Browsing by Author "Jemal, Yasin"

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    Assessment of Malnutrition and Anaemia and Their Determinants among Refugee Pre-School Children in Kebribeyah Refugee Camp, Somali Region, Ethiopia
    (Addis Ababa University, 2010-06) Jemal, Yasin; Haidar, Jemal(Associate professor)
    Background: Malnutrition and anemia remain one of the most common causes of morbidity and mortality among children throughout the world. Both malnutrition and anemia are important health problems affecting preschool children and pregnant women. Refugee children, due to their living condition, are the most vulnerable to suffer from these problems. Surveys in the refugee camps have shown that the prevalence of malnutrition and anaemia in the refugee camps were high. However, underlying variations of these nutritional indicators and determinant factors among refugee camps were poorly understood. Objective: The main objective of this study was to assess malnutrition and anemia and identify the various causes and determinants and their relative contributions in refugee settings. Methodology: Cross -sectional study with analytic component was conducted in Kebribayah refugee camp on a total of 671 refugee children aged between 6 and 59 months during the month of March 2010. Simple random sampling method was employed to collect quantitative data using structured questionnaire consisting of socio-demographic characteristics, child related variables, maternal/care takers characteristics, environmental health conditions, anthropometric and hemoglobin measurements. The study groups were drawn using random table number to select the sampled households from the roaster. Data were entered using EPI-INFO software (version 3.5.1.) and exported into SPSS for analysis. NCHS/WHO reference population and standard was used to convert height and weight measurements into nutritional indices. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analysis were utilized to identify the factors associated with under-nutrition and anaemia. Results: Overall, the prevalence of stunting, underweight and wasting were 27.6%, 26.1% and 8.9% respectively. While the prevalence of severe stunting, underweight and wasting was 9.5%, 4.8% and 2.5% respectively. The prevalence of anaemia was 52.4% and the magnitude of severe anaemia was 10.5%. The main determinant factors of stunting were child age, maternal illiteracy, paternal lack of education, and family size. Child sex, age, maternal lack of education, childhood illness such as diarrhea and ARI, and lack availability of toilet facility were associated with underweight. Age of child, sharing and selling of food ration, duration of ration lasting, presence of ARI and poor personal hygiene (number of baths took) were the most important determinants of wasting. The most determinant factors of anaemia were child age, lack of maternal and paternal education, number of under five children in the HH, duration of ration lasting, sharing and selling part of the ration, presence of diarrhea, stunting and underweight. Conclusion and recommendations: The study indicates that underweight is serious in the area according to the WHO classification, and chronic nutritional problem is also of particular concern. The study also shows that anaemia was highly prevalent in the area and was categorized as severe, compared to the WHO classification. Overall, the state of nutrition was better in the area than other surveys but anaemia was highly prevalent and severe in the study area. Actions targeting early child illness treatment are necessary to improve the nutritional status of the children. In addition, it is advisable to consider fortified food ration with iron for the community
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    Relation between Shrinkage Index and Swelling Pressure for Expansive Soil found in Addis Ababa
    (Addis Ababa University, 2011-12) Jemal, Yasin; Hadush, Seged (PhD)
    This research is inspired by the PhD thesis work of H. B. Nagaraj from Indian Institute of Science titled “Prediction of Engineering Properties of Fine Grained Soils from their Index Properties”. The PhD thesis indicated that the swelling pressure has a poor correlation with the liquid limit, a good correlation with the plasticity index and a better correlation with the shrinkage index (liquid limit – shrinkage limit) of fine-grained soils. Nagaraj used a total set of ten remolded soil samples representing the three extreme clay mineral types namely Kaolinite, Illite and Montmorillonite. Also due attention was given to select pairs of soils with nearly the same liquid limit values, but having different plasticity properties. Consequently, the research title “Relationship between Shrinkage Index and Swelling pressure for expansive soil found in Addis Ababa” was selected for this Master’s thesis work. In contrast to the PhD work mentioned above, the results of this Masters study show that the relationship between the swelling pressure and the shrinkage index for Addis Ababa expansive clay (one type of soil) is very weak. However, a good approximation is obtained between the normalized shrinkage index (normalized by initial moisture content) and the swelling pressure with R2 value of 0.89. In addition to this, a better estimation is observed when multiple soil parameters are involved in different combination in prediction of the swelling pressure rather than only the shrinkage index. The correlations developed in this work are compared with previously established equations such as David and Komornik (1969), Nayak and Christensen (1974), Daniel Teklu (2004), Vijayvergiya and Ghazzaly (1973), where the first two equations were found to be in a better agreement with the correlations developed in this work.