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Background As the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) rapid testing services expanded to reach the global target that 95% of people living with the virus will know their status by 2030, ensuring the quality of those services becomes critical. This study was conducted to assess the performance of HIV Rapid testing at sites in health facilities that were enrolled in the Rapid Test Quality Improvement Initiative (RTQII) in Ethiopia. Methods Characterized HIV proficiency testing (PT) panels of Dried Tube Specimen (DTS) were prepared, verified, and distributed to testing sites from August to December 2019. In addition on-site evaluation of HIV testing sites (HTSs) was conducted using a checklist to assess testing conditions. For proficiency testing, the study included 159 HIV testing sites (HTSs) in 41 Health facilities (HFs) in five administrative regions and two city administrations. The collected data was analyzed by SPSS version 20 and chi-square test was applied to identify the association between acceptable performance and contributing factors. Testing sites with 100% PT score as well as conducting the test with adherence to the National HIV Testing Algorithm were considered acceptable. Results The overall acceptable performance (100% PT score with the correct algorithm followed) was found to be 62% while 12% scored 80% and 11% scored between 20 and 60%. The rest 15% were not considered as acceptable due to failure to adhere to the National HIV Testing Algorithm. Testing sites that participated in External Quality Assessment/Proficiency Testing schemes have shown better performance than those that did not participate with 70% and 56% performance respectively (p = 0.057).

The coding-complete severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) genome sequences from 15 nasopharyngeal swabs collected in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, during the period from December 2020 to March 2021 were determined using Illumina MiSeq technology. A sequence analysis identified that the B.1 SARS-CoV-2 lineage was most prevalent with the worrying emergence of B.1.1.7 in June 2021.

Delivering value to customers and fostering new product success at the bottom of the pyramid (BoP) are major challenges for local manufacturing firms. At the BoP, local manufacturing firms (which originate in the local community and are owned by locals) pursuing the development of new products as part of their strategy have to deal with significant challenges such as poor infrastructure, poor distribution channels, high citizen illiteracy rates, corruption, and lack of enforceable legal frameworks. In order to deliver value to customers and realise new product success, local firms in BoP markets need to create ways to overcome these challenges. One key focus for local BoP firms is to effectively manage their intra (widening their resource base, deploying capabilities) and extra organisational processes (establishing collaboration) which may help better drive new product development (NPD) projects towards successful outcomes. Yet, the literature remains almost silent about how these intra and extra organisational processes affect NPD at the BoP. In an effort to raise awareness and address the silence of research on firms from BoP countries, this thesis develops three papers. The first paper (under 2nd round review at Industrial Marketing Management) examines how a firm's bricolage capability helps to enhance new product innovativeness and how social ties with civil society organisations and government bolster the impact of bricolage by moderating the relationship between bricolage and new product innovativeness. The study further discusses marketing capabilities as an important moderator of the relationship between product innovativeness and the firm's ability to create customer value. Data were obtained from managers of 150 Ethiopian local manufacturing firms and 325 active business customers. Drawing on the capability-based view and social capital theory, the findings show that bricolage has an inverted-U shape relationship with product innovativeness, and ties with civil society organisations attenuate this effect. Whereas our data do not support the moderating role of ties with governments. Further, the results demonstrate a significant moderating role for marketing capabilities in translating product innovativeness into customer value at the BoP. The second paper (under review at the Journal of Business Research) focuses on the role of NPD team's problem-solving creativity in enhancing new product performance. The paper seeks to identify factors (such as leadership style and role ambiguity) that facilitate or inhibit problem-solving creativity in NPD teams within BoP firms. Underpinned by social exchange theory and using a sample of 274 middle-level managers from local BoP firms in Ethiopia, the study shows that NPD team's creativity is a key to develop a new product that pays off financially in BoP markets. The study identifies that ambidextrous leaders (leaders who can deploy simultaneously transformational and transaction leadership styles) can reduce ambiguity in the minds of their NPD managers to foster their teams to look for new and better methods of performing tasks. The findings suggest that CEO's of BoP firms who engage in ambidextrous leadership attenuate the negative effect of role ambiguity on problem-solving creativity in their NPD teams. The third paper (under review at the European Journal of Marketing) examines underlying mechanisms linking collaboration with customers and suppliers to new product advantage en route to creating affordable product and enhancing new product performance for local firms at the BoP. The study further focuses on the contingent roles of two environmental factors relevant to the BoP market context (i.e., market turbulence and competitive intensity). Survey data were collected from three respondent groups including two managerial positions including marketing and NPD managers in local BoP firms and their customers. Drawing upon social capital and institutional theories, the findings show that collaboration with customers and suppliers enhance the ability of local BoP firms to create new product advantages. The relationship between collaboration with customers and suppliers, and new product advantage is, however, impacted by the level of market turbulence BoP local manufacturers face. Market turbulence diminishes the capacity of customer collaboration to generate new product advantage, while its effect on the supplier collaboration - new product advantage relationship was not supported. The study provides evidence for the view that new product advantage in the form of cost-efficiency and differentiation are determinants of affordability and new product performance at the BoP. The study confirms that new product advantage is translated into new product performance in environments with a higher level of competitive intensity. However, the benefit of product advantage in BoP markets to affordability diminishes at higher levels of competitive intensity

