scholarly journals Online National Health Agency Mask Guidance for the Public in Light of COVID-19: Content Analysis (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linnea Laestadius ◽  
Yang Wang ◽  
Ziyad Ben Taleb ◽  
Mohammad Ebrahimi Kalan ◽  
Young Cho ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
General Public ◽  
English Language ◽  
Health Agency ◽  
Face Mask ◽  
World Health ◽  
Language Version ◽  
The Status ◽  
Health Organization

BACKGROUND The rapid global spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has compelled national governments to issue guidance on the use of face masks for members of the general public. To date, no work has assessed how this guidance differs across governments. OBJECTIVE This study seeks to contribute to a rational and consistent global response to infectious disease by determining how guidelines differ across nations and regions. METHODS A content analysis of health agency mask guidelines on agency websites was performed in late March 2020 among 25 countries and regions with large numbers of COVID-19 cases. Countries and regions were assigned across the coding team by language proficiency, with Google Translate used as needed. When available, both the original and English language version of guidance were reviewed. RESULTS All examined countries and regions had some form of guidance online, although detail and clarity differed. Although 9 countries and regions recommended surgical, medical, or unspecified masks in public and poorly ventilated places, 16 recommended against people wearing masks in public. There were 2 countries that explicitly recommended against fabric masks. In addition, 12 failed to outline the minimum basic World Health Organization guidance for masks. CONCLUSIONS Online guidelines for face mask use to prevent COVID-19 in the general public are currently inconsistent across nations and regions, and have been changing often. Efforts to create greater standardization and clarity should be explored in light of the status of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.

scholarly journals Online National Health Agency Mask Guidance for the Public in Light of COVID-19: Content Analysis

10.2196/19501 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. e19501 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linnea Laestadius ◽  
Yang Wang ◽  
Ziyad Ben Taleb ◽  
Mohammad Ebrahimi Kalan ◽  
Young Cho ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
General Public ◽  
English Language ◽  
Health Agency ◽  
Face Mask ◽  
World Health ◽  
Language Version ◽  
The Status ◽  
Health Organization

Background The rapid global spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has compelled national governments to issue guidance on the use of face masks for members of the general public. To date, no work has assessed how this guidance differs across governments. Objective This study seeks to contribute to a rational and consistent global response to infectious disease by determining how guidelines differ across nations and regions. Methods A content analysis of health agency mask guidelines on agency websites was performed in late March 2020 among 25 countries and regions with large numbers of COVID-19 cases. Countries and regions were assigned across the coding team by language proficiency, with Google Translate used as needed. When available, both the original and English language version of guidance were reviewed. Results All examined countries and regions had some form of guidance online, although detail and clarity differed. Although 9 countries and regions recommended surgical, medical, or unspecified masks in public and poorly ventilated places, 16 recommended against people wearing masks in public. There were 2 countries that explicitly recommended against fabric masks. In addition, 12 failed to outline the minimum basic World Health Organization guidance for masks. Conclusions Online guidelines for face mask use to prevent COVID-19 in the general public are currently inconsistent across nations and regions, and have been changing often. Efforts to create greater standardization and clarity should be explored in light of the status of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.

scholarly journals Wikipedia and the National Cancer Institute Website Appear to Offer Similar Osteosarcoma Information for Patients

2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 78
Author(s):  
Kate Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Health Professional ◽  
Patient Information ◽  
National Cancer Institute ◽  
English Language ◽  
World Health ◽  
Language Version ◽  
Item Questionnaire ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Professional Information ◽  
Health Organization

A Review of: Leithner, A., Werner, M., Glehr, M., Friesenbichler, J., Keithner, K., & Windhager R. (2010). Wikipedia and osteosarcoma: A trustworthy patients' information? Journal of the Medical Informatics Association, 17(4), 373-374. Objective – To compare the completeness and accuracy of information about osteosarcoma in Wikipedia to information found on the patient and health professional versions of the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) website. Design – Comparative study, test against 20 item questionnaire and expert opinion. Setting – n/a. Subjects – n/a. Methods – The authors developed a 20-item questionnaire to test the completeness and accuracy of information on osteosarcoma in Wikipedia and on the “patient version and the health professional version of the National Cancer Institute’s website as ‘official’ reference websites” (p. 373). Three independent observers, two surgeons specializing in musculoskeletal tumour surgery and a medical student, tested the English language version of Wikipedia and the NCI “websites” on April 3, 2009. Answers to the 20 questions found on the websites were scored from zero to three and were discussed with a member of the “German board for guidelines in musculoskeletal surgery” (p. 373) and verified against international guidelines published by the World Health Organization. Data was analyzed using SPSS and group comparisons were performed using Mann-Whitney U test with p-values of less than 0.05 significance. Main Results – The quality of information about osteosarcoma found in the English language version of Wikipedia was good but inferior to the patient information from NCI. Out of a total of 60 points Wikipedia scored 33, NCI patient information 40 and NCI professional information 50. There was no significant difference between the NCI patient information and Wikipedia but a significant difference (p=0.039) between Wikipedia and NCI professional information. Conclusion – Non-peer reviewed websites providing health information, such as Wikipedia, should include links to sites such as NCI and other more definitive sources such as professional and international organizations. Frequent checks should be used to ensure external links are of the highest quality.

