Organophosphate Pesticide Exposure: Effect on Farmers' Sperm Quality in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam.

OBJECTIVES: Using pesticides in the An Giang province is widespread. However, studies on the health effect of organophosphate pesticide have not been updated within the past 12 years. This study aimed to assess exposure to organophosphate pesticides and their effects on sperm quality among farmers in the An Giang Province, Mekong Delta, Vietnam. METHODS: During the winter - spring crop season of December 2021 to February 2022, a cross-sectional study was conducted on farmers aged 18 to 60 years-old based on seven communes' health checkup programs. The pesticide spray group included farmers who had sprayed pesticides in the previous week and had a history of working in agriculture for more than 2 years. The control group was defined as those who lived in the same community, had not worked in agriculture, and had never sprayed pesticides. Demographic characteristics and blood, urine, and semen samples were collected and analyzed. RESULTS: Data for 184 eligible participants were analyzed, including 116 farmers in the pesticide spray group and 68 non-farmers in the control group. Pesticide spray contributed to a decrease in the sperm quality index of 6.253 units (95% CI, 4.472-8.749). Increasing each pseudocholinesterase (PChE) unit (kIU/L) was associated with an increase of 1.181 units in the sperm quality index (95% CI, 0.757-0.947). CONCLUSIONS: Preventive methods for organophosphate pesticide exposure, such as administrative controls, engineering controls, substitution, and personal protective equipment should be applied to control health risks. In the An Giang setting, personal protective equipment is feasible, but most types of equipment are not used. The immediate priority is to determine the cause of personal protective equipment not being used and to find solutions to encourage people to use them.

Climate change and human health in Vietnam: a systematic review and additional analyses on current impacts, future risk, and adaptation.

This study aims to investigate climate change's impact on health and adaptation in Vietnam through a systematic review and additional analyses of heat exposure, heat vulnerability, awareness and engagement, and projected health costs. Out of 127 reviewed studies, findings indicated the wider spread of infectious diseases, and increased mortality and hospitalisation risks associated with extreme heat, droughts, and floods. However, there are few studies addressing health cost, awareness, engagement, adaptation, and policy. Additional analyses showed rising heatwave exposure across Vietnam and global above-average vulnerability to heat. By 2050, climate change is projected to cost up to USD1-3B in healthcare costs, USD3-20B in premature deaths, and USD6-23B in work loss. Despite increased media focus on climate and health, a gap between public and government publications highlighted the need for more governmental engagement. Vietnam's climate policies have faced implementation challenges, including top-down approaches, lack of cooperation, low adaptive capacity, and limited resources.

Validity and Reliability Assessment of Attitude Scales for Hepatitis B Vaccination Among Parents in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

BACKGROUND: Attitudes and beliefs could be associated with the low number of vaccinations in low- to middle-income countries such as Vietnam. This study aims to describe ways to develop and assess the attitudes towards Hepatitis B vaccination. METHODS: A mixed-method study was carried out between April 2015 and July 2017. Qualitative data were gathered via semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions. The data were then analyzed thematically into four domains of the Health Belief Model (HBM) in order to design the structured questionnaire. The quantitative strand was followed by the evaluation of the reliability and the construct validity, for which data were obtained after interviewing 768 parents whose children aged from 12 to 24 months, who were receiving the vaccines as part of the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) schedules at the Commune Health Centers. RESULTS: The findings showed the content validity index value of 13 items ranged from 0.86 to 1.00. The factor analyses showed that 11 items remained in the final questionnaire after deleting 2 problematic items due to no relation to the total scales and revealed four factors (perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived benefits, perceived barriers) that jointly accounted for 62.1% of the observed variances. All four factors have good internal consistency with a total Cronbach's alpha of 0.735. A confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated the proposed factor model which fits well in four domains of HBM. CONCLUSION: Attitude scales for Hepatitis B vaccination based on HBM have been developed. This has confirmed to be a valid and reliable instrument that might be useful in assessing parents' attitudes regarding Hepatitis B vaccination and may be used to promote interventions within the increasing vaccination coverage for Vietnamese children.

Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices Regarding COVID-19 Among Chronic Illness Patients at Outpatient Departments in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

BACKGROUND: The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has become a major threat to human life around the world. This study aims to assess the knowledge, attitude, and practices regarding COVID-19 among people with chronic diseases at the outpatient departments in Ho Chi Minh City. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was carried out between February and March 2020 using a convenience sampling strategy in three hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) via the use of a structured self-administered questionnaire. Factors relating to practices, prevalence ratio (PR), and 95% confidence interval were estimated by using the Poisson regression with robust options. P-value <0.05 was considered as statistically different. RESULTS: A total of 522 participants had a mean age of 51.5 ± 10.6 years. Most of them reported seeing information regarding the COVID-19 pandemic (93.7%) via television and social media (72.8% and 62.1%, respectively). Just over two-thirds of the participants (68.4%) answered with sufficient knowledge of COVID-19. Most respondents had a positive attitude toward COVID-19 (90.8%), although some misconceptions existed. Almost over three-fourths of them (77.2%) maintained good practices for prevention. The rate of good practices in those who had sufficient knowledge was 1.24 times greater than that among those who had insufficient knowledge (PR 1.24, 95% CI: 1.10-1.41, P<0.05). Also, the rate of good practices in males was lower than that of females (PR: 0.91, 95% CI: 0.83-0.99, P<0.05). CONCLUSION: There still exists an amount of insufficient knowledge and negative attitude regarding COVID-19, which may be barriers to good prevention practices among chronic illness patients. Education programs need to continue via television and social media and emphasize that people with chronic diseases are more likely to experience severe symptoms, including death from COVID-19. Additionally, management authorities should prolong specific policies to protect the more vulnerable in our community.