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Molla Asnake,1 Suleman Hassen,2 Anteneh Messele,1 Yosef Habtemariam,1 Sisay Mengistu,2 Bizuayehu Tassew,2 Tsegaw Worku,1 Woineab Tadeg1 1Department of Medicine, School of Medicine, College of Health Sciences, Mizan-Tepi University, Mizan Aman, Ethiopia; 2Department of Surgery, College of Health Sciences, Mizan-Tepi University, Mizan Aman, EthiopiaCorrespondence: Molla Asnake, Email mollaasnake75@gmail.comAbstract: Appendicitis is an inflammation of the vermiform appendix (located near the base of the cecum). A lung abscess is a cavitary lesion containing necrotic lung tissue or an infected fluid component. It mainly occurs as a result of lung parenchymal disease. The patient was a 25-year-old male who first presented with a 1-week history of productive cough and chest pain associated with low-grade fever. He was diagnosed with a lung abscess as a complication of perforated retro cecal appendicitis. We report this in consideration of reducing the challenge of delay in diagnosis of this rare complication, and to avoid mistreatment specifically when the patient’s chest x-ray resembles empyema. Additionally, we encourage doing further studies on this topic.Keywords: lung abscess, sepsis, perforated appendicitis

Background: There has been a paucity of evidence for the development of a prediction model for diabetic retinopathy (DR) in Ethiopia. Predicting the risk of developing DR based on the patient's demographic, clinical, and behavioral data is helpful in resource-limited areas where regular screening for DR is not available and to guide practitioners estimate the future risk of their patients., Methods: A retrospective follow-up study was conducted at the University of Gondar (UoG) Comprehensive Specialized Hospital from January 2006 to May 2021 among 856 patients with type 2 diabetes (T2DM). Variables were selected using the Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO) regression. The data were validated by 10-fold cross-validation. Four ML techniques (naïve Bayes, K-nearest neighbor, decision tree, and logistic regression) were employed. The performance of each algorithm was measured, and logistic regression was a well-performing algorithm. After multivariable logistic regression and model reduction, a nomogram was developed to predict the individual risk of DR., Results: Logistic regression was the best algorithm for predicting DR with an area under the curve of 92%, sensitivity of 87%, specificity of 83%, precision of 84%, F1-score of 85%, and accuracy of 85%. The logistic regression model selected seven predictors: total cholesterol, duration of diabetes, glycemic control, adherence to anti-diabetic medications, other microvascular complications of diabetes, sex, and hypertension. A nomogram was developed and deployed as a web-based application. A decision curve analysis showed that the model was useful in clinical practice and was better than treating all or none of the patients., Conclusions: The model has excellent performance and a better net benefit to be utilized in clinical practice to show the future probability of having DR. Identifying those with a higher risk of DR helps in the early identification and intervention of DR., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Background: One of the most important health interventions for reducing maternal morbidity and death is the use of maternal healthcare services. In Ethiopia, maternal healthcare services are not well utilized, particularly in rural pastoralist communities, despite their significance. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the use of maternal healthcare services and the characteristics that are related to it in the East Borena zone. Techniques: In September 2020, a community-based cross-sectional survey was carried out in Liben with 416 randomly selected mothers. Mothers who had given birth within the 12 months before the study comprised the respondents. Questionnaires given by interviewers were used to gather the data. The data were transferred to SPSS version 20 for analysis after being entered into Epi-Info version 4.1 for coding. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Hosmer, and Lemeshow goodness of fit tests were employed, along with descriptive statistics. Additionally, multivariate and binary logistic regression analyses were carried out. 95% CI and the odd ratio were used to examine the relationship between the outcome and predictive variables., Results: At least one prenatal visit was received by 60% of moms. Only 21.2% and 17.5% of women had given birth in a medical facility and made use of early postnatal care services. The use of antenatal care was strongly correlated with maternal education [AOR = 2.43 (95% CI: 1.22-4.89)], decision-making capability [AOR = 2.40 (95% CI: 1.3-23.3)], felt compassionate and respectful treatment [AOR = 0.30 (95% CI: 0.18-0.50)], and intended current pregnancy [AOR = 0.22 (95% CI: 0.12-0.37)]. Moms b/n ages 15-19 had a 3.7-fold higher probability of giving birth in a hospitals than moms b/n ages 35 and 49 [AOR = 1.74 (95% CI: 1.02-3.08)]. Mothers who lived far away were 1.02 times less likely to give birth at a hospital than those who could reach one within an hour (AOR = 1.74;95% CI: 1.02, 3.08). While recent use of antenatal care [AOR = 5.34 (95% CI: 1.96-8.65)], planned current pregnancy, and knowledge of using postnatal care were shown to be strongly correlated with danger indicators [AOR = 2.93 (95% CI: 1.59-5.41)], knowledge of danger signs [AOR = 3.77 (95% CI: 2.16-6.57)] and perceived compassionate and respectful care were significantly associated with institutional delivery., Conclusion: Overall the prevalence of maternal healthcare services utilization was far below the national and regional targets in the study area. Thus, promoting institutional services, raising community knowledge, empowering women to make decisions, and enhancing the infrastructure of the health sector., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (© 2024 Desta, Mengistu and Arero.)

Background: Professional licensing bodies are valuable sources for tracking the health workforce, as many skilled health-care providers require formal training, registration, and licensure. Regulatory activities in Ethiopia were not effectively implemented due to poor follow-up and gaps in skilled human resources, budget, and information technology infrastructure., Objective: The aim of this study was to explore and describe the lived experiences and challenges faced by health care managers in health professionals' licensure practices in Ethiopia., Methods: A cross-sectional study design with a phenomenological approach was employed between March 26 and April 30, 2021, to collect qualitative data. We conducted in-depth interviews with a total of 32 purposively selected health system managers. An interview guide was prepared in English, translated into Amharic, and then pretested. Audio recorded data was transcribed verbatim, translated, and analysed manually by themes and sub-themes. A member check was done to check the credibility of the result., Results: The data revealed four major themes: awareness of licensing practices, enforcement of licensing practices, systems for assuring the quality of licensing practices, and challenges to licensing practices. Lack of awareness among managers about health workforce licensing was reported, especially at lower-level employers. Regulators were clear on the requirements to issue a licence to the health workforce if they are competent in the licensing exam, while human resource managers do not emphasise whether the employees have a licence or not during employment. As a result of this, non-licenced health workers were employed. Health care managers mentioned that they did not know any monitoring tools to solve the issue of working without a licence. Fraudulent academic credentials, shortage of resources (human resources, finance, equipment, and supplies), and weak follow-up and coordination systems were identified as main practice challenges., Conclusions: This study reported a suboptimal health professionals' licensing practice in Ethiopia, which is against the laws and proclamations of the country that state to employ all health workers only with professional licenses. Challenges for health professionals' licensing practice were identified as fraudulent academic credentials, a shortage of resources (HR, finance, equipment, and supplies), and a weak follow-up and coordination system. Further awareness of licensing practices should be created, especially for lower-level employers. Regulators shall establish a reliable digital system to consistently assure the quality of licensing practices. Health care managers must implement mechanisms to regularly monitor the licensing status of their employees and ensure that government requirements are met. Collaboration and regular communication between regulators and employers can improve quality practices., Competing Interests: There is no competing interest among the authors., (Copyright: © 2024 Teka et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)