Aim: This study’s aim was to assess the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of mothers regarding childhood vaccination during the first five years of children’s lives in Saudi Arabia. Method: A cross-sectional, descriptive study was conducted with the application of convenience sampling, and 262 questionnaires were completed by Saudi mothers who had children aged 5 years or younger. Results: The majority of the participants were aged 25–31 years (57%), 61% held a bachelor’s degree, and 60.3% had children aged 2–5 years. The knowledge score was 86%, 2492 out of a total score of 2893; the attitude score was 89.1%, 973 out of a total score of 1052; the practice score was 80.5%, 1059 out of a total score of 1315. There was no evidence of an association (p > 0.05) between the knowledge, attitudes, and practice of mothers regarding vaccination and their sociodemographic aspects. Conclusion: The Saudi mothers in our sample were knowledgeable, with positive attitudes regarding vaccination, and they demonstrated good practices. This might be explained by the higher educational level of our sample. Recommendations: We recommend using multiple educational methods to support the practice of mothers regarding the management of complications of vaccinations.

Blood transfusion is a common practice in hospitals. In many diseases, transfusion of red blood cells can be a life-saving measure. Knowing the blood group phenotypes of the donors in any population is important to improve health care services and to better serve patients. We aimed to determine the blood group phenotypes of the regular donors visiting the main blood donation center in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE). A total of 500 regular blood donors were included, and blood group antigens were tested using serologic methods. Major blood group systems included in this testing were ABO, Rh, Kell, Kidd, Duffy, Lewis, Lutheran, MNS, and P1PK. The most prevalent ABO/D blood type was group O, D+ (29.6%), with the most prevalent phenotype in the Rh blood group system reported as R 1 r (34.4%). In the Kell system, the K-k+ phenotype was reported in 92.4 percent of individuals tested. The rare Duffy null phenotype, Fy(a-b-), was reported in 11.0 percent of the cohort. Most donors (99.0%) were Lu(b+). In the Lewis system, the phenotype Le(a-b+) was seen in 61.8 percent of the donors. MNS system phenotypes were comparable to the reports from Saudi Arabia and India, with M+N+S-s+ being the most prevalent (21.2%). The prevalence of many major blood group phenotypes in the UAE blood donor population showed similarities to results from populations in neighboring countries, but other phenotype prevalences were unique to this population. This finding can be used to build a blood group registry for the local population that can better serve hospitals' transfusion requirements.

relative growth rate according to the FAW strain, using potted maize plants treated with 10 and 20 g of Si. The results showed that plants treated with Si disturbed the larval growth of FAW larvae only from the corn strain but not from the rice strain. Overall, the corn strain performed better on maize as compared to the rice strain regardless of Si treatment, explaining why it has become the most abundant strain in Africa. Keywords Silicon • Fall armyworm • Rice strain • Corn strain • Maize • Sub-saharan Africa in the Poaceae family (Montezano et al., 2018). In Africa, FAW represents a major threat to food security (Devi, 2018), and since 2018, the pest has infested tens of millions of hectares of maize (FAO, 2018) which is, on the continent, the second main food crop behind cassava in terms of annual production (FAOSTAT, 2020) and the most important cereal crop (FAOSTAT, 2020; IITA, 2020). In the African context, where most