The University of Health and Allied Sciences (UHAS) a public university located at Ho in the Volta Region of Ghana. UHAS is one of the youngest public universities in Ghana. Its operation started in September 2012, when the first batch of 154 students were admitted.
Hypertension affects a significant number of people globally, with the majority in low- and middle-income countries. Psychological distress such as anxiety, depression and stress, may occur as a consequence of hypertension. However, these distresses among people living with hypertension remain undiagnosed and untreated in Ghana. We assessed the prevalence and management of psychological distress among people living with hypertension, receiving care in selected health facilities in Ghana. The study employed a concurrent mixed-methods approach. A cross-sectional study was used to assess the prevalence of psychological distress and associated factors among 500 participants living with hypertension, using DASS-21 and some self-developed questions. Indepth interviews with healthcare professionals explored management approaches of psychological distress. Descriptive and logistic regression analyses were used to analyze quantitative data and thematic analysis was used for the qualitative data. We found out that the prevalence of psychological distress including symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress was 80.2
Tuo zaafi, a traditional dish prepared from cereals and often accompanied by dark green vegetable soup, is a revered dish well known for its medicinal and nutritional attributes. The cereals are usually prone to mycotoxin contamination. This study aimed to determine fungal diversity, mycotoxin contamination (Ochratoxin A, Aflatoxins, Fumonisins), and consumer risk associated with tuo-zaafi in the northern regions of Ghana. Fungi were identified using standard mycology protocols, and a high-performance liquid chromatography-fluorescence detector (HPLC-FLD) was used to analyze mycotoxin levels in the samples. Cancer risk assessments were done using deterministic models proposed by a Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Additives. The fungal counts were between the ranges of 3.19 and 4.27 log10 CFU/g. Some species of the genera Aspergillus, Fusarium, Trichoderma, Penicillium, Mucor, Rhizopus, Cladosporium, Alternaria, and Saccharomyces contaminated the food samples. Additionally, Aflatoxins (13.05-24.51 µg/kg) and Fumonisins (101.59-126.18 µg/kg) exceeded regulatory limits set by the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) in a majority of samples. Risk assessment based on Margin of Exposure (MOE) calculations revealed values below 10,000, indicating a significant carcinogenic public health concern. These findings highlight the urgent need for regulatory interventions and public awareness campaigns to mitigate mycotoxin exposure.
INTRODUCTION:Tobacco use among adolescents is a concern in the Upper East Region of Ghana. We estimated the prevalence and identified factors contributing to single and multiple use of tobacco products among junior high school students in Ghana. METHODS:We conducted a cross-sectional analysis of a baseline survey of a school-based tobacco control intervention among adolescents in the Upper East Region of Ghana in 2022. A multi-stage cluster sampling approach was employed to identify the study sample, and data were collected using self-administered questionnaires. Current use of single tobacco products (at least one: cigarette, e-cigarette, shisha, or smokeless tobacco products) and multiple products (≥2 products) in the past 30 days was assessed. Multinomial logistic regression was used to assess the association of sociodemographic characteristics, perceptions towards tobacco's health risks, and exposure to tobacco products with single and multiple product use. Adjusted relative risk ratios (ARRR) and their corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CI) were computed. RESULTS:We surveyed 1328 adolescents, comprising an equal proportion of males (49.8%) and females (50.4%). One in five (21.7%) reported using tobacco products, with 11.5% using single products and 13.0% using multiple products. Shisha (13.6%), cigarettes (10.6%), e-cigarettes (8.2%), and smokeless tobacco (6.0%) were used. A number of factors were identified to be associated with tobacco use among adolescents. CONCLUSIONS:One in five junior high school students used at least one form of tobacco product. Adolescent tobacco use is impacted by demographic factors and risk perceptions. Further studies are needed to better understand these associations.
Respectful and disrespectful care profoundly influence communication and collaboration between caregivers and patients, shaping outcomes across the continuum of care. Despite patients being the primary users of healthcare services, their experiences of respectful and disrespectful care remain underexplored in Ghanaian healthcare settings. To address these systemic inadequacies, this study explored patients' understanding and experiences of respectful and disrespectful care. The study employed a qualitative design and was conducted in six healthcare facilities across Ghana. Thirteen focus group discussions were conducted with 90 participants, aged 18-87 years, between October and December 2022. Data were audio-recorded, translated, transcribed, and thematically analyzed. The mean age of participants was 42.7 ± 15.3 years, with a majority (72.2%) being female. Participants associated respectful care with timeliness and quality of patient reception, showing hospitality and friendliness to patients, clarity of communication and patient involvement in decisions, and providing non-discriminatory care. On the other hand, disrespectful care was characterized by long waiting times, poor coordination, poor staff attitudes, privacy violations, neglect of patient priorities, navigational challenges, inadequate infrastructure, and lack of required medicines, equipment, and supplies. These experiences significantly influenced participants' psychological well-being, satisfaction, and future healthcare-seeking behavior. While respectful care fosters trust and well-being, disrespectful care erodes satisfaction and discourages engagement with healthcare services. Systemic inadequacies must be urgently addressed to create a dignified, inclusive, compassionate, and responsive healthcare system in Ghana.
Brain tumors are among the deadliest cancers worldwide, with particularly devastating impact in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) where limited access to medical imaging infrastructure and expertise delays diagnosis and treatment planning. Accurate brain tumor segmentation is critical for treatment planning, surgical guidance, and monitoring disease progression, yet manual segmentation is time-consuming and subject to inter-observer variability. Recent advances in deep learning, based on Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and Transformers have demonstrated significant potential in automating this task. This study evaluates three state-of-the-art architectures, SwinUNETR-v2, nnUNet, and MedNeXt for automated brain tumor segmentation in multi-parametric Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans. We trained our models on the BraTS-Africa 2024 and BraTS2021 datasets, and performed validation on the BraTS-Africa 2024 validation set. We observed that training on a mixed dataset (BraTS-Africa 2024 and BraTS2021) did not yield improved performance on the validation set in all tumor regions compared to training solely on SSA data with well-validated methods. Ensembling predictions from different models also lead to notable performance increases. Our best-performing model, a finetuned MedNeXt, achieved an average lesion-wise Dice score of 0.84, with individual scores of 0.81 (enhancing tumor), 0.81 (tumor core), and 0.91 (whole tumor). While further improvements are expected with extended training and larger datasets, these results demonstrate the feasibility of using deep learning methods for reliable tumor segmentation in resource-limited settings.
