Urological Emergencies at the University Hospital of Brazzaville: Epidemiological, Clinical, and Therapeutic Aspects

Introduction: Urological emergencies play a significant role in the medical and surgical activity of a urology department. The objective of this study was to determine the hospital prevalence of urological emergencies at the University Hospital of Brazzaville (CHUB), identify the different pathologies requiring urgent care, and list the various therapeutic methods. Patients and methods: A retrospective study of patients admitted to the medical and surgical emergencies department of CHUB over a 5-year period. Patient records admitted and treated for a urological emergency were included. The variables studied were the frequency of urological emergencies, patient age at admission, gender, nature of the emergency, and various therapeutic options. Results: Urological emergencies accounted for 4.3% of all medical and surgical emergencies. The mean age was 57 ± 28 years with a range of 3 to 93 years. The male-to-female ratio was 7.1. The most common conditions were urinary retention (54.67%), hematuria (17.20%), and renal colic (8.13%). Therapeutically, surgical urinary drainage was dominated by cystostomy. Conclusion: Urological emergencies are infrequent at the University Hospital of Brazzaville. Their management is often delayed.

A Game-Theoretic Approach to Safe Crowd Evacuation in Emergencies

Obstacle removal in crowd evacuation is critical to safety and the evacuation system efficiency. Recently, manyresearchers proposed game theoreticmodels to avoid and remove obstacles for crowd evacuation. Game theoreticalmodels aim to study and analyze the strategic behaviors of individuals within a crowd and their interactionsduring the evacuation. Game theoretical models have some limitations in the context of crowd evacuation. Thesemodels consider a group of individuals as homogeneous objects with the same goals, involve complex mathematicalformulation, and cannot model real-world scenarios such as panic, environmental information, crowds that movedynamically, etc. The proposed work presents a game theoretic model integrating an agent-based model to removethe obstacles from exits. The proposed model considered the parameters named: (1) obstacle size, length, andwidth, (2) removal time, (3) evacuation time, (4) crowd density, (5) obstacle identification, and (6) route selection.The proposed work conducts various experiments considering different conditions, such as obstacle types, obstacleremoval, and several obstacles. Evaluation results show the proposed model’s effectiveness compared with existingliterature in reducing the overall evacuation time, cell selection, and obstacle removal. The study is potentially usefulfor public safety situations such as emergency evacuations during disasters and calamities.

REDISSE in Benin and Lessons Learned for the Management of Public Health Emergencies after Five Years of Implementation

Introduction: Benin was embarked on phase 3 of the REDISSE Benin project (Regional Disease Surveillance Systems Enhancement) which began in 2018. The objectives were in five key components namely, Surveillance and health information;Laboratory capacity building;Emergency preparedness and response;Human resources management for effective disease surveillance and epidemic preparedness;and Institutional Capacity Building, Project Management, Coordination and Advocacy. After five years of implementation, this study aimed at the documentation of lessons learned and best practices. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study. Apart from individual semi-structured interviews, a thematic workshops bringing together the project’s main stakeholders recruited on an exhaustive way by component to identify and validate lessons learned, good practices and propose improvement mechanisms to be taken into account by the sector. Criteria were set up and used to validate best practices and lessons learned. Results: A total 54 (Surveillance workshop), 47 (Preparedness & response workshop), 53 (Human Resources workshop), 26 (Laboratories workshop) participated to the thematic workshops, and five interviews. The good practices (33: 9 for animal health, 7 for human health and 17 crosscutting) and lessons learned (10: 3 for animal health and 7 for human health) have been identified and have been the subject, depending on the case, of proposals for improvement or conditions necessary for their maintenance. Discussion: The richness of a project lies not only in the immediate achievement of its results, but also and above all, in its usefulness for similar interventions, whether in the local, regional, national or international context. It is in this context that the REDISSE project has set out to make public the various lessons learned and best practices from the implementation of its activities over a period of some five consecutive years.

