaluation of immune markers for laboratory diagnosis of infections, serological assays involving the use of rapid tests, ELISA-based evaluations and immunofluorescent assay techniques.

Source: UG