Background Microscopic diagnosis of Giemsa-stained thick and thin blood films has remained the standard laboratory method for diagnosing malaria. High quality performance of microscopists that examine blood slides in health facilities remains critically important. Materials and methods A cross-sectional study was conducted to assess the performance of 107 malaria microscopists working at 23 malaria rechecking laboratories in Ethiopia. A set of 12 blood film slides was distributed to each microscopist. Data was collected and exported to SPSS version 20 for analysis. Chi-square, sensitivity, specificity, percent agreement, and kappa scores were calculated to assess performance in detecting and identification of Plasmodium species. Results The mean age of the participants was 30 ± 5 yrs and most of them (54; 50.5%) were working at regional reference laboratories. Overall, the sensitivity of participants in detecting and identifying malaria parasite species was 96.8% and 56.7%, respectively. The overall agreement on detection and identification of malaria species was 96.8% (Kappa = 0.9) and 64.8% (Kappa = 0.33), respectively. The least accurately identified malaria parasite species was P. malariae (3/107; 2.8%) followed by P. ovale (35/107; 32.7%). Participants working at hospital laboratories had the highest percentage (72.3 %, Kappa=0.51) of accurate species identification. Study participants that had participated in malaria microscopy and quality assurance trainings were significantly better at quantifying parasite densities (P

Organizations have to understand the customer very well if they want to exist in business. Thisunderstanding of the customer will help organizations to act accordingly. More specifically hotelservices are characterized by frequent interaction with the customers. Thus, these frequentcontacts with the customers may lead to experience dissatisfaction/ frustration when things gowrong. Accordingly, it is important to find out the reasons for such negative emotions andmeasures to be taken to mold these behaviors.For this reason, the aim of our master‟s thesis is to identify reasons for customer aggression andconsiderable mechanisms to put in place for, how customer service employees mold the behaviorof aggressive customers through emotional labor while delivering services in hotels. This impliesthat major motives are mentioned based on some of the routine interactions, from the serviceitself and others outside the service delivery process. In addition, customer service employees‟(CSEs) key mechanisms used to react positively to such emotions due to customers‟dissatisfaction/ frustrations are assessed. Moreover, to fulfill the aim of the research, the hotelindustry has been chosen from which sample customers and service employees are also selected.In this regard, survey questions from a sample of customers and interviews held with selectedcustomer service employees (CSEs) were used as data collection tools from one of the hotelslocated in Umeå. The result of the findings helps to identify the most common types of reasonsfor customer aggression during interaction; lack of assistance from CSEs, noisy customeraround, lack of punctuality and billing errors are the common reasons for customer aggressionfrom the respondents‟ point of view. While interview results revealed that customer‟s ownpersonal reasons due to the prior emotional state of the customer (Antecedent State) are causes ofaggression during service provision. On the other hand, in molding such behaviors, emotionallabor is found to be fundamental tool in services, where surface acting emotional labor is themost widely used mechanism while delivering services to mold the customer aggression, angerand dissatisfaction into happier and more satisfying situations for the customers.We believe the study complements the existing research by extending and bridging on customeraggression and in response emotions to be applied to mold such behavior in hotel services. Keywords: Hotel industry, Emotional labor, Aggression, Anger, Customer serviceEmployees (CSE)