Search

Background: School closures in response to the COVID-19 impacted children's education, protection, and wellbeing. After understanding these impacts and that children were not super spreaders, countries including Ethiopia decided to reopen schools with specified preconditions. But when deciding to reopen schools, the benefits and risks across education, public health and socio-economic factors have to be evaluated. However, there was information gap on status of schools as per preconditions. Hence, this study was designed to investigate status of schools in Southern Ethiopia. Methods: School based cross-sectional study was conducted in October 2020 in Southern Ethiopia. Sample of 430 schools were included. National school reopening guideline was used to develop checklist for assessment. Data was collected by public health experts at regional emergency operation center. Descriptive analysis was performed to summarize data. Results: A total of 430 schools were included. More than two thirds, 298 (69.3%), of schools were from rural areas while 132 (30.7%) were from urban settings. The general infection prevention and water, sanitation and hygiene (IPC-WASH) status of schools were poor and COVID-19 specific preparations were inadequate to meet national preconditions to reopen schools during the pandemic. Total score from 24 items observed ranged from 3 to 22 points with mean score of 11.75 (SD±4.02). No school scored 100% and only 41 (9.5%) scored above 75% while 216 (50.2%%) scored below half point that is 12 items. Conclusion: Both the basic and COVID-19 specific IPC-WASH status of schools were inadequate to implement national school reopening preconditions and general standards. Some of strategies planned to accommodate teaching process and preconditions maximized inequalities in education. Although COVID-19 impact lessened due to vaccination and other factors, it is rational to consider fulfilling water and basic sanitation facilities to schools to prevent communicable diseases of public health importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: COVID-19 is highly infectious viral disease that can lead to main clinical symptoms like fever, dry cough, fatigue, myalgia, and dyspnea. Since there is no drug to cure the disease, focusing on improving community awareness related to prevention methods is crucial. But there was no regional level study addressing the reach of information, community knowledge and attitude related to COVID-19 and its prevention, and this study was done to inform and assist communication related to the disease responses during early introduction of the disease to the setting. Methods: Community based cross sectional study was conducted in selected ten towns of SNNPR, Ethiopia. Multi-stage sampling was used to select 1239 participants. Semi-structured questionnaire was designed, pre-tested and uploaded to SurveyCTO data collection system with security patterns. Knowledge was assessed considering awareness about signs and symptoms, confirmatory test (laboratory test), what to do if there is a suspect, availability of drug to cure the disease, mechanisms of transmission, prevention methods and most at risk groups. Attitude was assessed using 11 statements including seriousness of disease, being at risk, possibility of prevention, and benefits of staying at health facilities. Descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression were performed to manage data using SPSS version 25. Results: Almost all respondents (99.8%) heard about the disease. The mean score of knowledge was 52.3% (SD = 18.9) while the mean score attitude was 80.8% (SD = 6.48). Educational status, housing condition and marital status were associated with having good knowledge while occupation, housing condition, age and overall knowledge were associated with having positive attitude. Conclusion: Even though almost all respondents had heard about the COVID-19, knowledge and attitude related to COVID-19 and its prevention were low. Awareness creation should be intensified using different local languages to improve community awareness, overcome misconceptions and minimize consequences of the disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Health management information system (HMIS) is a system whereby health data are recorded, stored, retrieved and processed to improve decision-making. HMIS data quality should be monitored routinely as production of high quality statistics depends on assessment of data quality and actions taken to improve it. Thus, this study assessed accuracy of the routine HMIS data.Methods: Facility based cross-sectional study was conducted in Southern Nations Nationalities and People's region in 2017. Document review was done in 163 facilities of different levels. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) for windows version 20 was used to perform data analysis. Data accuracy was presented in terms of mean and standard deviation of data verification factor.Results: Though inaccuracy was noted for all data elements, 96.9 and 84.7% of facilities reported institutional maternal death and skilled birth attendance within acceptable range respectively while confirmed malaria (45.4%), antenatal care fourth visit (46.6%), postnatal care (55.2%), fully immunized (55.8%), severe acute malnutrition (54.6%) and total malaria (50.3%) were reported accurately only by about half of facilities. Antenatal care fourth visit was over reported by 24% while total malaria was under reported by 28%. Reasons for variations included technical, behavioral and organizational factors.Conclusions: Majority of facilities over reported services while under reporting diseases. Data quality should be monitored routinely against data quality parameters quantitatively and/or qualitatively to catch-up country's information revolution agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]