ghanaopendata/ghanaian-research-english huggingface dataset:
Prevention of maternal mortality in Amansie East District of Ashanti Region, Ghana

When considering prevention of maternal mortality in Ghana, it is equally expedient to deliberate on factors that contribute to the problem, taking into account the number of people that are affected by the problem. The study focused on identifying practicable measures that could be used to forestall maternal mortality in Amansie East District. The study was a cross-sectional type with a representative sample of 232 respondents. This was made up of 200 women of reproductive age group and 32 health workers. A multistage sampling, including simple random, systematic and purposive sampling was employed. Secondary data was collected from existing literature. Three (3) cases of maternal mortality were recorded during the period of the study. These were due to ruptured uterus, HIV opportunistic infection and anaemia in the puerperium. Dominase S.D.A. and the district hospitals provided comprehensive emergency obstetric care. Whereas Akomaa Memorial Hospital, Kortwia; Kokofu General 1-lospital; Dunkuraa, Asiwa and Tebeso Health Centres also provided basic emergency obstetric care in the district. Though Kokofu Hospital had a theatre with surgical equipment, they were not able to perform caesarean section nor any other surgery because they did not have any surgeon. Kokofti did not even detain nor admit patients in their facility because the medical practitioners did not want to come back to the hospital after close of work. Looking at deliveries from January to June this year (2005) for the district, 40.7 % of them were attended to by Traditional Birth Attendants (TBA’s). At the peripheries TBA’s attended to about 60% to 70% deliveries. The study further revealed that there was delay in accessing health 1cifiIies in the district. This was partly due to the bad nature of road network, and poor staffing at the health facilities in the district. Based on the findings of the study, recommendations have been made to the various concerned or interested stakeholders to stem the problem. Thus health professionals who are indigenous of the district should volunteer to work in the district, particularly at the peripheries. Members of the communities should be educated on the need to avoid delays. TBA’s should be given proper training and refresher courses. Kokofu General Hospital should be provided with a general doctor and a surgeon. The hospital should also admit patients. The Ministry of Health in collaboration with the District Assembly should sensitize the people on the dangers involved in unsafe abortion. Every hospital and health centre particularly those at the peripheries should be provided with ambulance and other proper communication systems. Roads at the peripheries should be well constructed and at least grave led. Telephone lines should also be extended to the peripheries. The District Assembly in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and the communities should endeavour to promote girl-child education to raise educational level, increase age at first birth and finally reduce total fertility rate.

Source: KNUST
Pricing Critical Illness Insurance Using The Dash And Grimshaw Model

Critical Illness Insurance is a new product and its now gaining grounds on the Ghanaian insurance industry market. This research is aimed at developing a fair pricing system for a critical illness insurance using the Dash and Grimshaw model which has embedded multi-state(decrement) model. Due to the uncertainty in the future and the possibility of an individual being diagnosed of some critical illness, it is important to cover oneself against this possible adverse financial trauma. This research considered five critical illnesses thus cancer, heart attack, stroke, kidney failure and Coronary Artery Bypass Graft. Data on the incidence rates for all the critical illnesses was used to compute the stand alone rates, acceleration rider benefit rates and premium rate from ages 20 to 80 inclusive using the Dash and Grimshaw model. Results from my computations showed that incidence rates and its corresponding premium rates are directly proportional to one’s age. Also the difference in stand-alone and accelerated rates was directly proportional to one’s age.

Source: KNUST
Pricing Critical Illness Using the Multiple Decrement Model Approach

The introduction of this booklet is about what the project entails (i.e. Pricing Critical Illness Using the Multi-State Model) To know the amount of money one has to pay for an insurance premium of a condition of a serious illness occurring, the first and critical step is to know the incidence rate and its corresponding premium rate for that particular illness. Due to the frequent hardships that an individual diagnosed of a particular illness go through in paying for medical bills, there is the need for an insurance that can help reduce these hardships. This happens because some of these diseases sometimes render them incapable of being able to work for a living. In this project we consider three major diseases (known as the big three) which can cause such major problems in one‟s life. They are Cancer, Heart Attack and Stroke. Where the incidence rate, and the premium rates for these illnesses are computed for individuals from the age of 20 to age 74. We use the a three state multiple decrement model, where the states are Active (Healthy) for state 1, Critical (Dread Disease) Sufferer for State 2 and Dead for State 3 The Dash and the Grimshaw model was used to accomplish this and it was found out that the premium rate for any the illnesses considered was directly proportional to one's age. It was also realized that the incidence rate of cancer was prevalent amongst females than males.

