scholarly journals The Common Missed Handwashing Instances and Areas after 15 Years of Hand-Hygiene Education

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. S. W. Wong ◽  
J. K. F. Lee
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Hand Hygiene ◽  
Multiple Logistic Regression ◽  
The Public ◽  
Hygiene Practices ◽  
General Quality ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Hygiene Education

The outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) claimed the lives of 286 Hong Kong people in 2003. Since then, the Hong Kong government has been promoting the benefits of proper hand hygiene. There are few studies that explore the general quality of handwashing and the hand-hygiene practices of the public of Hong Kong; given this, the aim of this study is to explore this neglected topic. This study is a quantitative study that was conducted in January 2018. The results show that the majority of participants only wash their hands after using the toilet (87%) or handling vomitus or faecal matter (91%). The mean duration of handwashing was 36.54 seconds (SD = 18.57). The areas of the hand most neglected during handwashing were the fingertips (48.1%), medial area (30.5%), and back of the hand (28%). A multiple logistic regression shows that participants who have reached third-level education or higher often tend to be more hand hygienic than those who have not reached third-level education (p≤0.001, B = 1.003). Thus, participants aged 30 and above tend to neglect 5 more areas of the hand than those aged below 30 (p=0.001, B = 4.933).

scholarly journals The Problems and Needs of Patients Diagnosed with Cancer and Their Caregivers

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 87
Author(s):  
Anna Lewandowska ◽  
Grzegorz Rudzki ◽  
Tomasz Lewandowski ◽  
Sławomir Rudzki
Keyword(s):  
Cancer Patients ◽  
Medical Information ◽  
Unmet Needs ◽  
Public Healthcare ◽  
Literature Analysis ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Mean ◽  
High Level ◽  
Patients Experience

(1) Background: As the literature analysis shows, cancer patients experience a variety of different needs. Each patient reacts differently to the hardships of the illness. Assessment of needs allows providing more effective support, relevant to every person’s individual experience, and is necessary for setting priorities for resource allocation, for planning and conducting holistic care, i.e., care designed to improve a patient’s quality of life in a significant way. (2) Patients and Methods: A population survey was conducted between 2018 and 2020. Cancer patients, as well as their caregivers, received an invitation to take part in the research, so their problems and needs could be assessed. (3) Results: The study involved 800 patients, 78% women and 22% men. 66% of the subjects were village residents, while 34%—city residents. The mean age of patients was 62 years, SD = 11.8. The patients received proper treatment within the public healthcare. The surveyed group of caregivers was 88% women and 12% men, 36% village residents and 64% city residents. Subjects were averagely 57 years old, SD 7.8. At the time of diagnosis, the subjects most often felt anxiety, despair, depression, feelings of helplessness (46%, 95% CI: 40–48). During illness and treatment, the subjects most often felt fatigued (79%, 95% CI: 70–80). Analysis of needs showed that 93% (95% CI: 89–97) of patients experienced a certain level of need for help in one or more aspects. (4) Conclusions: Patients diagnosed with cancer have a high level of unmet needs, especially in terms of psychological support and medical information. Their caregivers also experience needs and concerns regarding the disease. Caregivers should be made aware of the health consequences of cancer and consider appropriate supportive care for their loved ones.

scholarly journals Artificial Landscape: in search of publicness through urban spectacle in Hong Kong

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Isaac Leung ◽  
Andy Buchanan
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Constitutive Relationship ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Dynamic Information ◽  
The Public ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
A Site

Screen technologies increasingly permeate the experience of public space in Hong Kong. Large media walls have occupied the façades of many buildings, rendering a cityscape with dynamic information visible as a new urban skin. This article is a case study on Artificial Landscape, a site-specific media art project located on Asia Pacific’s largest LED outdoor screen. The case sets an example of how a public screen can serve as a mediating agent. It provides an opportunity for artists to provoke absent ideas in the public space and explore subversive potential, including critical reflection on issues surrounding surveillance, consumerism and rapid urban growth. The case also exemplifies how a public screen can mediate the public to experience an alternative context through artistic intervention, where negotiations of perceptions and subjectivities are made possible. This article provides insights into a public screen’s mode of spectatorship, quality of public space and curatorial strategies in an urban context. This is achieved by illustrating how various artworks extend the notion of publicness and remediate the mutually constitutive relationship among the built environment, media technologies, artists, public and everyday encounters.

