Prevalence and causes of visual impairment and blindness among primary schoolchildren in Herat, Afghanistan

2023-01-10T19:16:37+00:00

Childhood visual impairment and blindness (VI&B) significantly affects socioeconomic status and health of an individual in adult age. The prevalence and etiology of VI&B in children varies considerably around the world and across different studies. This study aims to identify the prevalence and causes of VI&B among schoolchildren in Herat, Afghanistan. This school-based cross-sectional study was conducted through a stratified cluster sampling on schoolchildren of both sexes aged between 7 and 15 years, between September and December 2021. Visual acuity of study participants was assessed using standard Snellen chart. Participants with VI&B were further assessed for identification of etiology. Data was analyzed in IBM SPSS Statistics (version 27). A total of 8930 schoolchildren, comprising 4366 (48.9%) boys and 4564 (51.1%) girls with a mean age of 10.1 ± 2.3 years were examined. The prevalence of VI&B in the worst eye was 5.2% (5.0% VI and 0.2% blindness). Of the 4366 boys in this study, 228 (5.2%) had VI, while 17 (0.4%) had blindness, while of the 4564 girls in this study, 211 (4.6%) had VI and 4 (0.1%) had blindness in the worst eye. Refractive error was the principle cause of VI&B in 334 (72.6% of the visually-impaired and 3.6% of the overall sample population). This is the first comprehensive study that reports the prevalence and causes of VI&B in schoolchildren in Afghanistan. The prevalence of VI&B among participants was high in Herat, and the principle cause was uncorrected refractive error.

Database Security Mechanisms in MySQL

2024-05-13T20:53:02+00:00

MySQL security is a concept that originates from database security and mainly comprises attacks that exploit database systems vulnerabilities. SQL injection, inference attack, passive attack, active attack, and other database side attacks are general security issues in many modern database systems. Those methods are used by hackers to retrieve, manipulate, misuse, make or delete information in organizations’ relational databases through application layer or backend layer. Different techniques to prevent MySQL against these attacks investigated and discussed in this article. Besides, different ways to secure or database were introduced. In this article, different ways to protect the data in relational databases including database backups, database and table locking, database encryption, user control, MySQL Enterprise Firewall, and use of views are discussed. Furthermore, each protection method explained with their usages and advantages. Database designers have to be aware of these methods to increase data protection on their designed information management systems. The goals of this research are to cover all security problems that occur in MySQL backend, declaring the security vulnerabilities and providing suggestions to improve MySQL security and preventing an attacker from attacking these systems.

Afghanistan Research Journal - Natural Science

Prevalence and causes of visual impairment and blindness among primary schoolchildren in Herat, Afghanistan

Database Security Mechanisms in MySQL