Source: KNUST
Pricing Financial Options Using Ensemble Kalman Filter

Pricing financial options is amongst the most important problems in the financial industry. In this study we investigated the use of the ensemble Kalman filter for pricing financial op- tions in the Black-Scholes model. The performance and accuracy of the Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) method based on a Monte Carlo simulation approach for propagation of errors is evaluated on two estimation problems. The first is a synthetic estimation problem using the Van der Pol equation and then a real-world estimation problem concerned with pricing financial instruments. The scenarios considered were to compare effect of different process noise, effect of different measurement noise, and the effect of different ensemble sizes on the performance and accuracy of the EnKF. It was found that as the ensemble size grows the performances of the ensemble Kalman filter improves judging from the values of the root mean square errors. With regard to the process noise, the measurement noise and the initial error covariance, decrease in the value of these parameters actually improves the performance of the EnKF. It was also found that the ensemble Kalman filter approaches same or better accuracy than the extended Kalman filter.

Source: KNUST
Pricing of Industrial Products: Case Study of Ghana Aluminium Products Limited (Ghanal), Tema

The prospects of producing and marketing a new product and hoping that the price in the market will be high enough to generate required profit is often a speculative objective. Product pricing, as a process, is integrated into the company’s overall marketing strategy along with other marketing mix such as the product itself, its distribution and promotion decisions. Great consideration must also be given to the corporate and marketing objectives. Essentially a firm would need to depend on its ability to generate revenue from the sales of its products in order to succeed as an enterprise. But whilst this ability is important and must be pursued, it is necessary for the firm to ensure customer satisfaction, in that optimum revenue and profits cannot be achieved without it. Most Ghanaian companies operate without appropriate pricing strategies and policies. This problem emanates from a number of factors some of which are ad hoc pricing behaviour, exclusion of customer values from pricing decisions, pricing with no market inputs such as market shares, the growth of the industry and competitors’ actions. In this study Ghana Aluminum Products Limited (GHANAL) was used as a case study to focus on the company’s corporate, marketing and in particular its pricing policies and strategies in order to address the above problem. Data on GHANAL were obtained by interviewing management of the company using questionnaire. The study has revealed the importance of good and systematic pricing strategies and the adverse consequences for the lack of it, in any profit oriented business organization, without de-emphasizing the other elements of the marketing mix. It was also identified from the study that industrial pricing is often a compromise involving several factors including the objective of the company, the price that consumers are willing to pay, the prevailing market conditions, cost considerations as well as government regulations. In the case of GHANAL, the study has shown that its major concern is how to remain competitive and at the same time avoid price wars in the oligopolistic market dominated by ALUWORKS.

Source: KNUST
Prevalence, Risk factors and Predictors of Diabetes-related Complications: Foot ulcers, Lower extremity amputations and Sexual dysfunction in three selected hospitals in Ghana

The prevalence and complications of diabetes is currently on the rise, thus this study investigated the prevalence, risk factors and predictors of diabetic foot ulcers, lower extremity amputations and sexual dysfunction to improve preventive strategies and care for diabetics. The study was a cross-sectional multicenter study conducted over a period of two months from June to July, 2015. It was carried out at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital and Tamale Teaching Hospital and involved 100 diabetics randomly selected from the diabetes clinics of the study facilities. The socio-demographic characteristics, medical history, lifestyle variables, physical characteristics and sexual dysfunction of the participants were investigated using a structured questionnaire. Blood samples were also taken from subjects and analyzed for triglycerides, total cholesterol, high density lipoprotein cholesterol, low density lipoprotein cholesterol, serum creatinine and serum urea. Estimated glomerular filtration rate was also determined using the serum creatinine. The sex distribution of the study participants was 31% males and 69% females with a mean age of 53.82±13.754 years. Among the patients, 11% had diabetic foot ulcers, 3% had lower extremity amputation and 54.8% and 68.1% of males and females had sexual dysfunction respectively. The prevalence of sexual dysfunction severity was 6.5% and 4.3% in males and females respectively. In univariate analysis the significant factors associated with diabetic foot ulcers were previous history of foot ulcers (p=0.000), foot deformities (p=0.002), impaired vision (p=0.042), serum creatinine (p=0.023) and estimated glomerular filtration rate (p=0.029). In the multivariate binary logistic regression analysis, only previous history of foot ulcers (OR= 40.441, 95% CI=5.453-299.93) and foot deformities (OR= 14.388, 95% CI=1.284-161.24) were identified as independent predictors of diabetic foot ulcers. Foot deformities (P=0.043) and serum urea (P=0.002) were significantly associated with diabetic lower extremity amputations in the univariate analysis. In the multivariate binary logistic regression analysis, only high serum urea (OR= 45, 95% CI=2.0015-1004.773) was identified as an independent predictor of diabetic lower extremity amputations. However, none of the independent variables were associated with sexual dysfunction in both men and women in the univariate analysis. This study has shown that the prevalence of diabetic foot ulcers, lower extremity amputations and sexual dysfunction are high among diabetics. Foot deformities and previous history of foot ulcers were predictive of diabetic foot ulcers while renal failure (high serum urea) was predictive of diabetic lower extremity amputations. Based on the findings of the present study, it is recommended that, interventions geared towards the prevention of foot ulcers, lower extremity amputations and sexual dysfunction in diabetics should be implemented.

