Early Childhood Education in Saudi Arabia: Report

Rabaah, Alqassem; Doaa, Dashash; Asma, Alzahrani

doi:10.5430/wje.v6n5p1

Cited by 7 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…The KSA-IBM simulates the heterogeneity of the number of contacts among people and the duration of these contacts. Available demographic data was used to build a simulated population similar to the actual KSA population, and the model accounts for the different contact interactions among various age groups [ 30 – 32 ]. NPIs adopted during the pandemic (as of November 20, 2020), as well as their timing were included in the KSA-IBM.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Estimating the effect of non-pharmaceutical interventions to mitigate COVID-19 spread in Saudi Arabia

Bisanzio

Reithinger

Alqunaibet³

et al. 2022

BMC Med

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Background The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) quickly controlled the spread of SARS-CoV-2 by implementing several non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), including suspension of international and national travel, local curfews, closing public spaces (i.e., schools and universities, malls and shops), and limiting religious gatherings. The KSA also mandated all citizens to respect physical distancing and to wear face masks. However, after relaxing some restrictions during June 2020, the KSA is now planning a strategy that could allow resuming in-person education and international travel. The aim of our study was to evaluate the effect of NPIs on the spread of the COVID-19 and test strategies to open schools and resume international travel. Methods We built a spatial-explicit individual-based model to represent the whole KSA population (IBM-KSA). The IBM-KSA was parameterized using country demographic, remote sensing, and epidemiological data. A social network was created to represent contact heterogeneity and interaction among age groups of the population. The IBM-KSA also simulated the movement of people across the country based on a gravity model. We used the IBM-KSA to evaluate the effect of different NPIs adopted by the KSA (physical distancing, mask-wearing, and contact tracing) and to forecast the impact of strategies to open schools and resume international travels. Results The IBM-KSA results scenarios showed the high effectiveness of mask-wearing, physical distancing, and contact tracing in controlling the spread of the disease. Without NPIs, the KSA could have reported 4,824,065 (95% CI: 3,673,775–6,335,423) cases by June 2021. The IBM-KSA showed that mandatory mask-wearing and physical distancing saved 39,452 lives (95% CI: 26,641–44,494). In-person education without personal protection during teaching would have resulted in a high surge of COVID-19 cases. Compared to scenarios with no personal protection, enforcing mask-wearing and physical distancing in schools reduced cases, hospitalizations, and deaths by 25% and 50%, when adherence to these NPIs was set to 50% and 70%, respectively. The IBM-KSA also showed that a quarantine imposed on international travelers reduced the probability of outbreaks in the country. Conclusions This study showed that the interventions adopted by the KSA were able to control the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in the absence of a vaccine. In-person education should be resumed only if NPIs could be applied in schools and universities. International travel can be resumed but with strict quarantine rules. The KSA needs to keep strict NPIs in place until a high fraction of the population is vaccinated in order to reduce hospitalizations and deaths.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Estimating the effect of non-pharmaceutical interventions to mitigate COVID-19 spread in Saudi Arabia

Bisanzio

Reithinger

Alqunaibet³

et al. 2022

BMC Med

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“…Therefore, we considered participants to have poor academic achievements if they did not obtain a secondary certificate, the completion of which is expected by the age of eighteen. 18 …”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Therefore, we considered participants to have poor academic achievements if they did not obtain a secondary certificate, the completion of which is expected by the age of eighteen. 18 Data were collected and analyzed using the International Business Machines (IBM) Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 26. The descriptive analysis was done to show the mean, median, and mode values with a standard deviation (SD) for quantitative data.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of Sickle Cell Disease on Academic Performance: A Cross Sectional Study