scholarly journals Status Hukum Khitan Perempuan (Perdebatan Pandangan Ulama dan Permenkes RI No.1636/MENKES/PER/XI/2010)

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-186
Author(s):  
Aisyatul Azizah
Keyword(s):  
World Health Organization ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Female Circumcision ◽  
Health Agency ◽  
World Health ◽  
Health Ministry ◽  
Positive Law ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
Health Organization

Khitan bagi laki-laki adalah wajib. Hal ini berbeda dengan khitan perempuan. Permasalahan ini menuai kontroversi baik terkait praktik dan status hukum. Polemik besar bergulir pasca Majelis Ulama Indonesia (MUI) berfatwa No. 9A tahun 2008. Legal himbauan ini mengatur pelarangan khitan terhadap perempuan. Pelarangan juga dimaklumatkan WHO (World Health Organitation), badan kesehatan dunia ini mengungkapkan dampak negatif pada praktik khitan perempuan. Data 140 juta perempuan mengalami pendarahan, gangguan buang air kecil, kista, dan kemandulan akibat berkhitan. LSM kemudian memvonis khitan perempuan berbahaya. Larangan tanpa tegas pada khitan perempuan juga diterbitkan kementerian Kesehatan yang membatalkan Permenkes Nomor 1636/MENKES/PER/XI/2010 dengan Permenkes Nomor 6 Tahun 2014. Hal ini menjadikan aturan khitan perempuan kurang jelas dimasyarakat. Dalam status Hukum Positif dan agama,tidak ada pelarangan maupun penganjuran secara mutlak. Namun demikian, khitan perempuan merupakan tradisi yangdipercaya sebagai penyempurna agama dalamajaran pada prilaku kesopanan. Di Indonesia, khitan perempuan dirayakan khusus dan sebagai argumen pelestarian adat dan budaya.[Circumcision for men is mandatory in Islamic Syari’ah. It is different from female circumcision. The issue is reaping controversy both practice and legal status. Public polemics is one reason in the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) fatwa No. 9A of 2008. The law stipulates the prohibition of female circumcision. The prohibition is announced by the WHO (World Health Organization), the world health agency that reveals negative things in female circumcision. Data on 140 million women experienced bleeding, urination problems, cysts, and infertility due to circumcision. NGOs is the next convicted female circumcision as a dangerous practice. Health Ministry also published an unequivocal prohibition on female circumcision, which canceled the Ministry rule (Permenkes) No. 1636 / MENKES / PER / XI / 2010 with Permenkes No. 6/2014. It makes the concept of rules for female circumcision less clear in society. In the status of positive law and religion, there is no absolute prohibition or recommendation. However, female circumcision is a culture believed as a religious accomplishment to make polite women. In Indonesia, female circumcision is special celebrations and argument for the preservation of tradition and culture.] 

scholarly journals Compliance and Etiquettes of Using Face Masks in Public during COVID-19 Pandemic: A Community-Based Survey from Islamabad, Pakistan

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 79-86
Author(s):  
Mishaal Fazal ◽  
Talha Khawar ◽  
Zawar Raza ◽  
Laiba Maryam ◽  
Arshia Bilal ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
General Public ◽  
Statistical Tests ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Face Mask ◽  
World Health ◽  
Sample Population ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Public Areas ◽  
Study Population ◽  
Health Organization

