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Abstract Background Despite advances in combination antiretroviral therapy (cARTs), children in Sub-Saharan Africa continue to experience neurocognitive deficits due to the virus crossing the blood-brain barrier (BBB). Based on the principles of neuroplasticity, our study sought to investigate the feasibility of introducing a pencil and paper cognitive rehabilitation tool called Brainwave-R, to ameliorate the effects of HIV neurocognition amongst children from a low socioeconomic background in rural South Africa. Material/Methods Five HIV positive and six HIV negative children were assigned to either an experimental or control group. The experimental group underwent two months of cognitive rehabilitation therapy to remediate sustained attention, using Brainwave-R, whereas the noncontact control group took part in placebo activities. Sustained attention measures were taken before and after the intervention training sessions, using a sustained attention subtest. The control group later received cognitive intervention three months following the conclusion of the research study. Results A Mann Whitney U Test revealed that the experimental group (Mdn=38.50) did not differ significantly from the control group (Mdn=37.00) after the cognitive rehabilitation intervention, U= 12.00, z= -.55, p= 0.66, r= -0.17. A Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test found that there was a significant improvement from pretest scores (Mdn=31.00) to post test scores (Mdn=38.00) following the rehabilitation for HIV positive participants in the sample, T=15.00, z = -2.02, p= 0.04, r= -0.90. Conclusions The findings of our study raise the feasibility of a pencil and paper cognitive rehabilitation method to supplement antiretroviral (ARV) therapy in paediatric HIV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the scale of energy poverty remains elusive. It is, however, a key metric in the global effort to eradicate poverty. The analysis presented in this paper provides insights into the true scale and impacts of unreliable electricity service provision. The paper introduces a simple and novel approach to quantifying the difference between electricity supply and demand, accounting for both met and unmet demand in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). To assess unmet demand, generator use, reduced utilization due to unreliable electricity service, unrealized demand from unelectrified households, and the effect of tariff reductions are considered. We find that at 2018 prices, SSA (excluding South Africa) on-grid power networks had annual unmet demand of 8.83 TWh for on-grid users and 42.9 TWh with the inclusion of the off-grid sector. With a 50% reduction in tariff by country, the on-grid power sector would face a 21.46 TWh of unmet demand in the region, rising to 55.53 TWh with the inclusion of off-grid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]