The aim of this study was to assess and explore household environmental health factors associated with the occurrence of diarrhoea experienced by children under five years of age in Sebeta town of Ethiopia. A cross-sectional study, using stratified random sampling was used to conduct the research. A total of 477 households’ mothers/caregivers had participated in the study. The study showed that the prevalence of childhood diarrhoea was 9.9%. A number of risk factors including demographic variables, water and hygienic practices, and knowledge of risk factors showed significant association with childhood diarrhoea on bivariate analysis. The multivariate analysis showed that four variables were protective factors for childhood diarrhoea, including the type of toilet facility (AOR: 0.37; 95% CI 0.16 – 0.87; p = 0.023), availability of specific hand-washing places (AOR: 0.40; 95% CI 0.18 – 0.90; p = 0.026), availability of hand-washing facilities (AOR: 0.20; 95% CI 0.06 – 0.70; p = 0.012) and mothers’ knowledge on diarrhoea causation (AOR: 3.09; 95% CI 1.24 – 7.68; p = 0.015). The study, thus, recommends that effective measures to curtail prevalence of diarrhoea in urban contexts should be substantially increased by enhancing protective factors such as urban sanitation promotion programmes with emphasis on accelerating universal access to improved sanitation and hand-washing facilities, together with efforts in promoting proper hygiene behaviours.

Background: Intimate partner violence (IPV) is common worldwide and occurs across social, economic, religious and cultural groups. This makes it an important public health issue for health care providers. In South Africa, the problem of violence against women is complex and it has social and public health consequences. The paucity of data on IPV is related to underreporting and a lack of screening of this form of violence in health care settings.Objectives: The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of IPV and explore the risk factors associated with this type of violence against women who visited a public hospital in Botswana.Method: A descriptive, cross-sectional survey was conducted among randomly sampled adult women aged 21 years and older, during their hospital visits in 2007. Data were obtained by means of structured interviews, after obtaining written and signed, informed consent from each participant.Results: A total of 320 women participated in this study. Almost half (49.7%) reported having had an experience of IPV in one form or another at some point in their lifetime, while 68 (21.2%) reported a recent incident of abuse by their partners in the past year. Experiences of IPV were predominantly reported by women aged 21 – 30 years (122; 38%). Most of the allegedly abused participants were single (173; 54%) and unemployed (140; 44%). Significant associations were found between alcohol use by participants’ male intimate partners (χ2 = 17.318; p = 0.001) and IPV, as well as cigarette smoking (χ2 = 17.318; p = 0.001) and IPV.Conclusion: The prevalence of alleged IPV in Botswana is relatively high (49.7%), especially among young adult women, but the prevalence of reported IPV is low (13.2%). It is essential that women are screened regularly in the country’s public and private health care settings for IPV.

Despite widespread global attention, the potential threats to human health posed by climate change in Africa still need to be further understood. Although there is mounting concern that climate change is a serious risk to human health, less evidence shows a direct causal relationship between climate change and health risks in Africa. In this rapid review, we discuss our synthesis of available evidence on the health implications of climate change with a focus on Africa. PubMed was systematically searched for relevant articles from 2020 to 2023 using a search strategy. Only eligible articles published in the English language with full article access were included for review using the population concept context (PCC) criteria by Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI). After removing duplicates, the selection process began with title and abstract screening, followed by screening full-text articles. Of the 3272 articles retrieved, only 10 were eligible for synthesis. We found mainly reported climate exposures to range from drought, concerning rainfall patterns, and increasing temperatures reported to cause morbidity and mortality through health risks: respiratory diseases, vector-borne diseases, cardiovascular diseases and mental health concerns. Africa still has a huge shortage of available evidence, particularly research focusing on the health implications, including mental health of climate change and interventions to prevent climate change-related health consequences. While the limited global evidence indicates that climate change results in an increased risk to public health, there are gaps in demonstrating the causal links between climate change and societal mental health impacts in Africa. There is also an urgent need for more research on effectively addressing climate hazards that threaten the African continent's public health and well-being.