scholarly journals Home-based hand hygiene practices of mothers in relation to infections in their infants

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-109
Author(s):  
O.B. Ogunfowora ◽  
T.A. Ogunlesi ◽  
O.O. Oba-Daini
Keyword(s):  
Hand Hygiene ◽  
Respiratory Infections ◽  
Cross Sectional Study ◽  
Hand Washing ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Hygiene Practices ◽  
Young Infants ◽  
Home Based ◽  
Access To Water

Background: Infections are the leading causes of death in children. Most of these infections are transmitted through the hands of mothers, carers and health workers.Objective: To determine the pattern of home-based hand hygiene practices among mothers of young infants attending a tertiary facility clinic in relation to infections in their infants.Methods: A cross-sectional study of mothers of infants attending an immunization clinic was conducted using a self-designed, pretested questionnaire.Results: The mean age of the 203 mothers was 30.3 ±3.8 years. The majority of the mothers received counselling about hand washing as part of antenatal care (79.8%), had access to water at home (94.0%) and always washed hands with water and soap (48.3%). Although 149 (73.4%) knew  hand sanitizers, only 28 (13.8%) used it. Close to half of their infants (46.3%) had various infections (diarrhoea, acute respiratory infections, and boils) within a month of the interview. Only counselling was associated with good quality hand washing practices (p<0.0001) while the age of child less than 6 months and good quality of hand washing were associated with the absence of infections in the infants (p = 0.029 and p<0.0001 respectively).Conclusion: Half of the cohort of mothers practiced good quality hand washing but with poor use of hand sanitizers. With various infections recorded in close to half of their infants, it is important to emphasise better hand washing techniques and improve access to alcohol-based hand sanitizers. Key words: Alcohol-based Hand sanitizers, Hand hygiene, Hand washing, Infants, Infections, Sagamu.

Knowledge Interoperability of Parliaments’ and Government Agencies’ Information Systems

2011 ◽  
pp. 300-320
Author(s):  
Euripidis Loukis ◽  
Alexandros Xenakis
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Information Systems ◽  
Government Agencies ◽  
Knowledge Level ◽  
Research And Practice ◽  
The Public ◽  
Efficiency And Effectiveness ◽  
The Common ◽  
Knowledge Intensive

There is a growing awareness that the interoperability among Government Agencies’ information systems (IS) is of critical importance for the development of e-government and the improvement of government efficiency and effectiveness. However, most of the IS interoperability research and practice in government has been focused on the operational level, aiming mainly to enable the delivery of integrated electronic services involving several Government Agencies, or to support the co-operation among Government Agencies from the same or even different countries. This chapter is dealing with knowledge-level interoperability, aiming to support higher knowledge-intensive tasks of government, such as the formulation of legislation and public policy. In particular, it presents an ontology-based methodology for achieving knowledge interoperability of IS of Parliaments and Government Agencies, so that they can exchange public policy related knowledge produced in the various stages of the legislation process. It is based on the common use by Parliaments of the ontology of the ‘Issue-Based Information Systems’ (IBIS) framework for constructing representations of this knowledge. An application of the proposed methodology is presented, followed by an evaluation, which results in an enrichment of the above ontology that enables a better representation of the public policy related knowledge produced in the legislation process, providing a ‘higher quality’ of knowledge interoperability. Finally a generalization of this methodology is formulated, which can be used for achieving knowledge interoperability among IS of other types of Government Agencies.

