Background: The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is a serious global health problem that has negatively impacted the mental health of students.Methods: We conducted an online descriptive cross-sectional study among 273 undergraduate pharmacy students at the University of Zambia from August to September 2020. A partial proportional odds regression model was used to determine the predictors of anxiety. All statistical tests were set at 95% confidence level (p<0.05).Results: A response rate of 70% was obtained with the majority of the students being female 51.6%. Of the 273 respondents, 23.8% did not experience anxiety, 34.4% experienced mild anxiety, 24.9% experienced moderate anxiety while 16.9% experienced severe anxiety about COVID-19. It was also found that 61.2% of students reported that their attention to mental health increased during the COVID-19 pandemic whereas 44.3% reported an increased resting time with a significant reduction in relaxation 51.3% and physical activity 45.4% time. Factors that affected mental health included; reduced family care (OR: 2.27; 95% CI: 1.09-4.74), not changing attention to mental health (OR: 0.33; 95% CI: 0.18-0.62), being in the final year of study (OR: 0.33; 95% CI: 0.13-0.84), reduced time of resting (OR: 2.10; 95% CI: 1.26-3.50) and feeling helpless (OR: 0.42; 95% CI:0.23-0.75).Conclusions: COVID-19 negatively impacted the mental health and physical activity of pharmacy students at the University of Zambia. This can have negative health and academic outcomes for students going forward. Higher learning institutions and key stakeholders should implement measures to aid students to recover from the impact of COVID-19 on their mental health and physical activity.

BackgroundThe novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is a serious global health problem that has negatively impacted the mental health of students.MethodsWe conducted an online descriptive cross-sectional study among 273 undergraduate pharmacy students at the University of Zambia. A partial proportional odds regression model was used to determine the predictors of anxiety. All statistical tests were set at 95% confidence level (p<0.05).ResultsA response rate of 70% was obtained with the majority of the students being female 51.6%. Of the 273 respondents, 23.8% did not experience anxiety, 34.4% experienced mild anxiety, 24.9% experienced moderate anxiety while 16.9% experienced severe anxiety about COVID-19. It was also found that 61.2% of students reported that their attention to mental health increased during the COVID-19 pandemic whereas 44.3% reported an increased resting time with a significant reduction in relaxation 51.3% and physical activity 45.4% time. Factors that affected mental health included; reduced family care (OR: 2.27; 95% CI: 1.09-4.74), not changing attention to mental health (OR: 0.33; 95% CI: 0.18-0.62), being in the final year of study (OR: 0.33; 95% CI: 0.13-0.84), reduced time of resting (OR: 2.10; 95% CI: 1.26-3.50) and feeling helpless (OR: 0.42; 95% CI:0.23-0.75).ConclusionCOVID-19 negatively impacted the mental health and physical activity of pharmacy students at the University of Zambia. This can have negative health and academic outcomes for students going forward. Higher learning institutions and key stakeholders should implement measures to aid students to recover from the impact of COVID-19 on their mental health and physical activity.

The research systematically documented and described the corporate governance practices and financial performance in State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in Zambia from 2006 to 2017. The research design that was adopted was the descriptive research design to systematically describe the corporate governance practices and financial performance of SOEs in Zambia. The corporate governance attributes for SOEs such as board size, board appointing authorities and board membership have been found to be prescribed by a diversity of Acts of Parliament for different SOEs. This finding suggests that the governance of these entities could be a challenge insofar as the uniformity of the legal framework for the governance of the entities was concerned. In addition to this, board membership which are designated by specific government positions rather than merit based, compromises board effectiveness. The study has further shown that failure to produce and publish, for public scrutiny, audited financial statements on a timely basis leads to lack of transparency and accountability. The financial performance has been found to have been poor as the SOEs on average produced negative returns on total assets and the SOEs were highly geared based on operating gearing and financing gearing. Lastly, financial performance of SOEs and the corporate governance practices differed significantly across different industries under which the SOEs operated.

Policy and legal frameworks are enablers for the delivery of appropriate higher education (HE) in a country. Zambia is currently implementing reforms in the HE sub-sector within the context of the policy and legal frameworks. These frameworks have implications on the provision of HE. The objectives of the paper are to: identify the policy and legal frameworks for the HE sub-sector; and determine the implications of these frameworks on HE. A document analysis method was used for the study in order to determine the relevant policy and legal frameworks on HE. In particular, the analysis used qualitative data purposively collected from the following documents: (1) Educating Our Future: National Policy on Education of 1996; (2) Technical Education, Vocational and Entrepreneurship Training Policy of 1996; (3) Higher Education Act No. 4 of 2013 and Zambia Qualifications Authority Act No. 13 of 2011; (5) Higher Education Loans and Scholarships Act No. 31 of 2016; (6) Technical Education, Vocational and Entrepreneurship Training (TEVET) Act No. 13 of 1998 as amended by the TEVET Act No. 11 of 2005; and (7) selected Government Gazette notices. The study findings are that the higher education policy and legal frameworks implications are liberalization, quality assurance, appropriate responses to the national needs, flexibility in training programs, financing, partnerships, accountability, and relevance of training programs offered. The paper concludes that there are multiple policy and legal frameworks implications on HE in Zambia but key among these are registration and accreditation of learning programs, and development of quality assurance systems to address the multitude of the twenty-first century challenges and demands of excellence in HE.

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