As the world grappled with the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare workers (HCWs) continued to provide uninterrupted health care service delivery; therefore, this disproportionately affected their wellbeing. Our study explored the wellbeing of HCWs during the COVID-19 era in public health facilities in the City of Johannesburg, Gauteng province, South Africa. A qualitative study was conducted among twenty (20) HCWs through face-to-face in-depth interviews (IDIs) in the form of semi-structured interviews, audiotapes, and transcribed verbatim, and thematically analyzed with NVivo version 10. The findings showed that over half of HCWs (aged between 27 and 60 years) tested positive for COVID-19. Also, one third of HCWs’ family members tested positive while some died due to COVID-19 infection. Informed by the workers’ wellbeing framework, four themes emerged with fourteen sub-themes. Firstly, unsafe work environment was characterized by human resource related challenges such as increased workload; staff shortage; insufficient resources, e.g., personal protective equipment (PPE); poor policies in terms of compensation/allowance for being infected with COVID-19; poor health services; and death of colleagues. Secondly, poor health outcomes were described as strained emotional (psychosocial distress) and physical (respiratory related conditions) wellbeing. Thirdly, home and community environments were negatively impacted by interrupted relationships with family and friends, and experiences of deaths of loved ones. Finally, HCWs engaged personal wellbeing strategies through self-motivation; staying positive; family support; and participating in resilience-promoting extra mural activities to cope during the pandemic. In conclusion, the wellbeing of HCWs was aggravated during the COVID-19 era and led to low morale and compromised healthcare quality. This study advocates for promotion of greater resilience, and psychological and physical safety of HCWs through evidence-based, multilevel-multicomponent interventions at the workplace, home, and community environments in addition to strengthening public health policies and response to future pandemics.

Deep-shaft mining is regarded as a high-risk occupation with an increasing number of traumatic accidents. Though there are strategies for the management of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), little has been done to document the male survivors’ perceptions of PTSD management strategies in the South African mining sector. An exploratory, descriptive and contextual study was conducted within the South African mining sector to explore and describe the survivors’ perceptions of PTSD management strategies. The population comprised all men who were suffering from PTSD as a result of accidents in the mines. A purposive sample of 29 men was selected to participate in the study and data saturation was achieved. Unstructured individual interviews and field notes were used as methods of data collection. One question was asked during the interviews: “What do think helped you recover from PTSD?” Communication skills were employed to facilitate the participation of the men during the interviews. Data were collected using a voice recorder and were then transcribed verbatim and analysed using Tesch’s descriptive method of data analysis. Measures for ensuring trustworthiness were applied to verify the findings. Three themes emerged during data analysis: (1) perceived emphasis on physical versus psychological treatments, (2) perceived coping strategies used to deal with the trauma, and lastly, (3) the perceived effect of social support networks during trauma. Based on the perceptions of the participants, it became evident that PTSD management did not meet expectations. An integrated approach is recommended for the future treatment of psychological and physical trauma among survivors of traumatic events in the mining sector.

As of 16 March 2023, 26,222 prominent entrepreneurs and business executives had signed a petition to cease all Artificial Intelligence (AI) experimentation and training beyond GPT-4.”[1] The rationale for this intervention was to examine the impact of AI developments and whether they pose a major risk to humanity. The petitioners believe that current AI developments can compete with humans in almost all respects and caution that AI technological advancements can lead to developments beyond human control with a high potential to outsmart humans. Teaching and learning (T&L), research and innovation form the backbone of the higher education sector. Higher education institutions develop individuals' intellectual, operational and technical abilities for a functional society. By its definition, a higher education institution and a university in particular is a provider of facilities and resources that enable intellectuals and expertise to facilitate T&L, research and community engagement.[2] Recently, the question of community engagement viewed in respect of its earlier reference to the triple helix has been redefined into quad helix as “engagement” to embrace all “stakeholders”. Here, mutual T&L between the higher education sector and industries continues to increase learning machine technologies for operational purposes in agriculture, manufacturing, and packaging.[3]