Beneficial use of biosolids: progress in controlling metals

1996 ◽  
Vol 34 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 493-497 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell A. Isaac ◽  
Yuhsia Boothroyd
Keyword(s):  
Health Risks ◽  
Pollution Prevention ◽  
Confounding Factors ◽  
Resource Value ◽  
Beneficial Use ◽  
The Public ◽  
Treatment Facilities ◽  
The Mean ◽  
By Products

Beneficial use of wastewater and its by-products is receiving increasing attention. The objective is to maximize the resource value and minimize the need to consider disposal only. While not always possible, more opportunities for such uses are being pursued. One aspect of this effort is the beneficial use of biosolids or, as it long has been known, sludge. Even the change in terminology reflects the effort to consider these materials as potential resources. While the new term may reflect more an effort to make such materials acceptable to the public from a psychological basis, efforts to assure the material is acceptable based on health risks by minimizing hazards from organisms and chemicals are prerequisite. Among the contaminants of concern are several elements. In the mid 1970s (designated 1975) and during the last several years (designated 1993), samples of wastewater solids were collected from 22 publicly owned wastewater treatment facilities (POTWs), all with pretreatment programs, in Massachusetts. These samples were analyzed for seven metals (Cd, Cr, Cu, Hg, Ni, Pb, Zn). While there are several potentially confounding factors such as differences in sampling and analytical methods, the fact that the mean concentrations of all seven of the metals monitored decreased during the interval 1975–1993 when the two sets of data (126 and 54 samples respectively) were collected suggests that pretreatment and pollution prevention efforts have contributed to improving the quality of biosolids.

Creating a Textual Public Space: Slogans and Texts from Hong Kong's Umbrella Movement

2016 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
pp. 673-702 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Veg
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Civic Culture ◽  
Discursive Space ◽  
The Public ◽  
Different Levels

Hong Kong's Umbrella Movement (September–December 2014) represented a watershed in Hong Kong's political culture and self-understanding. Based on over 1,000 slogans and other textual and visual material documented during the movement, this study provides an overview of claims, which are oriented towards an assertion of agency, articulated at different levels: in a universalistic mode (“democracy”), in relation with a political community (Hong Kong autonomy and decolonization), and through concrete policy aims. At the same time, slogans mobilize diverse cultural and historical repertoires that attest the hybrid quality of Hong Kong identity and underscore the diversity of sources of political legitimacy. Finally, it will be argued that by establishing a system of contending discourses within the occupied public spaces, the movement strived to act out a type of discursive democracy. Despite the challenges that this discursive space encountered in interacting with the authorities and the public at large, it represented an unfinished attempt to build a new civic culture among Hong Kong's younger generation.

scholarly journals Mothers' hygiene experiences in confinement centres: a cohort study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siew Cheng Foong ◽  
Wai Cheng Foong ◽  
May Loong Tan ◽  
Jacqueline Judith Ho
Keyword(s):  
Logistic Regression ◽  
Cohort Study ◽  
Hand Hygiene ◽  
Infant Health ◽  
Health Problems ◽  
Multiple Logistic Regression ◽  
Ethnic Chinese ◽  
Hygiene Practices ◽  
Health Related ◽  
At Home

Abstract Ethnic Malaysian Chinese used to observe the 1-month postpartum confinement period at home and many families would engage a traditional postpartum carer (TPC) to help care for the mother and newborn. A recent trend has been the development of confinement centres (CCs) which are private non-healthcare establishments run by staff not trained in health care. Concerns about hygiene in CCs arose after infections were reported. We describe the practice of hand hygiene observed in CCs, the availability of resources for hygiene and to determine the prevalence of health related problems in CCs. Methods This is a cohort study of ethnic Chinese mothers intending to breastfeed their healthy infants. They were recruited post-delivery along with a comparison group who planned to spend their confinement period at home, then all were telephone interviewed after their 1-month confinement period about their experience. To avoid any alteration in behaviour, mothers were not told at recruitment that they had to observe hygiene practices. Multiple logistic regression was used to assess the effect of place of confinement on rates of infant health problems. Results Of 187 mothers, 88 (47%) went to 27 different CCs while 99 (53%) stayed at home. Response rates for the 1-month interviews were 88% (CC) versus 97% (home). Mothers in CC group stayed in one to four-bedded rooms and 92% of them had their baby sleeping separately in a common nursery described to have up to 17 babies at a time; 74% of them spent less than six hours a day with their babies; 43% noticed that CC staff had inadequate hand hygiene practices; 66% reported no hand-basins in their rooms; 30% reported no soap at hand-basins; 28% reported inexperienced or inadequate staff and 4% reported baby item sharing. Of mothers staying at home, 35% employed a TPC to care for her baby; 32% did not room-in with their babies, but only 11% spent less than 6 hours a day with their babies. 18% of mothers who employed TPCs reported that their TPC had unsatisfactory hand hygiene practices. Health problems that were probably related to infection (HPRI) like fever and cough were similar between the groups: 14% (CC) versus 14% (home) (p=0.86). Multiple logistic regression did not show that CCs were a factor for HPRI: aOR 1.28 (95% CI 0.36 to 4.49). Three mothers reported events that could indicate transmission of infection in CCs. Conclusion We found unsatisfactory hygiene practices in CCs as reported by mothers who spent their confinement period there. Although we were not able to establish any direct evidence of infection transmission but based on reports given by the mothers in this study, it is likely to be happening. Therefore, future studies, including intervention studies, are urgently needed to establish an appropriate hygiene standard in CCs as well as the best method to implement this standard. Empowering CC staff with hygiene knowledge so that they can be involved and contribute to the development of the development of these standards would be important.

