| 1. |
- Irum, S., et al.
(författare)
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Cutaneous Leishmaniasis (CL) : A Cross-Sectional Community Based Survey on Knowledge, Attitude and Practices in a Highly Endemic Area of Waziristan (KPK Province), Pakistan
- 2021
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Ingår i: Acta Tropica. - : Elsevier. - 0001-706X .- 1873-6254. ; 213
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Recent outbreaks of Cutaneous Leishmaniasis (CL) in Waziristan make the disease a public health concern in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province, Pakistan. The awareness and behavior of local community towards the disease is an important factor towards effective control and management of CL in endemic areas of Pakistan. A cross-sectional community based survey was piloted in new emerging district of North Waziristan Agency (KPK province), Pakistan from August 2019- February 2020. The study aimed to examine the Knowledge, Attitude and Practices (KAP) of the local community members regarding CL. The results revealed that majority of the participants were male. Only 48.2% participants have knowledge about CL and the respondents had a moderate knowledge of CL vector and the disease. Few of the respondents were aware that CL is caused by sand flies, their breeding place, biting time, transmission of CL and control measures. Skin infection and sand-flies were the main disease symptoms and disease vector were known to some of the respondents. Most of the respondents showed positive attitude towards disease seriousness and believed that the disease could be cured and can be treated through modern medicines. Admission to hospitals, cleanliness and use of bed nets were the treatment measures for the disease in suspected patients, whereas some believed that the use of bed nets could be helpful in preventing the leishmaniasis. Moderate knowledge of the CL and its transmission in the study area emphasize the need to initiate health education and awareness campaigns to reduce the disease risk and burden in this highly endemic area in near future.
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| 2. |
- Asif, M., et al.
(författare)
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Developing Neck Circumference Growth Reference Charts for Pakistani Children and Adolescents Using the Lambda-Mu-Sigma (LMS) and Quantile Regression Method
- 2021
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Ingår i: Public Health Nutrition. - : Cambridge University Press. - 1368-9800 .- 1475-2727. ; 24:17, s. 5641-5649
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Objective: Neck circumference (NC) is currently used as an embryonic marker of obesity and its associated risks. But its use in clinical evaluations and other epidemiological purposes requires sex and age-specific standardized cut-offs which are still scarce for the Pakistani pediatric population. We therefore developed sex and age-specific growth reference charts for NC for Pakistani children and adolescents aged 2-18 years.Design: Cross-sectional multi-ethnic anthropometric survey (MEAS) study.Setting: Multan, Lahore, Rawalpindi and Islamabad.Participants: The dataset of 10,668 healthy Pakistani children and adolescents aged 2 to 18 years collected in MEAS were used. Information related to age, sex and NC were taken as study variables. The lambda-mu-sigma (LMS) and quantile regression (QR) methods were applied to develop growth reference charts for NC.Results: The 5th, 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, 90th and 95th smoothed percentile values of NC were presented. The centile values showed that neck size increased with age in both boys and girls. During 8 and 14 years of age, girls were found to have larger NC than boys. A comparison of NC median (50th) percentile values with references from Iranian and Turkish populations reveals substantially lower NC percentiles in Pakistani children and adolescents compared to their peers in the reference population.Conclusion: The comparative results suggest that the uses of NC references of developed countries are inadequate for Pakistani children. A small variability between empirical centiles and centiles obtained by QR procedure recommends that growth charts should be constructed by QR as an alternative method.
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| 3. |
- Khan, Aisha, et al.
(författare)
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Epidemiological and Pathological Characteristics of Cutaneous Leishmaniasis from Baluchistan Province of Pakistan
- 2021
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Ingår i: Parasitology. - : Cambridge University Press. - 0031-1820 .- 1469-8161. ; 148:5, s. 591-597
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Cutaneous Leishmaniasis (CL) is considered a neglected tropical disease which in Pakistan can now be considered as growing public health problem. The exact figures on the magnitude of disease are lacking both at national and regional level and only a few health centers are available for diagnosis of CL. The present study was designed to identify the epidemiology of CL infection from August 2018 to December 2019 and to assess clinical aspects of CL in Baluchistan Province of Pakistan. A total of 4072 clinically suspected CL cases were analysed statistically. The highest number of CL cases were reported in May, followed by April, January and then July, February, and June and lowest number of cases were observed in March and November. The highest prevalence rate was found in males where 38% of reported cases were aged 0-9 years. The majority (24.4%) of lesions were found on the hands followed by the face in which cheeks, ears and nose were the effected organs. About 50% of the participants have single lesion while 14% of the participants had two and nearly 3% of the participants have six lesions. The atypical clinical presentations were observed in Baluchistan and common unusual presentations were lupus erythematosus. The study findings suggest that more epidemiological studies and health education campaigns are needed for the population awareness regarding CL in Baluchistan. It is recommended that risk factors should be evaluated to establish the control and management strategies to prevent disease at individual and community level.
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