Suchergebnisse

Responses to recover from the first wave of COVID-19 crisis created a divide globally partly as some countries interpreted the pandemic defiantly, aptly to rescue their tourism, among other sectors. A lasting tragedy of the pandemic impact continues to particularly frustrate global tourism mobility unless strategic consensus is found. The strategy that Tanzania adopted to restore tourism early amidst the pandemic is examined in this article. It draws from headlines, surveys, tourist arrival statistics and interviews with industry actors. Findings revealed that from 16th March 2020, Tanzania reported coronavirus infections and few associated COVID-19 deaths for nearly three months after the pandemic outbreak. Airspace and border closures from 20th March halted tourist arrivals resulting to business closures, unemployment and severe revenue loss. Reopening of international gateways from May 2020, through adopting standard operating procedures, reverted a sharp decline of arrivals experienced in April-May to a gradual increase of arrivals from June onwards. Despite the early reopening, the number of international tourist arrivals were far below the pre-crisis levels, implying that the country's efforts were hardly resolving the tourism post-pandemic recovery paradox. Consensus is vital in restarting and sustaining post-pandemic tourism. This article contributes to the geopolitics of COVID-19, tourism recovery and resilience in Tanzania and globally, calling for continued collaboration among national and international tourism actors to chart out a post-pandemic sustainable tourism recovery strategy, as a policy response.

Data quality assessment is central in improving program performance. Reducing TB pandemic transmission is challenging in the global south. The success of interventions to address the pandemic depends upon the availability of sound and reliable data. This study applied a mixed research design to investigate the influence of data quality assessment on the performance of TB reduction program. We interviewed staff of several facilities composed of Directly Observed Treatment (DOT) nurse in-charge, and TB coordinators, among others. We reviewed various TB-related documents and used key informant interviews and observation to collect data from selected health facilities. The findings indicated that the performance of the programs can be determined if the data reported meets the five data quality standards, and present accurately what is done at the facility level. Facilities with accurate, reliable and timely data enable the reduction of TB cases through informing adequate treatment to avoid spreading infection to the wider population unlike those with unreliable data. In this study, most of the health facilities data under-reported the number of TB cases, thus leading to poor program performance. We argue that, to improve program performance, data provided from different facilities should meet the five quality standards. The study recommends regular training of DOT nurses and improvement of monitoring and evaluation systems.