Source: KNUST
Primer for environmental health education

The development of health has been a high priority in recent years in Ghana. In spite of concentrated efforts to establish health consciousness in the country, the health of the population has not improved and trends in mortality and morbidity are still unfavourable. People need to know what they can do to remain healthy or to restore their health if they fall sick. The aims of this research is to help inculcate in Ghanaians the habit of keeping in good health conditions in the environment, and also help eliminate environmental health hazards in the country. The research of the project was conducted through library studies, personal interviews, critical observation and personal experiences. The judicious use of illustration with a few texts is intended to sustain profound interest in the reader of the primer.

Source: KNUST
Pricing and tariff design in the Ghana Water Supply Sector: a case study of the Ashanti Region of Ghana

Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) recognizes both the social and economic importance of supplying water to all consumers. The company has not been able to achieve 100% coverage in urban areas. One of the problems leading to this underachievement is financial. Lack of adequate financing on the part of water service providers usually lead to poor maintenance and expansion of services The Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) in 2002 introduced tariffs to promote fairness in the water pricing or households The lifeline block, which was at an initial volume of 10m was consequently raised to 20m’ This work seeks to investigate the effect of tariffs and tariff structure on consumers in terms of fairness and equity and to find its financial implication on GWCL The tariff structure of GWCL has always been an increasing block tariff (IBT) It is intended to favour the urban poor with an initial lifeline block, which is billed at a lower rate. Unfortunately most of these low-income consumers live in tenement houses with a single meter. The result is that consumers in such houses often move into the higher more expensive block In carrying out the study, a survey was conducted that classified the housing stock in Kumasi into three namely, type I representing houses containing 10 households or more Type II representing houses containing 2 to 10 households, and type III representing single household residence. Three locations from each housing classification type were selected and houses sampled from each location. Water consumption and revenue records from January 2002 to December 2002 were obtained from the commercial department of GWCL. The selected houses were visited for data on population. One small town under community water and another community under private operation were also studied Analysis were performed to find out the impact of the 2002 GWCL tariff structure on the financial performance of the company, and also to find the effect of tariff and tariff structure on consumers c terms of fairness and equity. The result of the study showed that consumers in type and H houses pay 20.5% and 84% respectively more for water per m3 than consumers in single residence houses 1 was also realized that all consumers enjoy subsidies with consumers in type III paying 61% of the true cost o water while consumers in type II pay 71% of the true cost of water Consumers in type I pay 85% of the true cost of water The study further revealed that the minimum household water requirement was 52 I/c/d for type Based on a per capita consumption of 60 I/c/d and a household size of 4, a lifeline block of I 0rn will be reasonable It was also realized that at this lifeline block. GWCL could increase revenue generation by 5.5%

Source: KNUST
Principles of cost planning reporting and controlling for Ghanaian mines

Most of the operating mining companies (particularly the old ones) in Ghana are faced with increasing labour, material and supply costs; more severe geological and environmental conditions; long haulage distances; equipment maintenance and utilization problems; and greater mandatory safety and environmental regulations on operations. These have resulted in increased costs and hence reduced profits. To improve profitability in Ghanaian mines, therefore, there is the need to regulate cost and/or keep planned costs on track. To achieve this will require effective cost planning, reporting and controlling procedures. The objective of this thesis is to establish principles of cost planning, reporting and controlling for Ghanaian mines, taking into account the Ghanaian mining environment and organizational structures, for production line managers (shift bosses through mine manager/mine superintendent). Based on results of time and motion studies as well as production statistics, realistic physical standards for various parts of the operations have been developed. An appropriate standard costing technique has been applied to set standard costs and budgets for labour, materials and equipment. The physical and cost standards have been set for individual workplaces and for scheduling the operations.Variance and economic analyses have been conducted on the various operations to establish the sources of high costs and disparities between the actual costs and standard costs or budgets. The reasons for these disparities and deficiencies in the reporting and controlling aspects have been established. Decision analyses techniques, economics, accounting, management and industrial engineering principles have been integrated to evolve a unique methodology by which costs could be effectively planned, reported and controlled. Incorporated in this methodology are clear organizational structures with consequent clarification of roles, authorities and responsibilities, classification of costs, cost centres and responsibility centres. Motivational and implementational techniques as well as education, training and development of employees form an indispensable ingredient of this methodology. A way to computerize cost planning, reporting and controlling procedures has been presented, by which human errors could be avoided and information storage, retrieval, updating and presentation could be done with high speed and accuracy and made good for easy assimilation.