Digestive Surgical Emergencies at the “Mother Child”Hospital Center Luxembourg in Mali

Digestive surgical emergencies concern all patients admitted urgently, for whom a decision for surgical intervention may be necessary within 24 hours. They are on guard duty day and night. To carry out this work, we set ourselves the objectives of: 1) Studying digestive surgical emergencies in the general surgery department of the “Mother Child” Le Luxembourg hospital in Bamako, Mali;2) Determine the frequency of digestive surgical emergencies, 3) Describe the clinical and therapeutic aspects, and 4) Analyze the results of treatment. From November 1, 2022 to October 31, 2023, the general surgery department of the “Mother Child” Luxembourg Hospital Center in Bamako, Mali, carried out 139 digestive surgical emergencies whose files were usable;75 men and 64 women, a sex ratio of 1.2. The 20 - 40 years old age group was the most represented, at 40.29%. The average age was 39 years;the extremes 16 years and 93 years with a standard deviation of 21.65 years. The reference concerned 51.08% of our patients. Abdominal pain was the main reason for consultation (100% of cases). In the majority of cases, the physical examination made it possible to make the diagnosis. Faced with certain clinical cases, we requested ultrasound (109/139), ASP (46/139) and CT (15/139). The main etiology was acute appendicitis with 42.45% of cases. The frequency of digestive surgical emergencies was 10.71% of all activities in the general surgery department of the “Mère Enfant” Le Luxembourg hospital center in Bamako. All our patients were seen in consultation by an anesthesiologist before entering the operating room. The surgical consequences were complicated in 11.51% of cases with 7.91% deaths. Surgical site infections accounted for 12.5% of postoperative complications. Eleven deaths were noted, representing 68.75% of complications and 7.91% of our sample. Acute peritonitis was the cause of death in 100% of cases. The average cost of care was 329,000 FCFA.

Obstetric Emergencies at the Kara University Hospital Maternity Ward: Sociodemographic, Etiological and Prognostic Aspects

Introduction: Obstetric emergencies are common throughout the world and more particularly in developing countries where they are responsible for high maternal-fetal mortality and morbidity. Objective: Study obstetric emergencies in the maternity ward of Kara University Hospital. Method: Retrospective and descriptive study from April 1, 2022 to March 30, 2023, carried out in the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department of Kara University Hospital. Results: Eight hundred and thirty-five (835) obstetric emergencies were recorded out of 2215 admissions, i.e. a frequency of 37.7%. The average age of the patients was 26.7 with a range of 14 and 45 years. They were primigravidas (36.7%) and nulliparous (38.7%), referred (84.7%) and came from rural areas (72%). Emergencies occurred in the 3rd trimester in 74.1% and in parturients (54.1%). Preeclampsia (27%), cessation of progression of labor due to feto-pelvic disproportion (12.4%), postpartum hemorrhage (7.5%) constituted the main obstetric emergencies. In 44.8%, the delivery was carried out vaginally. Magnesium sulfate was the most used drug, i.e. 30.1%;followed by antihypertensive medications in 28.1%. Blood transfusion was performed in 24.3%. The evolution was simple in 90.9%. The maternal fatality rate was 1.6%. The perinatal case fatality rate was 12.3%. Conclusion: Obstetric emergencies are common, dominated by preeclampsia, stopping progress of labor and postpartum hemorrhages. They are responsible for high morbidity and mortality.

Infectious ENT Emergencies: A One-Year Experience at the ENT Department of Mamou Regional Hospital

Introduction: ENT infectious emergencies encompass all infectious pathologies affecting the ear, nose, sinuses, throat, and neck. A good understanding of these emergencies is essential for organizing appropriate care. In Guinea, few studies have described ENT infectious pathologies in rural areas. Objective: To study ENT infectious emergencies in the Otorhinolaryngology department of the Mamou Regional Hospital. Materials and Methods: This is a retrospective and prospective descriptive study, conducted from August 1, 2021, to July 31, 2022. All patients admitted to the ENT department of the Mamou Regional Hospital for an infectious emergency were included. Results: Among the 1854 recorded consultations, 261 cases involved ENT infectious emergencies, representing a prevalence of 14.07%. The most represented age group was 0 to 10 years (31.03%), with a majority of female patients (59%) and a predominantly urban origin (81.61%). Students accounted for 32.18% of the cases. The main reasons for consultation were odynophagia/dysphagia (32.42%) and otalgia (22.94%). The primary etiologies were tonsillitis (28.73%) and otitis (27.20%). Treatments administered included probabilistic antibiotic therapy (38.80%), analgesics (32.03%), and corticosteroid therapy (10.47%). The outcome was favorable in 98.85% of cases, with only 0.38% lost to follow-up. Conclusion: The results of our study confirm the frequency of ENT infectious pathologies. Their management requires joint actions for population awareness, staff training, and services equipment, particularly in rural areas.

