Malaria has been the leading cause of mortality for many years in underdeveloped countries like Ethiopia.Community Knowledge of cause and transmission of malaria and mosquito feeding behavior is key to design appropriate health communication strategies for malaria prevention and control. The present study aimed to assess knowledge and awareness on malaria and its association with mosquitoes in Dembele kebele, southeastern, Ethiopia. A community cross sectional study was carried out in Dembele kebele from January to February, 2017. A total of 159 randomly selected individuals were interviewed to assess their KAP about malaria. Data were collected by an interview based structured questionnaire after pre-tested. The collected data were entered in to SPSS for data coding and analysis. Binary logistic regressions analysis was applied and statistical significance test was declared at P-value <0.05 and OR with 95% CI. All respondents had ever heard of malaria and more than 86% of them believed that malaria was one of the most health problem diseases of the community. Most of the respondents (70.4%) were reported mosquito bite as the cause of malaria. The majority (79.2%) and (74.2%) of respondents had good levels of knowledge on transmission and prevention of malaria respectively. Binary logistic regression analysis showed that, knowledge on mode of malaria transmission was positively associated with sex (male) (OR=3.3; CI, 1.27-7.22), age (OR=5.03; CI, 1.03-24.46) and education level (OR=3.30; 95% CI, 1.04-10.50). Among socio-demographic variables, only education level (OR=3.8; CI, 1.51-9.65) was significance factor to knowledge on malaria prevention. The study aimed to assess knowledge and awareness regarding the cause, transmission and preventive measures of malaria; it was found to be high. Use of mosquito net as protective measure against mosquito bites was high in the study area. However, distance of respondent house is near to the mosquito breeding site. Therefore, environmental management and use of other additional preventive methods is very important to reduce prevalence of malaria in study area. Sex, age and education level were strong predictors of knowledge on malaria.

Background: Socioeconomic and demographic statuses are associated with adherence to the treatment of patients with several chronic diseases. However, there is a controversy regarding their impact on adherence among HIV/AIDS patients. Thus, we performed a systematic review of the evidence regarding the association of socioeconomic and demographic statuses with adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART) among HIV/AIDS patients. Methods: The PubMed database was used to search and identify studies concerning about socioeconomic and demographic statuses and HIV/AIDS patients. Data were collected on the association between adherence to ART and varies determinants factors of socioeconomic (income, education, and employment/occupation) and socio-demographic (sex and age). Findings: From 393 potentially-relevant articles initially identified, 35 original studies were reviewed in detail, which contained data that were helpful in evaluating the association between socioeconomic/ demographic statuses and adherence to ART among HIV patients. Two original research study has specifically focused on the possible association between socioeconomic status and adherence to ART. Income, level of education, and employment/occupational status were significantly and positively associated with the level of adherence in 7 studies (36.8%), 7 studies (28.0%), and 4 studies (23.5%) respectively out of 19, 25, and 17 studies reviewed. Sex (being male), and age (per year increasing) were significantly and positively associated with the level of adherence in 5 studies (14.3%), and 9 studies (25.7%) respectively out of 35 studies reviewed. However, the determinant of socioeconomic and demographic statuses was not found to be significantly associated with adherence in studies related to income 9(47.4%), education 17(68.0%), employment/ occupational 10(58.8%), sex 27(77.1%), and age 25(71.4%). Conclusion: The majority of the reviewed studies reported that there is no association between socio- demographic and economic variables and adherence to therapy. Whereas, some studies show that age of HIV patients (per year increasing) and sex (being male) were positively associated with adherence to ART. Among socio-economic factors, the available evidence does not provide conclusive support for the existence of a clear association with adherence to ART among HIV patients. There seems to be a positive trend between socioeconomic factors and adherence to ART in some of the reviewed studies.

Microbes are ubiquitous and live in familiar settings such as soil, water, food and animal intestines as well as in more extreme setting such as rocks, glaciers, hot springs and deep-sea vents. They are essential component of the biodiversity as they account for 50% of the living biomass of this planet. The aim of this work was isolation and screening of protease producing bacteria from soil collected from the study area. Isolation of protease producing bacteria was performed by the serial dilution and spread plate technique using skim milk agar medium. Accordingly, 131 isolates were positive on skim milk agar and of which 13 (10%) of them are protease producer. Four best isolates were selected on the basis of their clear zone size, one from each site for further study. IS-4 has larger clear zone size with 10.5mm followed by IS-2 (6mm). All potential isolates have circular in shape of colony and flat in height of colony except IS-1 which is irregular and raised respectively. Most of potential isolates have opaque in their colonial optical density. All isolates were found to be Gram positive and spore producers. Morphological and biochemical results have revealed that three of four active enzyme producing bacteria are identified as Bacillus spp. Members of the genus Bacillus produce a large variety of extracellular enzymes (proteases) particularly significant for industrial application.

Abstract:Proteases are among the most important hydrolytic enzymes that found in every organism to undertake important physiological functions. They are multipurpose enzymes used in various industries such as detergent, silver recovery, food, pharmaceutical, leather, and textile industries. This work aimed to produce protease from indigenous microbes for use as detergent additive. Isolation of protease producer was undertaken using skim milk agar medium. Crude enzyme was characterized in terms of wash and stain removal tests. A total of 188 protease positive bacteria were isolated from seven samples collected from Arba Minch town. Out of 36 alkaline protease producing bacteria, one isolate designated as Bacillus sp. Cab44 was selected. The optimum activity was reached at pH 9 and 50°C. The enzyme was stable in the pH range of 7 to 10. It retained 75%, 86% and 72% activity after one hr pre-incubation at 50°C, in 15% H 2 O 2 and 0.3% commercial detergent respectively. . It removed stains of blood and egg yolk on cotton cloth at pH 9, 40°C, 5.07 U/ml in 30-40 min. These properties suggest that protease from Bacillus sp. Cab44 could find potential application in detergent industries as good candidate of additive in detergent formulation which have economic implication.

Background: On December 31, 2019, multiple pneumonia cases, subsequently identified as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), was reported for the first time in Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei province in China. At that time, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission had report 27 cases, of which seven are severely ill, and the remaining cases are stable and controllable. Since, then, the spread of COVID-19 has already taken on pandemic proportions, affecting over 100 countries in a matter of weeks. As of September 07, 2020, there had been more than 27 million confirmed cases and 889,000 total deaths, with an average mortality of about 3.3%, globally. In Ethiopia, 58,672 confirmed cases and 918 deaths and this number are likely to increase exponentially. It is critical to detect clusters of COVID-19 to better allocate resources and improve decision-making as the pandemics continue to grow.Methods: We have collected the individual-level information on patients with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 on daily bases from the official reports of the Ethiopian Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH), regional, and city government of Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa health bureaus. Using the daily case data, we conducted a prospective space-time analysis with SaTScan version 9.6. We detect statistically significant space-time clusters of COVID-19 at the woreda and sub-city level in Ethiopia between March 13th-June 6th, 2020, and March 13th-June 24th, 2020.Results: The prospective space-time scan statistic detected “alive” and emerging clusters that are present at the end of our study periods; notably, nine more clusters were detected when adding the updated case data.Conclusions: These results can notify public health officials and decision-makers about where to improve the allocation of resources, testing areas; also, where to implement necessary isolation measures and travel bans. As more confirmed cases become available, the statistic can be rerun to support timely surveillance of COVID-19, demonstrated here. In Ethiopia, our research is the first geographic study that utilizes space-time statistics to monitor COVID-19.