Prevalence and Factors Associated with Neonatal Jaundice Among Term and Pre Term Infants at Amana Regional Referral Hospital in DAR ES Salaam, Tanzania

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Background: Neonatal jaundice among term and preterm infants in Tanzania is still a very common problem which has a negative effect on children growth and development. Kernicterus as a complication of extensive accumulation of unconjugated bilirubin can lead to mental retardation.  

Objective: The study focused on assessing prevalence and factors associated with neonatal jaundice among term and preterm infants at Amana Referral Hospital.

Materials And Methods: Cross section study conducted at Amana Regional Referral Hospital (ARRH) for assessing neonatal jaundice in both term and preterm infants. The sample of 120 children was taken.

The respondent mothers or care takers of infants with neonatal jaundice were structured interviewed based on questionnaire. Kramer’s rule as visual inspection of skin used to aid in collecting data.

Expected Results: This study is expected to provide valuable insight into prevalence and factors associated with neonatal jaundice among term and preterm infants admitted at ARRH. Findings will help understanding correlation between factors associated with neonatal jaundice and medical condition itself.

A Practical Framework for Selecting Health Literacy Measurement Tools in Rural and Agricultural Communities: A Narrative Review

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Health literacy is a key public health competency that enables individuals to access, understand, appraise, and apply health information in daily decision-making. Rural and agricultural communities require particular attention because health information is often delivered in contexts shaped by limited formal education, work-related hazards, restricted access to health services, uneven digital connectivity, and culturally diverse communication practices. Although many studies use well-known health literacy instruments, tool selection is often based on popularity rather than methodological fit for field conditions, respondent literacy level, cultural adaptation, occupational risk exposure, and interviewer burden. This narrative review aims to compare commonly used health literacy measurement tools and to propose a practical framework for selecting instruments for rural and agricultural populations, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Literature was identified through targeted searches in PubMed/MEDLINE, Google Scholar, ScienceDirect, and official instrument sources, with priority given to validation studies, psychometric papers, reviews, and publications involving rural or agricultural populations. The review discusses multidimensional tools such as the European Health Literacy Survey instruments and the Health Literacy Questionnaire, functional and clinical tools such as TOFHLA, S-TOFHLA, and the Newest Vital Sign, digital tools such as eHEALS, and occupation-specific tools such as the Agricultural Safety and Health Literacy Tool. A purpose-based selection framework is proposed to guide the choice of instruments for community surveys, clinical screening, digital health assessment, agricultural safety, and intervention development. For rural and agricultural settings, the most feasible approach is often a short-validated tool, culturally adapted, administered with interviewer assistance, and supplemented with context-specific items on work-related health risks and access to health information.

Explainable Pneumonia Detection in Chest X-Rays: A Comparative Study of CNNs and Vision Transformers

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Pneumonia is a leading cause of global mortality, especially among children and the elderly, and chest radiography (CXR) remains the most widely used modality for its diagnosis. While deep learning has reached or exceeded radiologist-level performance on this task, the resulting models are still treated as opaque black boxes, which is a critical barrier to clinical deployment. In this work, we present a comparative and interpretable computer-aided-diagnosis (CAD) framework for pneumonia detection that combines three modern image-recognition backbones—a convolutional ResNet-50, a Swin Transformer (Swin-T), and a modernised convolutional network (ConvNeXt-T)—with Gradient-weighted Class Activation Mapping++ (Grad-CAM++) explanations. The three backbones were fine-tuned on the public Kermany chest X-ray dataset using a class-balanced training subset, weighted cross-entropy and an early-stopping protocol, and then evaluated on the held-out test set of 624 images. The Swin-T backbone achieved the best overall performance with a test accuracy of 95.51%, an F1-score of 0.95 and only 11 false negatives out of 234 normal cases, outperforming both ResNet-50 (93.11%) and ConvNeXt-T (88.94%). Grad-CAM++ heatmaps generated from the convolutional and transformer feature maps consistently localised on the affected pulmonary regions, providing radiologically plausible visual evidence for each prediction. Compared with five recent state-of-the-art pneumonia detectors, our Swin-T-based pipeline reaches a competitive accuracy while delivering layer-faithful visual explanations, supporting its use as a transparent decision-support tool in clinical workflows.