Sustainable Community Epidemic Prevention Countermeasures against Public Health Emergencies

How to deal with public health emergencies is an important issue related to the normal life of community residents. However, after the corresponding understanding, it is found that a series of unsustainable epidemic prevention factors have been exposed in the community in the COVID-19, such as blocked access to basic materials, unsafe living environment, and lack of social platforms. In view of these problems, based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the changes in the hierarchy of needs of residents during the epidemic were analyzed, and sustainable community epidemic prevention strategies were proposed from five aspects of material storage, safe environment, social platform, respect opportunity and self-worth realization, so as to provide effective reference for future response to public health emergencies.

The Place of Blood Transfusion in the Management of Obstetric Emergencies in the Gynaecology and Obstetrics Department of the Reference Health Center of Fana (Mali)

This is a prospective and descriptive study carried out at the gynecology and obstetrics department of the reference health center of Fana from 01 May 2019 to 30 November or 7 months. The main objective was to study the role of blood transfusion in the management of obstetric emergencies. During the study period we recorded 434 cases of obstetric emergencies of which 116 cases required an emergency blood transfusion or 26.73%. The most frequently found indications for blood transfusion are hemorrhages of the immediate postpartum 46.6% followed by severe malaria on pregnancy 27.6%. Blood remains the most prescribed and available Labile blood product in the department. Maternal prognosis was improved in 92.2%.

Study of the Management of Children with Major Sickle Cell Disease in Pediatric Emergencies at the Gabriel Toure University Hospital

Objective: To study the epidemiological, clinical and therapeutic aspects of sickle cell disease in children admitted to the pediatric emergency department of the Gabriel Toure University Hospital. Materials and methods: This was a prospective study over 12 months in sickle cell children aged 6 months to 15 years. Results: The frequency of sickle cell disease was 4.67% with 71.1% of SS form. The age range of 60 - 120 months predominated with 43.4% and the sex ratio 1.4. Vaso-occlusive crises (VOC) were the most frequent reason for consultation (50.6%) and osteoarticular pain was the main symptom followed by fever and pallor with respectively 67.5%, 60.2%, 39.8%. The pain subsided in less than 72 hours in 39.8% and hyper hydration was performed in 85.1% of patients. Analgesic treatment was given in 90.4%, antibiotic therapy in 51.8% and phenotyped red blood cells transfusion was performed in 36.1%. The average duration of treatment was 10 days. Conclusion: Vaso-occlusive crisis remains the main reason for consultation in sickle cell disease children at Gabriel Toure University Hospital. The management consisted, in addition to the correction of the triggering factors, of hyper hydration and the administration of analgesics and blood products.

Obstetrical Emergencies in Ouahigouya Regional Teaching Hospital (Burkina Faso) in the Context of Insecurity Linked to Armed Groups: A Comparative Study between Patients from Precarious Security Zones and Those from Safe Areas

Introduction: Insecurity can be an obstacle to access to emergency obstetric and newborn care, that is why we proposed to study obstetrical emergencies in Ouahigouya Regional Teaching Hospital, a referral hospital in a region plagued by insecurity linked to armed groups. Method: This was an analytical cross-sectional study with prospective data collection over a 4-month period, from June 10 to October 10, 2020. Patients from precarious security areas were compared to those from safer areas. The Chi squared and Fisher tests were used for comparison of variables. Results: Obstetric emergencies accounted for 38.62% of admissions, from which 25.59% came from precarious security zones. Age was similar in both comparison groups. However, patients from unsafe areas were more likely to reside in rural areas (p 0.001) and more likely to be in unpaid occupations (p 0.001). Prenatal visits were less frequent (p 0.01) and women were more often multigravidae (p 0.01) in the precarious security group of patients. Apart from the more frequent uterine rupture (p = 0.02) in the group from precarious security zones, diagnosed complications and maternal mortality were similar in the 2 groups, while perinatal mortality was higher in the group of patients from precarious security zones (p 0.01). Conclusion: The precarious security situation has negative consequences on maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality. Further studies are needed for better understanding of these consequences, and improvement of health system resilience strategies, to reduce related maternal and fetal morbidity and mortality.

