Internationally, studies suggest that inadequate comprehension of the concept of palliative care and misconceptions about it hinder the effective use of palliative care, especially in developing ...nations.
To assess the awareness of the adult population in Jordan regarding palliative care.
The study used a cross-sectional design and an online self-administered questionnaire survey. The recruitment method was convenience snowball sampling of three thousand nine hundred forty-two Jordanian adults covering 12 governorates. Participants were recruited through social media platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp. The process of gathering data commenced in October –December 2023. Descriptive statistics were computed.
A study of 3942 respondents in Jordan found that 45% have some knowledge of palliative care, with 31% being pretty knowledgeable. Most respondents (89%) strongly agree that patients with incurable illnesses should receive palliative care, with cancer patients showing the highest level of agreement (96%). The most agreed-upon aspect of palliative care is controlling pain and symptoms at home, while the least agreed-upon aspect is providing information on benefits and financial matters. The study also highlighted the link between palliative care and mortality, suggesting the need for increased awareness and education.
The demand for palliative care in Jordan is increasing, requiring increased access, a holistic approach, open discussions, and easily accessible information. Challenges include integrating palliative care into non-malignant progressive diseases, ensuring comprehensive end-of-life care, promoting societal receptiveness towards mortality, enhancing information accessibility, and health promotion efforts. The study's results indicate the importance of implementing educational strategies and engaging families and communities in policy-making to change public knowledge and attitudes toward palliative care.
Globally, a resurgence of measles during the last decade may be attributed to many factors. An unexpected measles outbreak occurred in Hong Kong, and infected 29 airport staff between March and April ...2019. The authority updated public on new cases daily, a public enquiry telephone/online platform was set up on March 23, and an emergent vaccination programme was launched targeting unvaccinated airport staff. We aimed to study this measles outbreak and its related factors.
We quantified the transmissibility of the outbreak by the time-varying effective reproduction number,
(
), and inferred the time-varying basic reproduction number,
(
). We examined the statistical associations between local public awareness or reporting delay and the
(
).
Our estimated average
is 10.7 with 95% CI of 6.0-29.2. We found that
(
) was negatively associated with the level of public awareness and the level of promptness of situation updates on new cases.
Public awareness via situation updates helped to control the outbreak. The medical effects of the vaccination programme was not soon enough to cause the immediate shutting down of the outbreak, but it boosted herd immunity to prevent future airport outbreaks in the next few years.
Categorizing and Naming MARINE HEATWAVES Hobday, Alistair J.; Oliver, Eric C. J.; Gupta, Alex Sen ...
Oceanography (Washington, D.C.),
06/2018, Letnik:
31, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Considerable attention has been directed at understanding the consequences and impacts of long-term anthropogenic climate change. Discrete, climatically extreme events such as cyclones, floods, and ...heatwaves can also significantly affect regional environments and species, including humans. Climate change is expected to intensify these events and thus exacerbate their effects. Climatic extremes also occur in the ocean, and recent decades have seen many high-impact marine heatwaves (MHWs)—anomalously warm water events that may last many months and extend over thousands of square kilometers. A range of biological, economic, and political impacts have been associated with the more intense MHWs, and measuring the severity of these phenomena is becoming more important. Progress in understanding and public awareness will be facilitated by consistent description of these events. Here, we propose a detailed categorization scheme for MHWs that builds on a recently published classification, combining elements from schemes that describe atmospheric heatwaves and hurricanes. Category I, II, III, and IV MHWs are defined based on the degree to which temperatures exceed the local climatology and illustrated for 10 MHWs. While there is a long-term increase in the occurrence frequency of all MHW categories, the largest trend is a 24% increase in the area of the ocean where strong (Category II) MHWs occur. Use of this scheme can help explain why biological impacts associated with different MHWs can vary widely and provides a consistent way to compare events. We also propose a simple naming convention based on geography and year that would further enhance scientific and public awareness of these marine events.
Nanoscience breakthroughs in almost every field of science and nanotechnologies make life easier in this era. Nanoscience and nanotechnology represent an expanding research area, which involves ...structures, devices, and systems with novel properties and functions due to the arrangement of their atoms on the 1-100 nm scale. The field was subject to a growing public awareness and controversy in the early 2000s, and in turn, the beginnings of commercial applications of nanotechnology. Nanotechnologies contribute to almost every field of science, including physics, materials science, chemistry, biology, computer science, and engineering. Notably, in recent years nanotechnologies have been applied to human health with promising results, especially in the field of cancer treatment. To understand the nature of nanotechnology, it is helpful to review the timeline of discoveries that brought us to the current understanding of this science. This review illustrates the progress and main principles of nanoscience and nanotechnology and represents the pre-modern as well as modern timeline era of discoveries and milestones in these fields.
Geological issues are increasingly intruding on the everyday lives of ordinary people. Whether it is the onshore extraction of oil and gas, the subsurface injection of waters for geothermal power or ...the deep storage of waste products, communities across the world are being confronted with controversial geological interventions beneath their backyards. Communicating these complex scientific and technical issues is made more challenging by the general public's unfamiliarity with the geological realm. Cognitive studies confirm a cultural dissonance with the subsurface and highlight lay anxieties about tampering with nature. In addressing those concerns, factual information is argued to be subordinate to values and beliefs in shaping public perspectives on contested geoscientific issues. In this context, scientists' attention to technical accuracy and their emphasis on professional consensus may do little to influence multiple publics whose worries instead root into their sense of place, trust and governance, as well as equity and ethics. With a growing recognition that it is social rather than technical factors that stir public unease and fuel community outrage, geoscientists need to develop new strategies to engage dissonant publics, underpinned by a culture change in geocommunication from conveying ‘matters of fact’ to brokering ‘matters of concern’.
Antibiotic resistance (AR) represents a global health challenge. Within the coordinated efforts to tackle AR, community education is a key strategy to enhance awareness and improve antibiotic use. ...The current study intends to investigate the Albanian community's attitude and practices regarding antibiotic use, including recent health related developments, like COVID-19.
A cross sectional survey was conducted among Albanian residents between December 2022 and March 2023, using a standardized questionnaire which featured three sections covering demographic data, attitudes, and practices regarding antibiotic use. Statistical analysis included both descriptive statistics and the Chi-square test to assess relationships between categorical variables.
The questionnaire was effectively completed by 519 participants. The majority were females (70.1 %) within the 18–30 age range (55.5 %) and had a college/university degree (93.3 %). 53.4 % reported antibiotic use without a medical prescription, with amoxicillin and azithromycin being the most used antibiotics. Commonly cited reasons for antibiotic use were self-reported symptoms such as flu/common cold, sore throat, cough, and fever (82.3 %). 69.0 % reported following prescribed antibiotic courses, with higher adherence among females and those with higher education. Awareness of AR was considerable (78.0 %), with females evidencing more awareness compared to males. Only 34.3 % of participants reported antibiotic use for COVID-19, mostly after testing positive, with azithromycin being the most frequently used antibiotic.
Our study highlights concerning trends in antibiotic self-medication and awareness gaps in prudent antibiotic use emphasizing the need for tailored educational programs, regulatory oversight, and robust surveillance systems in Albania's healthcare.
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