Background: Early initiation of breastfeeding offers nutritional and immunological benefits to the newborn, which is critical for health and survival. Understanding factors associated with timely initiation of breastfeeding is crucial for healthcare providers and policy-makers. This study aimed to assess the prevalence and factors associated with early initiation of breastfeeding among mothers wit

Background: The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends early initiation of breastfeeding within 1 h as it confers many benefits to the child and prevents neonatal mortality. This study aimed to determine the prevalence and factors associated with timely initiation of breastfeeding in the Kilimanjaro region, northern Tanzania. Methods: We analyzed secondary data for 866 participants from a popu

Background: Internet addiction is one of the fast-growing addictive behaviors and is a significant public health problem affecting a large number of people worldwide. Excessive use of the internet among university students increases their risk of internet addiction and related negative consequences. This study aimed to determine the prevalence and factors associated with internet addiction among m

Modern contraceptive use provides opportunities for women and couples to achieve optimal child spacing, achieve desired family size and reduce unsafe abortions. Despite these facts, modern contraceptive prevalence rate (mCPR) in Tanzania remains as low as 32%. This study aimed to determine trends and factors associated with changes in modern contraceptive use among women of reproductive age in Tan

Background More than five million perinatal deaths occur each year globally. Despite efforts put forward during the millennium development goals era, perinatal deaths continue to increase relative to under-five deaths, especially in low- A nd middle-income countries. This study aimed to determine predictors of perinatal death in the presence of missing data using birth registry data from Kilimanja

Background: Mental distress is a major public health problem which includes anxiety, depression and somatic symptoms such as sleeping problems, fatigue and headache. University students are consistently reported to have higher levels of mental distress compared to the general population. Although university students with mental distress have significantly impaired cognitive functioning, learning d

Background Low birth weight (LBW) is an important indicator of newborn survival. It is associated with higher risk of morbidity, mortality and long-term health consequences. Little has been done on incidence and recurrence risk of LBW in developing countries including Tanzania. This study aimed to determine the incidence and recurrence risk of LBW among women who delivered at Kilimanjaro Christian

Background Blood is a critical aspect of treatment in life saving situations, increasing demand. Blood requisition practices greatly effect sufficient supply in blood banks. This study aimed to determine the risk factors for inappropriate blood requisition in Tanzania. Methods This was a cross sectional study using secondary data of 14,460 patients’ blood requests from 42 transfusion hospitals. Pr

Background: Hypertension is a public health problem, and yet few people are aware of it and even fewer access effective treatment. With the ongoing demographic transition in many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, people are changing from rural, manual work to urban lifestyles, hence the risk of hypertension increases. Objective: This study aimed at determining the prevalence, awareness and risk factors

Background: Insufficient physical activity (PA) is a major contributing factor in the growing problem of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in urban and rural Sub-Saharan Africa. This study aimed to determine PA and associated factors among adults in Northern Tanzania. Methods: We analyzed secondary data from a cross-sectional serological survey nested within the Magu health and demographic sentinel

Introduction: Fever in malaria endemic areas, has been shown to strongly predict malaria infection and is a key symptom influencing malaria treatment. WHO recommended confirmation testing for Plasmodium spp. before initiation of antimalarials due to increased evidence of the decrease of morbidity and mortality from malaria, decreased malaria associated fever, and increased evidence of high prevale

Background: Hepatitis B virus infection is a global health problem with the highest prevalence in East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. The majority of infected people, including healthcare workers are unaware of their status. This study is aimed to determining seroprevalence of hepatitis B virus infection and associated factors among healthcare workers in northern Tanzania. Methods: This cross-sectio

In this article, we investigate public support for eco-social policies combining goals of social justice and ecological sustainability. Eco-social policies contribute both to providing a social floor or redistributing resources to where they are needed and to respecting an ecological ceiling by keeping human activities within ecological limits. We discuss five such policies and highlight arguments

This paper presents simulations of the radar cross section for a marine corner reflector affected by icing as it is illuminated by 3 GHz marine radar. This is compared to the radar cross section for an unaffected reflector, and the consequences for radar range are investigated. To perform the simulations, a finite element-boundary integral hybrid method is used. The simulation code is based on sev

Torrential rainfall predisposes hills to catastrophic landslides resulting in serious damage to life and property. Landslide inventory maps are therefore essential for rapid response and developing disaster mitigation strategies. Manual mapping techniques are laborious and time-consuming, and thus not ideal in rapid response situations. Automated landslide mapping from optical satellite imagery us

Recent Advances: Various studies have suggested that mitochondrial DNA copy number (mtDNA-CN), a surrogate biomarker of mitochondrial dysfunction, is an easily quantifiable biomarker for chronic diseases, including diabetes and cancer. However, current knowledge is limited, and the results are controversial. This has been attributed mainly to methodology and study design.Critical Issues: The incid

One of the major issues with dental implants is failure due to bacterial infection, and additions of copper are known to improve the antimicrobial properties of Ti alloys. There are inconsistencies in the Ti rich area of the Cu-Ti binary phase diagram, hence the need to find out if Ti2Cu or Ti3Cu is formed, and to identify the type of formation of Ti2Cu. Four alloys: 20, 33, 40 and 50 Cu (mass%) w

Purpose: Although both relaxation and diffusion imaging are sensitive to tissue microstructure, studies have reported limited sensitivity and robustness of using relaxation or conventional diffusion alone to characterize tissue microstructure. Recently, it has been shown that tensor-valued diffusion encoding and joint relaxation-diffusion quantification enable more reliable quantification of compa

BACKGROUND: Data on unrecognized liver cirrhosis in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) are derived mainly from cohorts with a risk of selection bias.OBJECTIVES: In a population-based cohort study we aimed to determine the proportion, characteristics, and prognosis of HCC in patients with unrecognized cirrhosis.METHODS: Using the Swedish quality register for liver cancer and other nationw