Screening, Identification, and Medical-Psychological Services for Domestic Violence Survivors in Inpatient Primary Health Centers in Kendari City

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Background: Domestic violence is a public health problem with physical, psychological, and social consequences.

Objective: This study aimed to analyze the role of healthcare workers in screening, identifying, and providing medical and psychological services for domestic violence survivors at inpatient primary health centers in Kendari City.

Methods: This qualitative descriptive study used in-depth interviews, observation, and documentation involving 16 informants. Data were analyzed thematically using NVivo.

Results: Screening was mainly conducted through clinical observation and trust-based communication rather than consistent use of standardized tools. Identification relied on visible injuries, recurrent psychosomatic complaints, and private anamnesis. Medical care was prioritized, while psychological support was limited by the absence of psychologists, restricted counseling rooms, and uneven training.

Conclusion: Domestic violence screening and identification at primary health centers remain reactive and insufficiently standardized. Strengthening SOPs, healthcare worker training, referral pathways, and psychological support services is needed.

Utilization of Maternal and Child Health Books among Pregnant Women: Which Factors Have the Greatest Influence?

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The Maternal and Child Health (MCH) book is an important medium for improving pregnant women’s knowledge and awareness of maternal and fetal health. However, several health centers still report low MCH book ownership among pregnant women, including Kuala Lempuing Health Center (52.55%) and Anggut Atas Health Center (77.92%). This study aimed to identify factors influencing the utilization of MCH books among pregnant women and to determine the most dominant factor. This descriptive analytic study used a cross-sectional design. It was conducted from June 8 to June 18, 2025, in the working areas of Kuala Lempuing and Anggut Atas Health Centers, Bengkulu City. The study involved all 70 eligible pregnant women in their second and third trimesters through total sampling. Primary data were collected using structured questionnaires, and secondary data were obtained from relevant records. The results showed significant associations between MCH book utilization and knowledge (p < 0.001), attitude (p < 0.001), and family support (p < 0.001). Multivariate analysis showed that family support was the most dominant factor (p = 0.001; OR = 10.800). These findings highlight the importance of family involvement and the role of health care providers in delivering health education and social support to optimize MCH book utilization.

Association of Sociocultural Factors and Health Literacy Levels with Cervi-cal Cancer Early Detection Among Women in Reproductive-Age Couples in the Service Area of the Laosu Community Health Center in 2025

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Background: Cervical cancer remains a major cause of death among women, particularly in settings where early detection coverage is low.

Objective: This study analyzed the association of sociocultural factors and health literacy with cervical cancer early detection among women in reproductive-age couples in the Laosu Community Health Center service area in 2025.

Methods: This quantitative cross-sectional study involved 278 respondents selected using simple random sampling. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire and analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) with SmartPLS 4 software.

Results: Sociocultural factors had a significant positive effect on health literacy (β = 0.323; t = 4.539; p = 0.000) and early detection of cervical cancer (β = 0.112; t = 4.962; p = 0.000). Health literacy did not significantly affect early detection (β = -0.007; t = 0.351; p = 0.726) and did not mediate the relationship between sociocultural factors and early detection (β = -0.002; t = 0.325; p = 0.745). The R-square values were 0.104 for health literacy and 0.159 for early detection, indicating limited explanatory power. Only 21 respondents (7.55%) had undergone early detection, while 257 respondents (92.45%) had not.

Conclusion: Early detection of cervical cancer remained very low. Sociocultural factors, particularly stigma and shame within the final measurement model, were more directly associated with screening behavior than health literacy. These findings indicate a knowledge-behavior gap and suggest that culturally sensitive interventions should accompany health literacy improvement to increase cervical cancer screening uptake.

Effect of Childhood Sexual Abuse on the Sexual Behaviour of Victims Among Undergraduates of the University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria

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Background: Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) is a major public health problem with long-term consequences on sexual and psychological well-being. Evidence suggests that CSA may influence later sexual behaviors, increasing vulnerability to risky sexual practices in adulthood.

Objective: This study assessed the effect of childhood sexual abuse on the sexual behaviour of victims among undergraduates of the University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria.

Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study design was used among 400 undergraduates selected through multistage sampling. Data were collected using a semi-structured questionnaire and analysed using SPSS version 22. Associations between CSA and sexual behaviors were tested using chi-square at 5% significance level.

Results: The prevalence of CSA was 26.2%. A significantly higher proportion of females experienced CSA (63.8%) compared to males (36.2%). CSA was significantly associated with risky sexual behaviors including pornography use (p = 0.006), sexual orientation (p = 0.015), and history of sexually transmitted infections (p = 0.037). Victims of CSA were more likely to engage in risky sexual and health-compromising behaviors compared to non-victims.

Conclusion: childhood sexual abuse significantly influences sexual behaviour in adulthood, increasing the likelihood of engagement in risky sexual practices among victims. Strengthening prevention programmes, counselling services, and sexual health education in universities is essential.

Variation in the Influence of Climate Parameters on Dengue Fever

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Dengue haemorrhagic fever (DHF) is the highest viral infection due to its fatality in humans. Initially, dengue only occurred in the tropics and has spread to sub-tropical areas. This disease is transmitted through the bite of vector mosquitoes, Aedes aegypti, and Aedes albopictus, so the presence of these vectors is important in the spread of dengue disease. The existence of this vector is influenced by environmental conditions. Creating a suitable environment for vector mosquitoes is determined by climatic factors, especially rainfall, temperature, and humidity. Various studies have shown that these climatic factors’ influence can vary from region to region. This article discusses the variations in the influence of these climatic factors on the incidence of DHF to enrich knowledge about the epidemiology of dengue infection. This study concludes that temperature and rainfall could have a positive or negative effect on the incidence of DHF, while humidity consistently had a positive effect on the incidence of DHF. The climate factor does not stand alone and does not directly affect the process of DHF transmission. The influence appeared through the vector’s life and the virus’s multiplication in the vector’s body.

Evaluation of Brain Masses Using Magnetic Resonance Diffusion-Weighted Imaging (DWI)

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Background: Diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) is a valuable MRI technique that provides information about tissue cellularity and helps differentiate various brain lesions.

Objective: To evaluate the role of DWI and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) values in the characterization of brain masses.

Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional hospital-based prospective study was conducted between January 2019 and May 2024 at the MRI Department of Aliaa Specialist Hospital, Khartoum, Sudan. Thirty patients with suspected brain tumors on CT were included. All patients underwent conventional MRI, contrast-enhanced MRI, DWI, and ADC measurement. Histopathological confirmation was obtained in all cases.

Results: Brain lesions included gliomas, metastases, meningiomas, schwannomas, abscesses, epidermoid cysts, hemangioblastomas, and medulloblastomas. ADC values varied among lesion types, with lower values generally observed in high-grade and highly cellular tumors.

Conclusion: DWI and ADC measurements are valuable tools in differentiating brain masses, particularly in distinguishing benign from malignant lesions.

Association of Economic Status and Type of Occupation with Changes in Risky Behaviors among People Living with HIV/AIDS in Kupang City, Indonesia

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Background: Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) remains a major global public health problem. Changes in risky behaviors among people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) play a crucial role in preventing further transmission. Socioeconomic factors, particularly economic status and type of occupation, may influence behavioral changes by affecting access to health information and services.

Objective: This study aimed to analyze the association between economic status and type of occupation with changes in risky behaviors among people living with HIV/AIDS in Kupang City, Indonesia.

Methods: An analytical observational study with a cross-sectional design was conducted among adult PLWHA in Kupang City from August to October 2024. A total of 136 respondents were selected using non-probability consecutive sampling. Data were collected using structured questionnaires assessing economic status, type of occupation, risky behaviors, and changes in risky behaviors. Data analysis was performed using descriptive statistics and Spearman rank correlation test, with a significance level of p < 0.05.

Results: Most respondents showed changes in risky behaviors after being diagnosed with HIV. Statistical analysis demonstrated a significant association between economic status and changes in risky behaviors among PLWHA. In addition, type of occupation was also significantly associated with changes in risky behaviors.

Conclusion: Economic status and type of occupation are significantly associated with changes in risky behaviors among people living with HIV/AIDS in Kupang City. These findings highlight the importance of incorporating socioeconomic considerations into HIV prevention and behavioral intervention programs.