Front Public Health
September 2021
Emerging from early of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has become one of the most serious health crisis globally. In response to such threat, a wide range of digital health applications has been deployed in Vietnam to strengthen surveillance, risk communication, diagnosis, and treatment of COVID-19. Digital health has brought enormous benefits to the fight against COVID-19, however, numerous constrains in digital health application remain.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: This study aimed to examine the potential of combining routine tuberculosis (TB) surveillance and demographic and socioeconomic variables into the Geographic Information System (GIS) to describe the geographical distribution of TB notified incidence in relation to distances to health services as well as local demographic and socioeconomic factors, including population density, urban/rural status, and household poverty rates in Nam Dinh, Vietnam. It also aimed to compare the conventional Generalized Linear Models (GLM) Poisson regression model and Geographically Weighted Poisson Regression (GWPR) models in order to determine the best fitting model that can be used to investigate the relationship between TB notified incidence and distances and the social risk factors.
Methods: The data of new and relapse patients with all forms of TB aged ≥15 years residing in Nam Dinh (Vietnam) from 2012 to 2015 were collected from the Administration of Medical Services' (Ministry of Health of Vietnam) TB surveillance database.