Alsalman,

AlHaddad,

Alibrahim

et al. 2023

PPA

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Purpose Sickle cell disease (SCD) is a multisystemic disease that results in diverse clinical manifestations in the form of acute and chronic complications. This study aims to assess the academic achievements of patients with SCD. Methods and Materials A cross-sectional study was a study conducted among adult patients with SCD from the eastern province of Saudi Arabia, where SCD is more widespread than in other regions. Results A total of ninety patients with SCD, whose median age was 32.33 ± 11.84, were retrospectively evaluated. Of the total number, 32 (35.5%) did not obtain a secondary higher education certificate, and five (3.3%) were illiterate. Sixty-three (70%) of the patients were female, indicating no significant association between gender and education level (p-value > 0.05). The patients’ mean annual hospitalizations and emergency visits totaling 4.7 and 8.43, respectively, were not significantly associated with education (p-value > 0.05). Throughout the patients’ lives, mean blood transfusions and ICU admissions occurred 6.29 and 2.75 times, respectively, which were not significantly associated with education level (p-value > 0.05). However, education was inversely proportional to a history of splenectomy and cholecystectomy (p < 0.05). Laboratory parameters (hemoglobin level, WBC, platelets, and hemoglobin F) showed no significant associations with education level (p-value > 0.05). Patients with sickle-thalassemia exhibited a trend of being better-educated than those without the diseases, but the difference did not reach statistical significance (p-value > 0.05). A linear regression analysis revealed no significant associations among clinical and laboratory parameters. Conclusion SCD is a multisystemic disease that impacts socioeconomic status, learning ability, and academic achievements. More research is needed to identify factors that predict poor performance. Additionally, intelligence quotient (IQ) and cognitive assessment should be incorporated into early screening programs for SCD in order to implement preventive measures and a thorough investigation of underlying causes.

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“…The model was built using demographic data to reproduce a population with characteristics of the actual KSA population. The IBM-KSA also accounts for differences in contact interactions among age groups [18][19][20][21] as well as accounts for movement flux among cities-a main driver of SARS-CoV-2 spread in a country [22].…”

Section: Ibm-ksa Model Structure Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making use of an App (Tawakkalna) to track and reduce COVID transmission in KSA

Bisanzio

Reithinger

Almudarra

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Since March 2020, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has launched several digital applications to support the intervention response to reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2. At the beginning of 2021, the KSA Government introduced a mandatory immunity passport to regulate access to public venues. The passport was part of the strategy of resuming public activities before reaching high vaccination coverage. The passport was implemented as a new service in the Tawakkalna mobile phone application (App). The immunity passport allowed access to public locations only for the users who recovered from COVID-19 or those who were double vaccinated. Our study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of the immunity passport, implemented through the Tawakkalna App, on SARS-CoV-2 spread. We built a spatial-explicit individual-based model to represent the whole KSA population (IBM-KSA) and its dynamic on a national scale. The IBM-KSA was parameterized using country demographic, remote sensing, and epidemiological data. The model included non-pharmaceutical interventions and vaccination coverage. A social network was created to represent contact heterogeneity and interaction among age groups of the population. The IBM-KSA also simulated the movement of people across the country based on a gravity model. We used the IBM-KSA to evaluate the effect of the immunity passport on the COVID-19 epidemic's outcomes. The IBM-KSA results showed that implementing the immunity passport through the Tawakkalna App mitigated the SARS-CoV2 spread. In a scenario without the immunity passport, the KSA could have reported 1,515,468 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 965,725-1,986,966) cases, and 30,309 (95% CI: 19,314-39,739) deaths from March 2021 to November 2021. The comparison of IBM-KSA results with COVID-19 official reporting estimated that the passport effectively reduced the number of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths by 8.7 times, 13.5 times, and 11.9 times, respectively. These results showed that the introduction of the immunity passport through the Tawakkalna App was able to control the spread of the SARS-COV-2 until vaccination reached high coverage. By introducing the immunity passport, The KSA was able to allow to resume most of public activities safely.

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Early Childhood Education in Saudi Arabia: Report

Cited by 7 publications

References 3 publications

Estimating the effect of non-pharmaceutical interventions to mitigate COVID-19 spread in Saudi Arabia

Estimating the effect of non-pharmaceutical interventions to mitigate COVID-19 spread in Saudi Arabia

Impact of Sickle Cell Disease on Academic Performance: A Cross Sectional Study

Making use of an App (Tawakkalna) to track and reduce COVID transmission in KSA

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