scholarly journals Knowledge and Practices of Meat Hygiene among Meat Handlers and Microbial Profile of Meat in the Jos Abattoir, Plateau State

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-21
Author(s):  
CA Miner ◽  
HA Agbo ◽  
AP Dakhin ◽  
P Udoh
Keyword(s):  
Bacterial Load ◽  
Meat Products ◽  
Sampling Technique ◽  
Cross Sectional Study ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
The Public ◽  
Hygiene Practices ◽  
Microbial Profile ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Plateau State

Background: Meat handling and sanitation practices can have resultant effects on the quality of meat sold to the public. The study aimed to determine the knowledge and practices of meat hygiene amongst meat handlers. It also sought to determine the microbial profile of meat sold in the Jos abattoir of Plateau State. Methodology: It was a cross sectional study conducted among 128 butchers and meat handlers in the Jos abattoir selected by total population sampling technique. Data on knowledge and practice was collected using a semi-structured interviewer-administered questionnaire. Sampled meat products were analysed for bacterial load using Serial Dilution technique and bacterial pathogens identified by standard procedures. Epi Info statistical software was used for data analysis at a 95% confidence limit. Results: The mean age of respondents was 32.8 ± 10.4 years and all were males. A fair knowledge of meat hygiene was found among 55.5% of respondents while 8.6% were adjudged to have good meat hygiene practices. The mean bacterial load for sampled meat for sale was 2.5 x 103 ± 3.4 cfu/ml. Main bacterial isolates identified were Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas spp and Enterobacter spp.Conclusion: In this study knowledge of meat hygiene was mostly fair among respondents with a low level of meat hygiene practices and a high level of meat bacterial contamination. The study recommended training for meat handlers for hygiene maintenance, increased inspection of meat sold to the public and provision of standard facilities to ensure the maintenance of a good level of meat hygiene.

scholarly journals The Underlying Indicators of Good Governance in Vietnam

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bui Phuong Dinh ◽  
Nguyen Thi Hoai Thu
Keyword(s):  
Good Governance ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Common ◽  
Governmental Institutions ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Measurement And Evaluation ◽  
Near Future

The concept of "Good governance" was brought to the world in the 1990s in the context of increasing globalization and expanding democratization worldwide. It can be seen that the common factors needed to implement good governance include: (i) Capacity of the state - the degree of problem-solving by governments and leaders religion; (ii) Responsiveness - whether public policies and institutions meet the needs of citizens and uphold their rights; (iii) Accountability - the ability of citizens, civil society and the private sector to monitor the responsibilities of public and governmental institutions. In Vietnam, from the first decade of the twenty-first century, efforts have been made to set up indicators and measure the effectiveness of the public authority aligning to the principles of "good governance". Using data from the four sets of indicators in Vietnam namely PAR, SIPAS, PCI, and PAPI, this article reviews the process of developing the good governance’s indicators, compares the areas where each set of indicators measures and assesses the effectiveness, analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of each set of indicators, and reviews some local government efforts in using the measurement and evaluation results of the four sets of indicators to improve the quality of governance in their respective localities. The article also asserts that these four sets of indicators reflect a large part of the content to be measured according to the principle of "good governance", and presents some recommendations to improve the four sets of indicators themselves to better reflect the principles of "Good governance" in the near future.

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