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Gabriella J Caren,1 Deni Iskandar,2,3 Dian AE Pitaloka,1 Rizky Abdulah,1,4 Auliya A Suwantika1,4,5 1Department of Pharmacology and Clinical Pharmacy, Faculty of Pharmacy, Universitas Padjadjaran, Bandung, Indonesia; 2Unit of Global Health, Department of Health Sciences, University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG), University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands; 3Faculty of Pharmacy, Bhakti Kencana University, Bandung, Indonesia; 4Centre of Excellence in Higher Education for Pharmaceutical Care Innovation, Universitas Padjadjaran, Bandung, Indonesia; 5Center for Health Technology Assessment, Universitas Padjadjaran, Bandung, IndonesiaCorrespondence: Auliya A SuwantikaDepartment of Pharmacology and Clinical Pharmacy, Faculty of Pharmacy, Universitas Padjadjaran, Jl. Raya Bandung-Sumedang Km. 21, Jatinangor, Bandung, Sumedang, 45363, Indonesia, Email auliya@unpad.ac.idAbstract: The current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) situation might deteriorate the efforts to eliminate tuberculosis (TB) in Indonesia. This study aimed to review the COVID-19 pandemic disruption on the management of TB treatment in Indonesia. We identified several disruptions due to the pandemic on TB control management. Firstly, there is a potential decrease in the funding for TB treatment. Financial disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have led to further setbacks. In many countries, including Indonesia, financial and other resources have been reallocated from TB to the COVID-19 response. Secondly, it has been highlighted that all TB services, including case detection and rapid diagnostic, have been disrupted by the pandemic. Thirdly, the pandemic would be associated with the lower quality of care and treatment for TB in Indonesia. It might decrease the enthusiasm of patients with TB, multi-drug resistant (MDR)-TB, and TB-human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) to visit TB hospitals because of social distancing measures by the government. Finally, the COVID-19 pandemic also has impacted critical activities of monitoring, evaluation, and surveillance. There are several lessons from other countries about managing TB treatment during the pandemic, such as combining screening for COVID-19 and TB by applying x-ray technology and artificial intelligence-based software. In addition, the use of telemedicine or telehealth in TB treatment is also beneficial to deliver medication, assess patients’ progress, and inform prevention strategies. To reach the target with the end TB strategy, the government of Indonesia can adopt the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) comprehensive strategies, such as integrated, patient-centered TB care and prevention strategies; bold policies and supportive systems; and intensified research and innovations.Keywords: fixed-dose combination, rapid diagnostic, MDR-TB, telemedicine, national TB program

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is considered one of the most effective imaging techniques used in the medical field for both clinical investigation and diagnosis. This is due to the fact that MRI provides many critical features of the tissue including both physiological and chemical information. Rician noise affects MR images during acquisition thereby reducing the quality of the image and complicating the accurate diagnosis. In this paper, we propose a novel technique for MR image denoising using Deep Convolutional Neural Network (Deep CNN) and anisotropic diffusion (AD) which we will refer to as Deep CNN-AD. Watershed transform is then used to segment the tumorous portion of the denoised image. The proposed method is tested on the BraTS MRI datasets. The proposed denoising method produced better results compared to previous methods. As denoising process affect the segmentation process therefore better denoised images by proposed technique produced more accurate segmentation with an average Specificity of 99.85% and dice coefficient of 90.46% thus indicating better performance of proposed technique.

Collecting biological specimens for scientific studies came under scrutiny when B. A. Minteer et al. [“Avoiding (re)extinction,” Perspectives, 18 April, p. [260][1]] suggested that this practice plays a significant role in species extinctions. Based on a small number of examples (rare birds