Background: To determine the frequency of general public compliant to face mask and also to evaluate knowledge and practice of using face mask in accordance with World Health Organization (WHO) and National Institute of Health (NIH) guidelines in our community. Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive design was adopted. A sample of 190 people was recruited from public areas in Islamabad during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study was conducted over a period of two months between November and December 2020. Knowledge and etiquettes of face mask use were evaluated with the help of a self-developed questionnaire based on WHO and NIH guidelines. Statistical tests were applied to understand the association of knowledge with etiquettes and also to see the effects of demographic variables on them. Results: This study revealed that one fourth of the sample population was not wearing face masks in public. More than half were not concerned about COVID-19 pandemic and only one third knew about the national policy related to face mask usage. Only one-tenth of the population wore the correct type of mask recommended for general public use (cloth mask). The participant’s performance in the etiquette aspect of using face mask was also poor. Conclusion: The general public is unaware of Pakistan’s national policy on face masks. Although majority of the study population was compliant with wearing masks in public, results were unsatisfactory in terms of their etiquette. Effort is needed to increase the general public’s concern in value of using face mask and awareness about correct techniques.

scholarly journals Epidemiology training and public health practice

1989 ◽  
Vol 102 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. S. Brachman ◽  
S. I. Music
Keyword(s):  
Public Health Practice ◽  
International Health ◽  
Health Agency ◽  
Information Support ◽  
World Health ◽  
Research Information ◽  
Systems Research ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
Health Organization

There is a significant role for the practice of epidemiology throughout the world if health professionals are to work effectively towards ‘Health for All’. The status quo leaves a great deal to be desired, as evidenced by recent signals from the premier international health agency, the World Health Organization (WHO). The forty-first World Health Assembly meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, in May 1988 approved a resolution stressing ‘the importance of epidemiology as a tool for the formulation of rational health policy’ (PAHO, 1988). In addition to its key role ‘in studying the causes and means of prevention of disease’, the Assembly noted epidemiology's valuable inputs in ‘health systems research, information support, technology assessment, and the management and evaluation of health service’.

ARIMA model for forecasting COVID-19 Death cases in India (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeya Sutha M
Keyword(s):  
Arima Model ◽  
Public Health Emergency ◽  
World Health ◽  
The People ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Government ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
Spread Of Infection ◽  
Death Cases

UNSTRUCTURED COVID-19, the disease caused by a novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), is a highly contagious disease. On January 30, 2020 the World Health Organization declared the outbreak as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. As of July 25, 2020; 15,947,292 laboratory-confirmed and 642,814 deaths have been reported globally. India has reported 1,338,928 confirmed cases and 31,412 deaths till date. This paper presents different aspects of COVID-19, visualization of the spread of infection and presents the ARIMA model for forecasting the status of COVID-19 death cases in the next 50 days in order to take necessary precaution by the Government to save the people.

The study of Iranian children and adolescents’ physical activity: a systematic review and meta-analysis

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adel Alizadeh ◽  
Reza Negarandeh ◽  
Fahimehe Bagheri Amiri ◽  
Zahra Yazdani
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Children And Adolescents ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
World Health ◽  
Chi Square ◽  
The Status ◽  
Newcastle Ottawa Scale ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
Iranian Children

Abstract Objectives This systematic and meta-analysis review was conducted to determine the status of Iranian children and adolescents’ physical activity. Content All the related articles which were published in the major databases, including Pubmed, Scopus, Web of Science, Embase, Magiran, SID from the beginning of 2010 to the end of 2019, were reviewed by researchers. The Newcastle-Ottawa scale was also used to evaluate the quality of articles. Moreover, I 2 index and chi-square were used to assess the heterogeneity between the results. Summary 490 articles were found as a result of the search in the selected international and local databases, where finally, 10 articles were included into the meta-analysis after the elimination of the duplicated articles and applying inclusion and exclusion criteria. The results indicated that 29.5% of the girls were considered active according to WHO criteria (16.1–42.8: 95% CI) and also 20.5% of the boys (7.3–33.7: 95% CI). Outlook Overall, this study’s findings showed that a large percentage of Iranian children and adolescents do not achieve the level of physical activity recommended by the World Health Organization. This can lead to undesirable consequences for this group of population that is considered as the human capital of any country; consequently, it seems necessary to take basic measures at the micro and macro levels in order to reduce such problems in the society.

scholarly journals IoT and Deep Learning Based Approach for Rapid Screening and Face Mask Detection for Infection Spread Control of COVID-19

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 3495
Author(s):  
Shabir Hussain ◽  
Yang Yu ◽  
Muhammad Ayoub ◽  
Akmal Khan ◽  
Rukhshanda Rehman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Deep Learning ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Face Mask ◽  
World Health ◽  
Rapid Screening ◽  
Screening System ◽  
Source Of Infection ◽  
The Face ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
Vaccine Distribution

