Background: Sexual harassment has received global attention and has been recognized as a public health problem with increased physical and mental health risks among the victims. This study attempted to assess understanding, experience, response and effect of sexual harassment among the secondary school female students in Kathmandu, Nepal.Methods: It was a mixed method study conducted among 441 secondary level female students. In quantitative component, a structured questionnaire was used to collect information relating to socio-demographic characteristics, and understanding, experience, response and effect of sexual harassment from 441 participants from three clusters (schools) of Tokha Municipality, Kathmandu. For qualitative method, two focused group discussions were conducted to assess the understanding of and response to sexual harassment. Quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed using Chi square test and thematic analysis method respectively.Results: Around 76% of the participants had experienced some forms of sexual harassment in their life. Sexual harassment was significantly associated with religion and parental occupation. Majority of participants who faced sexual harassment reported that the perpetrators were strangers and they either ignored it or did nothing at the time of events. School, roads and public places were the most common settings where participants encountered sexual harassment.Conclusions: Sexual harassment is prevalent among female secondary students in Kathmandu. However, they lacked a clear understating of and ways to respond to sexual harassment. Raising awareness to recognize and respond to different forms of harassment and to change the victim-blaming attitudes can be a potential strategy for tackling the problem in Nepalese society. Keywords: Abuse; sexual harassment; victimization; violence.

This study analyzes the trend and spatial distribution of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases with geographic information systems approach from January 23, 2020, to January 1, 2021. The prevalence of COVID-19 on the tested population, the case fatality rate, and cured rate in Nepal was ~13.00%, ~0.71%, and ~96.97%, respectively. The prevalence (~1.87) and death rate (~1.28 times) were higher among men than women and ~68% of fatal cases were with comorbidities—distinctly hypertension and chronic kidney diseases. The distribution of COVID-19 cases was heterogeneous across all administrative regions, mainly in Kathmandu valley and Bagmati Province. Confirmed and cured cases showed an upward trend till the end of October 2020 followed by a downward trend as of January 1, 2021. In the present scenario of the ongoing pandemic in Nepal, one of the better strategies to prevent and control the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) could be monitoring using geographic information systems and spatial analysis.

We are facing global pandemic of novel corona virus diseases COVID-19 which is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). This paper is aimed to assess trend of COVID-19 cases and health sector response in Nepal. We reviewed WHO databases to observe the global trends and epidemiology of COVID-19 as well as daily situation updated reports of Health Emergency and Operation Centre (HEOC), guidelines, national and international government documents. The first case of COVID was reported in Nepal on 23 January 2020 and number of cases reached 454 on 21 May 2020. In order to address the increasing number of cases of COVID-19, Government of Nepal is adopting various preventive measures like extending lockdown period, setting up quarantine and isolation facilities, sealing borders, suspending flights, closing public places etc. There is need of joint effort by individuals, communities and government to prevent the further spread and flatten epidemic curve in Nepal.

Background: Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is a recently discovered severe and contagious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and has received worldwide attention. The risk of COVID-19 is serious for the infected persons of chronic diseases as well as vulnerable populations including elder group. Still, the present scenario of scarcity of effective treatment options and limited recovery rate of ongoing treatment are prevailed in Nepal. This study aims to analyze the spatial distribution and trends of COVID-19 with the help of geographic information system (GIS) software and outlook future preventive perspectives.Methods: In this research work, we used GIS tool ArcGIS 10.4.1 to map the distribution patterns of population of COVID-19 cases. Federal, provincial and district level daily cases data of COVID-19 confirmed, cured and death from 23rd January to 13th July 2020 were obtained from the Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP), Government of Nepal. In addition, we reviewed several peer-reviewed research papers to summarize the global scenarios and preventive perspectives on COVID-19.Results: In context to Nepal SARS-CoV-2 has spread throughout the country infecting 16,945 persons in all 77 districts, as of 13th July, 2020. Confirmed, cured and death cases experienced an upward trend up to 1st July, 2020 followed by downward trend as of 13th July, 2020. Over 70% of total confirmed cases of reported COVID-19 patients were from the lowland-plain area. Spatial clustering suggested that provinces 2 and 5 were at potentially increased risk of COVID-19, and Province 1 and Bagmati province could be grouped as future "hot spots". In addition, we proposed four strategies namely, identification of the key medical and social elements, discovery and development of treatment options for a future pandemic, investing in ethno-medicine research and epidemic preparedness of health care system to decrease the efficacy of calamities of future pandemics.Conclusion: Our study demonstrates one of the best ways to protect; control and sluggish transmission of SARS-CoV-2 could be achieved by monitoring active ties using GIS spatial analysis. And, the severity of future pandemic could be minimized by integrative action on the abovementioned four different preventive master plans.