Browsing by Author "Gebreselassie, Solomon"

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    Households’ Willingness to Pay for Environmental Practices: An Implication of Eco-Labeling for Leather Products in Ethiopia
    (Addis Ababa University, 2007-01) Gebreselassie, Solomon; Mekonnen, Alemu (PhD)
    Eco-labels are becoming important market based instruments to influence the behavior of consumers and industry in favor of environmentally-friendly products. This study examined households’ willingness to pay (WTP) a premium for environmental attributes of leather products in a hypothetical market. An eco-labeling scheme is used to differentiate leather products. Data was collected using two-stage sampling. First purposive sampling is used to select two kebeles based on their relative distance from the pollution source and polluted river. Next 300 households are selected using systematic random sampling. Descriptive statistics and an ordered probit model are used to analyse the data set. The result revealed that the majority of the households agreed that environmental pollution caused by conventional leather processing is a problem to the livelihood of the people. Besides, almost all respondents acknowledged the importance of the shift of production techniques from conventional to environmentally friendly production techniques. With regard to eco-labeling scheme, almost all respondents supported the programme. About 75% of the respondents are willing to pay a premium for environmental practices. The results suggest that monthly income, family size and location significantly affect willingness to pay. Finally, the findings in this study showed that there is a market for ecolabeled leather products. Therefore eco-labeling could be used as an important market instrument to complement mandatory laws and regulation for environmental protection.
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    A Study on Human Antibody Response to Moraxella (Branhamella) Catarrhalls Antigens During Respiratory Tract Infections
    (Addis Ababa Universty, 1996-05) Gebreselassie, Solomon; Hathaway, Audrey E. (PhD)
    In this study, M. catarrhalis was isolated from 68 of 200 (34.0%) sputum samples of patients with community-acquired pneumonia. It was also found in 56 (28.0%) of the nasopharynx of these patients. There were 42 (61.8%) males. and 26 (38.2%) females with pneumonia caused by M. catarrhalis. Fifty one of the 68 (75.0%) had chronic underlying diseases. Of the isolates from sputum 37 (54.4%) and 32 (57.1%) of the 56 nasopharyngeal isolates were p-Iactamase positive. An ELISA was used to determine the antibody response of sera of patients with pneumonia caused by M. catarrhalis to the outer membrane proteins (OMPs) of the bacterium for both IgG-A-M and IgG31eveis in the sera. It was found that 40 of the 68 (58.8%) patients with pneumonia caused by this organism showed significant rise in the total immunoglobulin (IgG-A-M) level, and 43 of 68 (63.2%) in the IgG3 level in their convalescent sera. In the control sera only I of 30 (3.3%) patients had significant rise for IgG-A-M while none of them showed significant increase in titre for IgG3 (P< 0.05). Using lipopolysaccharide (LPS) antigens, only 16 of 68 (23.5%) paired sera showed significant increase in antibody titre for both IgG-A-M and IgG3 compared to 2 of 30 (6.7%) of controls (P< 0.05). Significant bactericidal activity of the convalescent-phase sera at a dilution of 60% was detected in l3 of 15 (86.7%) of the sera assayed. The same sera without complement were used as controls and none of the controls showed significant bactericidal activities (P< 0.05).