Interaction of Household Wealth and Women’s Working Status on Child Malnutrition: Evidence from PDHS-2013

Theoretically, it is supposed that women’s working status and household wealth independently contribute towards the children’s dietary status. The working women of the inferior socio-economic class are generally engaged in the informal sector or low paid work. It may be argued that such kinds of service cannot contribute to the nutritious prestige in children. To solve this puzzle whether woman's working status in all socio-economic setups is contributing to children’s nutritional status or not? This is the main focus of the research. A sample data of 1169 households from PDHS (2012-13) are used to explore the influencing factors of child malnutrition. The study employed the binary logistic regression which observes the likelihood of malnutrition in the children. Malnutrition is measured through CIAF. The interaction terms of the woman’s working status and five quintiles of wealth index have been created. The results disclose that working women belonging to the household of the first two quintiles of the wealth index and the fourth quintile of the wealth index are not contributing to the nutritious prestige of the children. Furthermore, in the third quintiles, the working status of women contributes to the nutritional prestige of children. It may be inferred that the socioeconomic status of the household is important for the nutritional welfare of the children, not the woman's employment. However, it may be concluded that women’s employment should be of the level that can support the socio-economic status of the household.

Genetic Evolution and Development of Recombinant Vaccine Against Newcastle Disease for Chicken in Pakistan

Newcastle disease (ND) is considered as a highly infectious disease of poultry worldwide. The commercial broiler industry is highly susceptible to virulent NDV, the data indicating heavy losses and documentary proof is available on NDV surveillance program. However, a little is known regarding the maintenance and enzootic trends of vNDV infection level in domestic and wild birds. Poor vaccination strategy as well as the existence of virulent form of NDV in the domestic birds indicates a root cause of the occurrence of disease eruption in the developing countries. Here, we report the eleven complete genome sequences of NDV from lovebird parrot (n=1) and exotic parakeets (n=3), backyard chickens (n=5), peacock (n=1) and pheasant (n=1). The complete genome lengths of all isolates were 15,192 nucleotides (nt) with same virulenceassociated cleavage site (112-RRQKRF-117) and selected ones have intracerebral pathogenicity index (ICPI) values ranging from 1.50 to 1.86, which is typical of vNDV. The deduced amino acid residues analyses have shown a number of substitution mutations in the functional domains of fusion and hemagglutinin-neuraminidase proteins. Phylogenetic analysis showed all NDV isolates belong to sub-genotypes VIIi within the genotype VII of class II. The isolation of highly similar viruses (98-99%) during 2011-16 provides the evidence of an epidemiological links between poultry, domestic and wild birds. Our results also support the existence of fifth panzootic as these viruses primarily isolated from South Asia, Middle East and Indonesia and recently spread into Eastern Europe. Active surveillance of these newly emerging viruses to determine their evolution is one of the most realistic strategies for preventing and controlling NDV outbreaks.