Respiratory-related deaths and associated factors in Alicho-Weriro district, southern Ethiopia: verbal autopsy data analysis.

BACKGROUND: Respiratory diseases disproportionately affect people living in resource-limited settings. However, obtaining information that explains respiratory-related deaths has been difficult, mainly due to a lack of medical certification of death and the fact that most deaths occur outside of health institutions. This study aimed to determine the proportion of respiratory-related deaths and identify associated factors in Alicho-Weriro district, southern Ethiopia, using the verbal autopsy method. METHODS: A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted from April to June 2022. All deceased people in the study area from January 2020 to December 2021 were included in the study. Trained physicians ascertained the cause of death from verbal autopsy data that were collected using a pre-tested and modified WHO-designed questionnaire. The binary logistic regression models were used to identify factors associated with respiratory-related deaths. RESULTS: Respiratory-related deaths accounted for 25% of the deaths from all causes, with 20.8% of male and 29.5% of female deaths. Of which, 9.7% were from tuberculosis, 8.3% were from asthma and 6.2% were from acute lower-respiratory tract infections. Moreover, being female (adjusted OR, AOR: 3.3; 95% CI: (1.75 to 6.22)), age 50-64 years (AOR: 9.3; 95% CI: (1.16 to 73.90)), age above 64 years (AOR: 8.9; 95% CI: (1.130 to 70.79)), family size of five persons or more (AOR: 1.9; 95% CI: (1.15 to 3.29)), smoking (AOR: 3.9; 95% CI: (1.86 to 8.35)), using wood and/or animal dung for household cooking (AOR: 6.6; 95% CI: (1.92 to 22.59)) and poor house ventilation (AOR: 3.1; 95% CI: (1.75 to 5.38)) were significantly associated with increased odds of dying from respiratory-related diseases. CONCLUSION: This study has determined that about a quarter of deaths from all causes were due to respiratory diseases, mainly tuberculosis, asthma and acute lower respiratory tract infections. Therefore, interventions to reduce this burden should focus on supporting early case detection and treatment, promoting healthy lifestyles, exercising women's equality at the household level and improving housing conditions.

Willingness and acceptability of cervical cancer screening among women living with HIV/AIDS in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: a cross sectional study.

BACKGROUND: In Ethiopia, cervical cancer (CC) ranks the 2nd most frequent cancer and the country had 27.19 million women at risk of developing the disease though only 0.6 % women age 18-69 years was screened every 3 years. Nearly a quarter (22.1 %) of southern Ethiopia HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) infected Women were positive for precancerous cervical cancer. Doing regular screening can prevent the disease by around half (45 %) of the cases in age of 30s and three quarter (75 %) cases in 50s and 60s.In the presence of high risk for acquiring cervical cancer among HIV patients, willingness and acceptance of the screening is low in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia thus the current study was aimed to assess willingness and acceptability of cervical cancer screening and its determinants among women living with HIV/AIDS in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. METHOD: A facility based cross sectional study was conducted among HIV positive women attending HIV treatment centers in Addis Ababa. The respondents were identified using systematic random sampling method. Data was collected using pretested questionnaire and were entered in to Epi-info version 3.5.1 software and exported in to SPSS version 20 statistical package for analysis. The criterias for entering independent variables into multivariate analysis were having p-value 0.05 or less at bivariate analysis and not co-linear. RESULT: One third (34.2 %) of participants knew cervical cancer and two third (62.7 %) were willing for the test though only a quarter (24.8 %) were accepted the test. The independent variables significantly associated with acceptance of screening were educational level, source of information, awareness for the test and preventability of the disease. CONCLUSION: In current study willingness and acceptance of CC (cervical cancer) were low thus organizations working on cancer and HIV/AIDS should establish cervical cancer screening program and further enhance awareness creation.