Source: KNUST
Privacy Preservation in Data Mining through Geometric Transformation

There are a number of benefits that data mining provides. However, because data mining deals with massive data stored in databases or other electronic formats, there have been issues of ethics and privacy violations. The purpose of privacy preserving data mining (PPDM) algorithms is to mine significant information from huge amounts of data while protecting sensitive information against unauthorized use. This work was undertaken to test and experiment two main PPDM algorithms. The focus of this work is on numerical attributes which are considered to be confidential. The dilation algorithm adopted multiplicative data perturbation and the translation implemented additive data perturbation. After conducting series of experiments, the results were validated using statistics, tree structure, Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) curve and confusion matrix. Also the levels of privacy provided by the two PPDM algorithms were quantified. It was realised that the algorithms can be described as restrictive and so Privacy Enhancement Procedure (PEP) was instituted to improve the levels of privacy provided by the two algorithms. After the implementation of Privacy Enhancement Procedure (PEP), it was discovered that the level of privacy can be improved but is highly dependent on values given to the lower bound and upper bound. The knowledge discovery is done using the University of Waikato open source data mining software – Waikato Environment Knowledge Analysis (WEKA). It can be concluded that the PPDM algorithms used in this work can provide a good level of privacy when adopted to protect the privacy of data mining participants. Typically the dilation changed the lowest age and income values in the original dataset from 69 and 2100 to 15 and 728 respectively.

Source: KNUST
Private finance initiative: the risk involved

Private finance initiative (PFI) is the financing of the delivery of public infrastructure projects by the private sector. The concept is appropriate where governments are unable or have difficulty in finding the delivery of the infrastructure needs of their people. This concept of infrastructure delivery has some inherent risks. Though this system promises to be such a good innovation, it has not flourished in the Ghanaian environment as expected. The main aim of this study is to identify the sources of risk in the PFI concept of infrastructure project delivery in the Ghanaian construction industry. This research work sought through a literature search and a brainstorming exercise to identify the risks associated with PFI as a delivery system for public infrastructure projects. A questionnaire survey to identify the risk factors that hampers the smooth implementation of the system in the Ghanaian environment was undertaken. The research revealed that the environment is not enabling enough to enhance the implementation of this system in the delivery of public infrastructure services due to some inherent risks. The risk sources impacting on the implementation were identified as, Political Risk Factors, Commercial Risk Factors, Legal Risks, and Project Characteristic factors. The subject of risk identification in the delivery concept must be carried out for specific infrastructure projects, with the other direct and indirect participants of the construction industry like legal advisors, the investors, insurance personnel, and investment advisors among others. This is to highlight the peculiar risk sources inherent in the delivery of specific public infrastructure projects through the PFI concept. Key words: Finance, project finance, public infrastructure, privatisation, risk, Ghana.

Source: KNUST
Private finance initiatives and public private partnerships in Ghana: the policy, law and dispute resolution.

This study examined Private Finance Initiative (PFI) through the Public Private Partnership (PPP) model. Using interdisciplinary legal research methods, it relied on legal and non-legal sources of data. The study found that the Government of Ghana, since independence, has used PPP for major projects and infrastructure to provide basic infrastructure in aid of the development of the country. Currently, there are ongoing projects in the form of roads, bridges, railways, hospitals and health centres, education colleges, accommodation, agriculture, water supply, manufacturing, etc. that are being financed through the PPP model. This notwithstanding, the study found that PPP has not fully been utilized due to certain bottlenecks such as the inadequate protection of investors by the government, lack of provision of sovereign guarantee and unfavourable legal regimes in Ghana. It also emerged that the legal regime on dispute resolution of PPP transaction poses the greatest difficulties. In such cases the government of Ghana has won on grounds of technicality. The distressed or innocent party, most especially the investor, resorts to arbitration for resolution of the disagreement and eventually wins. Heavy fines are therefore slapped on the Government of Ghana and if the project must be revived as a matter of necessity, Government of Ghana would have to find the money to continue with the project after very long suspense and delays. In order to curtail this, it is proposed that Ghana should explore the possibility of employing the UK model to forestall the challenges that have hitherto confronted PFI/PPP in infrastructure development in Ghana and dispute resolution of PFI/PPP transaction.

Source: KNUST