VIVA

There were two panels. Each student spent 15 minutes at each panel, with a question per
panel. A question or two would be asked concerning your research work. Try to say
”everything” you know about whatever you are asked while being meticulous with your
choice of words.
1. What are the aims of the UNICEF?
2. Tell us about the yellow card.
3. What nutritional deficiencies do you know? State how they are managed.
4. What is low birth weight? What are the causes? Why is it of public health importance?
5. What is the natural history of a disease?
6. What is multifactorial cause of a disease?
7. What is Intermittent Preventive Treatment of Malaria?
8. What are the ways of getting information on the nutritional consumption of a family.
9. What are the advantages of breasfeeding? What is the current national policy on
breastfeeding?
10. What is Infant mortality rate and what are the common causes?
11. What is a cohort study? Discuss its advantages and disadvantages.
12. What is environmental pollution? State the causes and for each, the diseases that
may arise.
13. Mention the major non-communicable diseases in Ghana. Compare epidemiological
differences between communicable and non-communicable diseases.
14. What is maternal mortality?
15. Tell us about hormonal contraceptives.
16. With regards to TB, differentiate between DOTS and DOTS plus.
17. What is DOTS; and what diseases use DOTS as treatment? What is the reason behind
DOTS??
18. What is primary health care? Mention the components of primary health care.
19. Mention the fat soluble vitamins. Mention food sources for each. What deficiencies
arise from deficiencies of each fat soluble vitamin?
20. Define surveillance. What are the types?
21. What is integrated pest control? List four insect pests of public health and hygiene
importance.
22. What do you understand by cold chain and its maintenance? What is vaccination?
What is immunization?
23. What are missed opportunities in terms of vaccination?
24. Talk about the water treatment process.
25. What are the qualities of good surveillance?
26. What are nosocomial infections and how can they be minimised?
27. Explain the term cause as used in disease causation. (The concept of agent,
environment and susceptible host could be used). With respect to the host, mention 3
 diseases and their causes. With reference to family history, how important is the host
in disease causation? Differentiate between the terms sufficient cause and necessary
cause of disease as used in disease causation.
28. Define a variable. What are the types. How can you determine which variable is
dependent and which is not in research? (From the research question.) What does a
“structured questionnaire” mean? With respect to the questionnaire, how does one
determine which questions to ask? (From the literature review is used)
29. What is antenatal care and what are the packages available?
30. What are the phases of prevention?
31. What is demographic transition?
32. Talk about family planning and combined pills.
33. What do you know about food supplementation and fortification?
34. Differetiate between a pandemic and an epidemic with examples. How do you
manage an epidemic as a district director? Tell us about cerebrospinal meningitis in
Ghana?
35. State the differences between retrospective and prospective studies. Give examples
of retrospective and prospective studies done in Ghana.
36. Define Census. Differentiate between De-jure and De-facto methods of census.
37. Differentiate distinctly between Incidence vs prevalence.
38. What is the daily dietary intake of iron? How is anemia controlled in pregnancy? What
is epidemiology?
39. What is PMTCT (Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission)? In what conditions is
this strategy used?
40. What is the DHIMS (District Health Information Management System)? What
variables can be derived from the DHIMS?
41. Discuss case control studies.
42. Explain the terms reliability and validity as applied to screening tests (Discussion
included specificity, sensitivity, positive and negative predictive values)
43. What is Primary Health Care? What are the components? Which components of the
PHC are not directly health related and how will you implement them as a District
Health Officer?
44. Mention the members of the DHMT. *What is the hierarchy of Health System at the
district level? *
45. What are the different modes of transmission of infectious diseases? What are the
levels of disease prevention?
46. Hypertension is rising in prevalence. How can you tackle issues of medication
adherence as the district health officer?
47. Differentiate between the terms quarantine and isolation.
48. What are the measures of central tendency and measures of spread?
49. What does weaning mean? Prepare a meal for a child under 2 years.
50. What are the sampling meth0ds?
51. Differentiate between perinatal mortality rate, neonatal mortality rate and under 5
mortality rate.
52. What programs are there to help control under 5-years mortality in Ghana?
53. Tell us about the epidemiology of Malaria.
54. What is routine data? What are its uses?
55. Which STDs are of public heath importance?
56. What is water sampling? What are the parameters used to determine the quality of
water? What does the presence of Coliforms in water indicate?
57. What are vital statistics? Give examples. List some of the vital statistics used in health.
(maternal mortality rate, infant morality rate, <5-years mortality rate, etc). Define
Maternal Mortality and Maternal Mortality rate