| MEH503 |
Climate and Environmental Change |
Adaptation strategies both at a global and localised level in mitigating health impacts of change. Debate on environmental change; Causation and mapping out indicators of change; explanation of recurrent extreme weather condition for example storms, droughts. International response. Impacts on health delivery especially in developing countries; Environmental justice within the context of the north-south debate. Micro-climatic changes and the localised impacts on plants, animals and aquatic ecosystem and food security; The carbon foot print; Impact of water scarcity; land and forest degradation; Appreciation of Climate Change Models |
| MEH509 |
Geographical Information Systems and remote sensing |
Introduction to GIS: Geographical data; Definition of GIS, Components and purpose of GIS. Conceptual models of geographical phenomena: Conceptual models of real world geographical phenomena, Entities and Fields; Models for representing spatial data; Raster spatial data model; Vector spatial data model. Coordinate Systems and Projections: Coordinate systems & Map projections, Coordinate transformation. Spatial data sources, geo-referencing & spatial data capture: Primary and secondary data sources; Geo-referencing; Spatial data input; digitizing and data manipulation. Global Positioning Systems (GPS): Theory of GPS, Applications of GPS. Database Management Systems (DBMS): Database design, Query design. Spatial data analysis: Operators; Spatial data query; Neighborhood analysis; Overlay analysis. GIS project: Designing and implementing a GIS project. Introduction to remote sensing: Definition of remote sensing; The Remote sensing system. The electromagnetic spectrum (EM): EM interaction with Earth Surface Materials; EM interaction with vegetation, EM interaction with Soil, EM interaction with Water. Image acquisition and image structure: Image structure, Image visualization. Sources and correction of radiometric and geometric distortion: Sources and correction of radiometric distortion, Sources and correction of geometric distortion. Spatial image enhancement: Image filtering. Supervised Image Classification Techniques: Steps in supervised classification, Parallel Piped classification, Minimum distance to mean classification, Maximum likelihood classification. Unsupervised Image Classification Techniques: Steps in unsupervised classification, Basic clustering algorithm. Multispectral transformations of image data: Band ratios, Vegetation indices. Applications of remote sensing: Applications in vegetation monitoring, Applications in water resources and environmental management; Remote Sensing based Water Quality Monitoring and Management; Nutrient mapping for lakes and rivers; Applications of RS in water quality monitoring (Using TOA reflectance and radiance); Applications of RS in pollution control (Using calculated indexes). |
| MEH501 |
Occupational Health and Safety |
: Occupational ergonomics:anthropometry, working postures, task analysis, manual materials handling, lifting equations, and environmental factors. Upon completion, students should be able to recognize ergonomic problems and recommend appropriate control measures.Occupational Safety: Accident investigation, Workers Compensation, record keeping, training, machine guarding, facilities, personal protection and fire protection. Workplace psychology: Psychosocial epidemiology. Work based study of sources of stress. Measurement of occupational stress. Application of moderator variables and coping strategies. |
| MEH506 |
Project Planning Monitoring and evaluation |
Purpose, benefits, Key concepts of planning, monitoring, evaluation and reporting. Integrating monitoring and evaluation, reporting into planning and designing project cycle. Use of Logical framework approach in project planning. Developing result based monitoring and evaluation framework. Different stages and types of evaluation. Basic knowledge of collecting data, analyzing techniques and their relationship to the different types of evaluation. |
| MEH508 |
Principles of Epidemiology and modelling |
Basic epidemiological concepts, mathematical modelling, model building, mathematical modelling in public health, epidemiological modelling, simple deterministic models, intervention models, modelling of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, Model validation, simple stochastic models, data collection and basic statistical treatment of data, Geographical information systems in epidemiology, remote sensing. |
| MEH505 |
Environmental Health Aspects of Food and Technology |
Biological, chemical and physical contaminants that cause ill-health, or infringe on consumer rights. Technology of food production and packaging. Examination of food commodities for quality and safety. Good Hygiene Practice and Good Manufacturing Practice for quality control. Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP) and the application of a food safety management system; quality assurance as a business’ response to food safety risk. Legislation pertaining to food safety and food standards (codex alimentarius). Multi-disciplinary approach in control of food-borne illnesses. |
| MEH504 |
Communicable and Non-communicable diseases |
Communicable diseases epidemiology and comparisons and evaluations of disease burden between different countries. Critical evaluation of main diseases spread by poor sanitation and contamination of drinking water like cholera. A critical evaluation of the major vector borne diseases including Malaria, Dengue Haemorrhagic Fever (DHF) and Ebola. Impact of pneumonia on health of children in developing countries. Global spread of HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis (TB) and their impacts on human population. The WHO neglected tropical disease strategy. Case studies of control/mitigation of the above diseases. Migration and urbanisation impacts on disease prevalence; Zoonoses; Health protection with emphasis on disease control as well as protection from environmental hazards. Emergency preparedness and response planning. This course will address the health transition from communicable to non-communicable diseases occurring in developing countries including Zimbabwe and the subsequent “double burden” of disease. Understanding the disease burden of major non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and chronic lung disease and their risk factors such as diet, exercise, tobacco, alcohol and other environmental exposures such as pesticides and air pollutants which are responsible for considerable morbidity and premature mortality globally and locally. The course aims to provide students with the ability to critically evaluate evidence for causation and the (cost)-effectiveness of NCD control in populations. The strengths, weaknesses and challenges of different population approaches to NCD prevention and control will be assessed. |
| MEH510 |
Environmental health systems management |
Health leadership, partnership working, change management and performance management. The nature of governance and the legal system in Zimbabwe. Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) and asset based mapping, Health Impact Assessments. Health and wellbeing commissioning. Health inequalities within and between countries. Policy and strategy development in health. Interventions, programmes and services to improve health. Evaluation and monitoring of health interventions like Water, Sanitation and Health. Current developments in health research, policy and practice and intervention strategies, risk assessment, health impact assessment and social impact assessment. |
| MEH570 |
Dissertation |
This module seeks to consolidate and enable students to practically apply research techniques they would have learnt throughout the course. This module allows students to demonstrate different research skills such as: writing styles and skills (grammatical errors, formats and logical writing), individual approach to a research project (originality and ability to identify viable research questions), usage and critique of literature to justify necessity of proposed research, identification and recruitment of data sources, data collection tools and techniques including consideration of research ethics, analytic skills and interpretation of data, time management and responsibility. |
