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Economic and social development along the urban–rural continuum: New opportunities to inform policyThe economic and social development of nations relies on their population having physical access to services and employment opportunities. For the vast majority of the 3.4 billion people living in rural areas, this largely depends on their access to urban centers of different sizes.
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Comparative assessment of the human and animal health surveillance systems in Tanzania: Opportunities for an integrated one health surveillance platformGlobally, there have been calls for an integrated zoonotic disease surveillance system. This study aimed to assess human and animal health surveillance systems to identify opportunities for One Health surveillance platform in Tanzania.
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Mapping BCG vaccination coverage in Ethiopia between 2000 and 2019The Bacille-Calmette–Guerin (BCG) vaccination remains the primary strategy to prevent severe disseminated TB in young children, particularly in high TB-burden countries such as Ethiopia. Accurate knowledge of vaccination coverage in small geographical areas is critically important to developing targeted immunization campaigns. Thus, this study aimed to investigate the spatiotemporal distributions and ecological level determinants of BCG vaccination coverage in Ethiopia.
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Effects of zinc and vitamin A supplementation on prognostic markers and treatment outcomes of adults with pulmonary tuberculosis: a systematic review and meta-analysisUndernutrition is a major risk factor for tuberculosis (TB), which is estimated to be responsible for 1.9 million TB cases per year globally. The effectiveness of micronutrient supplementation on TB treatment outcomes and its prognostic markers (sputum conversion, serum zinc, retinol and haemoglobin levels) has been poorly understood.
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Gaussian random fields: with and without covariancesWe begin with isotropic Gaussian random fields, and show how the Bochner-Godement theorem gives a natural way to describe their covariance structure. We continue with a study of Matérn processes on Euclidean space, spheres, manifolds and graphs, using Bessel potentials and stochastic partial differential equations (SPDEs).
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Spatio-temporal monitoring of health facility-level malaria trends in Zambia and adaptive scaling for operational interventionThe spatial and temporal variability inherent in malaria transmission within countries implies that targeted interventions for malaria control in high-burden settings and subnational elimination are a practical necessity. Identifying the spatio-temporal incidence, risk, and trends at different administrative geographies within malaria-endemic countries and monitoring them in near real-time as change occurs is crucial for developing and introducing cost-effective, subnational control and elimination intervention strategies.
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A Journey from Wild to Textbook Data to Reproducibly Refresh the Wages Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth DatabaseTextbook data is essential for teaching statistics and data science methods because it is clean, allowing the instructor to focus on methodology. Ideally textbook datasets are refreshed regularly, especially when they are subsets taken from an ongoing data collection.
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Rift Valley fever seropositivity in humans and domestic ruminants and associated risk factors in Sengerema, Ilala, and Rufiji districts, TanzaniaData on Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV) prevalence in urban settings and pastoral areas of Tanzania are scarce. We performed a cross-sectional study of RVFV seroprevalence and determinants in humans and animals from Ilala, Rufiji, and Sengerema districts of Tanzania.
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Improving Influenza Vaccination in Children With Comorbidities: A Systematic ReviewChildren with medical comorbidities are at greater risk for severe influenza and poorer clinical outcomes. Despite recommendations and funding, influenza vaccine coverage remains inadequate in these children. We aimed to systematically review literature assessing interventions targeting influenza vaccine coverage in children with comorbidities and assess the impact on influenza vaccine coverage.
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Risk factors for COVID-19 infection, disease severity and related deaths in Africa: A systematic reviewThe aim of this study was to provide a comprehensive evidence on risk factors for transmission, disease severity and COVID-19 related deaths in Africa. A systematic review has been conducted to synthesise existing evidence on risk factors affecting COVID-19 outcomes across Africa.