International Journal of Public Health and Safety

Introduction: Depression and anxiety impacts people of every age, sex, and ethnic background, with debilitating health care and disability costs. Due to the significant increased costs, lack of availability of health care, and associated social stigma, there is an increased need to find alternative, socially acceptable therapies like CBT (Cognitive behavior therapy) for the treatment of COPD symptoms like depression and anxiety.
Methods: The research design of the study was quasi-experimental one group pre-test post-test design. The subjects selected for the study were patients suffering from COPD. The sample of 30 patients of COPD who were admitted in hospital wards were selected using simple randomization technique. Interview technique was used to fill pre-test and post-test regarding depression and anxiety. Both the tools used- Beck’s anxiety scale and Hamilton’s depression scales were standardized. Data was collected and CBT program was administered to COPD patients. The analysed data was interpreted in the form of objectives and hypothesis.
Results: The collected data was analyzed by using descriptive and inferential statistics. The majorities of patients were females (53%) and were married (90%).The mean post-test depression score with standard deviation. (26.6 ± 6.5) was significantly higher than mean pretest depression score with standard deviation (22.8 ± 5.5). Similarly the mean post- test score of anxiety with standard deviation (19.7 ± 6.1) was significantly higher than mean pretest score with standard deviation (17.4 ± 5.5). The study findings revealed that there was negative co-relation (-0.18) between anxiety and depression. A significant association was found between level of post-test depression and anxiety with educational status.
Conclusion: There was negative correlation between post-test depression and anxiety scores. Cognitive behavior therapy was an effective therapeutic process in reducing anxiety and depression among COPD patients.

Harare used to be known as the sunshine city considering its cleanliness and middle class competence but out of a blue, the city’s busiest areas are now a big threat to the general public. This paper has been compiled to explore on the threats and problems on public health with focused lens on Harare’s central business district (CBD) and the inner-city. Poor management of the city by the council has led to rampant vending at unclean places which affects the hygiene of the products consumed by the public. The shortage of public toilets to ensure a healthy environment is another story to tell. Harare’s drainage systems within the CBD are failing to properly allow water drainage due to increased litter blocking the pipes increasing flash floods susceptibility. Consequently, the inner-city is filled with quite a lot of unhygienic food outlets which mostly capture the attention of low income earners such the comb venders and conductors. The influx of the so called traditional healers in the both the CBD and the innercity has also become a threat to the public as most of them are not licensed by responsible authorities which may cause health problems as a result. The public is susceptible to a number of diseases and infections in other terms life threatening risks from the tainted environment. Proper measures have to be taken to ensure that the public’s wellbeing health wise is free from environmental related threats and problems.

Introduction: HIV currently remains a leading cause of adult morbidity and mortality in Namibia, which continues to have one of the highest HIV prevalence rates in the world. Namibia is experiencing one of the largest HIV epidemics in Africa with a reported national prevalence of 15.3%. Globally, young adults are considered to be most vulnerable to HIV/AIDS, and therefore worth assessing the prevalence of HIV risk behavior in relation to the knowledge of the disease among this age group.
Methods: We used a cross-sectional study on a sample 385 young adults (18-35 years) attending the outpatients’ department at a referral hospital in Namibia. Relative importance index (RII) was used to describe the overall score for knowledge on HIV and risk perception, alcohol and drug use behavior, condom use behavior, health status for each study participant. The chi-square test and multiple regression analysis were employed for data analysis.
Results: The participants; 56% were females, the average age (SD) was 26.4 years (5.3), 9% were educated up to primary school only, 21% were unemployed while 38% were either students or intern, 56% reported residence in Windhoek urban area while 38% and 6% resided in Windhoek rural or other classification, 51% were of the Oshiwambo ethnicity while 49% were from other ethnical groupings, 52% were single while 26% and 18% were married and cohabiting respectively. There was a significant association between marital status and knowledge RII score while adjusting for other study variables, the odds of having knowledge RII score below median was 36% less in participants who are not single compared to those single (OR=0.36, p=0.012). There was boundary significant association between drug use RII score and knowledge RII score while adjusting for other study variables, the odds of having knowledge RII score below median was 1.95 times more in participants with drug use RII score below median (OR=1.95, p=0.067). There was no association between knowledge RII score with condom use and age at first sexual encounter (p>0.05).
Conclusion and Recommendations: Policy makers need to consider expansion of policies on HIV/AIDS awareness to include strategies beyond ensuring knowledge of disease.

Objective: To assess the internet addicted teenagers’ parents’ awareness about positive and negative impact of internet use.
Methods: A survey was conducted to find out the parents’ awareness about positive and negative impact of internet use by distributing a questionnaire to the parents of those teenagers already identified as internet addicted.
Results: 70.3% mothers of internet addicted teenagers agreed that internet is useful to support in education and 78.7% mothers agreed that internet is useful for attaining information whereas 100% fathers agreed that internet is very useful to supports education and attaining information, 49% mothers and 71.4% fathers believed internet is useful for individual development whereas 78% mothers and 97.4% fathers believed that internet is very useful for communication and entertainment, 57.6% mothers of internet addicted teenagers believed that internet somewhat facilitate easy access to child unfriendly contents whereas 100% fathers of the internet addicted teenagers believed that internet very much facilitate easy access to child unfriendly contents, 70.3% mothers and 65.3% fathers had the opinion that internet somewhat has negative effect on individual’s life, 64% mothers believed that internet somewhat puts negative impact on human psychology on the other hand 100% fathers believed that internet somewhat puts negative impact on human psychology, 76.3% mothers and 64.2% fathers agreed that internet somewhat has negative impact on physical health.
Conclusion: Though teenagers’ parents have some knowledge about the positive and negative impact of internet, they have poor control over their children or, they don’t know the strategic management for prevention and management of internet addiction.

A primary focus of Survival analysis in medicine is modelling time to surviving of a particular disease. In this paper, survival analysis was carried out on the neonatal jaundice data modeling time to surviving the disease. The data was gotten from collected from University College hospital (UCH), Ibadan, Nigeria. The Kaplan-Meier approach was used to describe the survival functions of the neonatal jaundice patients and Log-rank tests was used to compare the survival curves among groups. Different kinds of models such as Cox Proportional Hazard Model and Accelerated Failure Time (AFT) models like Weibull AFT model, Logistic AFT model, Log-normal AFT model, Log-logistic AFT model and Exponential AFT model are considered to be used for modelling the time to surviving neonatal jaundice. Models selection criteria were used as a guide to unravel the best model for modeling neonatal jaundice. The result revealed that the fitted cox proportional hazard model suggested that there were 0.2708 chances of male neonates having higher median time of surviving jaundice compared to female neonates. Based on the mother's health history, neonates whose mother had illness during pregnancy will have 0.5329 chance of having higher median time of surviving the Jaundice compared to neonates whose mother do not have any illness during pregnancy. The log-logistic AFT model out-performed the other models since it has the lowest AIC and the highest log-likelihood value with 1131.461 and -550.7305 respectively.