The spread of COVID-19 has been taken on pandemic magnitudes and has already spread over 200 countries in a few months. In this time of emergency of COVID-19, especially when there is still a need to follow the precautions and developed vaccines are not available to all the developing countries in the first phase of vaccine distribution, the virus is spreading rapidly through direct and indirect contacts. The World Health Organization (WHO) provides the standard recommendations on preventing the spread of COVID-19 and the importance of face masks for protection from the virus. The excessive use of manual disinfection systems has also become a source of infection. That is why this research aims to design and develop a low-cost, rapid, scalable, and effective virus spread control and screening system to minimize the chances and risk of spread of COVID-19. We proposed an IoT-based Smart Screening and Disinfection Walkthrough Gate (SSDWG) for all public places entrance. The SSDWG is designed to do rapid screening, including temperature measuring using a contact-free sensor and storing the record of the suspected individual for further control and monitoring. Our proposed IoT-based screening system also implemented real-time deep learning models for face mask detection and classification. This module classified individuals who wear the face mask properly, improperly, and without a face mask using VGG-16, MobileNetV2, Inception v3, ResNet-50, and CNN using a transfer learning approach. We achieved the highest accuracy of 99.81% while using VGG-16 and the second highest accuracy of 99.6% using MobileNetV2 in the mask detection and classification module. We also implemented classification to classify the types of face masks worn by the individuals, either N-95 or surgical masks. We also compared the results of our proposed system with state-of-the-art methods, and we highly suggested that our system could be used to prevent the spread of local transmission and reduce the chances of human carriers of COVID-19.

scholarly journals Facial Recognition System for People with and without Face Mask in Times of the COVID-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 6900
Author(s):  
Jonathan S. Talahua ◽  
Jorge Buele ◽  
P. Calvopiña ◽  
José Varela-Aldás
Keyword(s):  
Facial Recognition ◽  
Face Mask ◽  
Recognition System ◽  
Classification Model ◽  
World Health ◽  
The Face ◽  
Recognition Systems ◽  
Facial Recognition System ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
Face Detector

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the use of a face mask as a mandatory biosafety measure. This has caused problems in current facial recognition systems, motivating the development of this research. This manuscript describes the development of a system for recognizing people, even when they are using a face mask, from photographs. A classification model based on the MobileNetV2 architecture and the OpenCv’s face detector is used. Thus, using these stages, it can be identified where the face is and it can be determined whether or not it is wearing a face mask. The FaceNet model is used as a feature extractor and a feedforward multilayer perceptron to perform facial recognition. For training the facial recognition models, a set of observations made up of 13,359 images is generated; 52.9% images with a face mask and 47.1% images without a face mask. The experimental results show that there is an accuracy of 99.65% in determining whether a person is wearing a mask or not. An accuracy of 99.52% is achieved in the facial recognition of 10 people with masks, while for facial recognition without masks, an accuracy of 99.96% is obtained.

scholarly journals THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY AS A GLOBAL EMPLOYMENT SKILL: THE VIEWPOINT OF PAKISTANI ACADEMIA

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 1071-1077
Author(s):  
Furrakh Abbas ◽  
Abdul Majid Khan Rana ◽  
Irfan Bashir ◽  
Azhar Munir Bhatti
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
Mixed Method ◽  
English Language ◽  
English Language Proficiency ◽  
English Language Teaching ◽  
Mixed Method Research ◽  
Occupational Groups ◽  
Employment Skills ◽  
The Status

Purpose of the Study: The current research aims at exploring the need of effective English skill as a global employment skill and its various reasons, as there are various Pakistani institutes which are dedicated to The English language teaching and reinforce its relationship with employability. The importance of the study being conducted in Pakistan becomes more evident as English enjoys the status of the second language in the country. Methodology: Current study uses a mixed-method research design and employs both questionnaires and interviews as research instruments. The questionnaire was administrated on a sample of 392 university students while a sample of 13 informants from university faculty participated in an interview for data collection. Main Findings: The study concludes that the importance of English was associated with increased connectivity due to globalization. The study also concludes that the importance of English for finding jobs and making a career was well-established. To conclude, it can be said that English language proficiency is amongst the top global employment skills in the viewpoint of Pakistani academia. Application of this Study: The study implicates that the importance of English for employment across the globe and a successful career will further lead to the formulation of English Specific courses for different professional and occupational groups in Pakistan. The originality of the Study: There is a scarcity of empirical evidence in terms of the importance of English as an employment skill though English is considered very important as an elite language and a status symbol. The study proposes to fill in the gap by providing empirical evidence, therefore, the research is being conducted to assess the status of English and its importance for global employment skills.

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