Triage and Risk Concept: Application Proposal for Pre-Hospital Emergencies in a Psychiatric Ambulance in the City of Buenos Aires

The heterogeneity of clinical presentations in psychiatric emergencies creates difficulties in the response by interdisciplinary Mental Health teams. This is aggravated and difficult when the care is carried out on public roads or the patient’s home, that is, it is a pre-hospital context. Our Psychiatric Emergency Hospital, located in the City of Buenos Aires, provides pre-hospital care with a psychiatric ambulance, which is then referred to general hospitals or other health system providers. Not all effectors in the network have the same resources and, at the time of the emergency, the reasons for consultation such as the patient’s clinic are heterogeneous and require the greatest effectiveness in the intervention that is taken. The triage system is a resource that allows the systematization of approaches against the multiplicity of reasons for consultation and presentation of mental pathologies in the emergency room, in addition to providing greater effectiveness in interventions, homogeneity for the health system and consensus among the health effectors. Framed in the Mental Health Law, and especially in the concept of risk, a triage proposal was designed for pre-hospital interventions by the psychiatric ambulance dependent on Hospital Alvear and under current legal regulations with the aim of homogenizing care and referrals with the highest rate of effectiveness to provide quality interdisciplinary medicine.

An Analysis of the Evolution of Online Public Opinion on Public Health Emergencies by Combining CNN-BiLSTM + Attention and LDA

In this paper, the Foxconn epidemic event in Zhengzhou was taken as an example to analyze the evolution of online public opinion on public health emergencies. In order to improve the performance of online public opinion analysis, based on the life cycle theory and LDA theory, the emotional changes of Internet users in four stages of the Foxconn incident centered on the evolution of inscription were divided. The emotions of netizen speech at different stages are analyzed based on CNN-BiLSTM + Attention model, which uses Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to extract local features. Bi-directional Long Short-Term Memory (BiLSTM) is used to efficiently extract contextual semantic features and long distance dependencies, and then combined with attention mechanism to add emotional features. Finally, Softmax classifier realizes text emotion prediction. The experimental results show that: compared with TextCNN, BiLSTM, BiLSTM + Attenion, CNN-BiLSTM model, the emotion classification model has better effects in the accuracy rate, accuracy rate, recall rate and F value. By analyzing the emotional distribution and evolution trend of public opinion under “text topic”, the paper accurately deconstructs the development characteristics of public opinion in public health emergencies, in order to provide reference for relevant departments to deal with public opinion in public health emergencies. .

Peritonitis: Perioperative Care in Surgical Emergencies CHU Ignace Deen

Objective: Describe the perioperative management of peritonitis in surgical emergencies. Methodology: This was a prospective observational study of the descriptive type over a period of 12 months from January 01 to December 31, 2020 in the surgical emergency room at the CHU Ignace Deen. Included in the study were all patients admitted for peritonitis aged greater than or equal to 18 years. The parameters were epidemiological, clinical and anesthetic. Results: Of the 653 admissions to surgical emergencies in 2020, 185 cases presented with peritonitis, i.e. 29.3%. The average age was 38.6 ± 16.64 years with extremes of 18 and 90 years. The sex ratio was 1.89. The comorbidities were dominated by gastritis and hypertension, i.e. 22%. The patients were classified as ASA 3U (52.4%), ASA2 U (39.5%) and ASA 4 U (8.1%). Preoperative resuscitation was provided only with 100% saline. 25.5% of patients had received a blood transfusion. The response time was less than 48 hours, i.e. 77.6%. General anesthesia was performed for all patients. Ketamine was the most used IV hypnotic (56.3%) combined with 100% halothane. The curares used were suxamethonium at (81.6%), Atracurium (81.6%) and rocuronium at (18.3%). Fentanyl was the only morphine used. Senior anesthesia technicians provided anesthesia in (63.2%). Intraoperative incidents were dominated by hypotension, difficult intubation, cardiac arrest, respectively 10.3%, 8% and 0.5%. The immediate postoperative incidents were arterial hypotension, nausea and desaturation, respectively 52.9%, 80% and 32.4%. Mortality was 3.4%. Conclusion: The perioperative management of peritonitis in the emergency room must be as early as possible in order to reduce morbidity and mortality.

Urological Emergencies at Kara Teaching Hospital (Togo): Epidemiological, Clinical and Therapeutic Profile

Background: The urology department of the teaching hospital of Kara is the second urology department in Togo, after that of the teaching hospital Sylvanus Olympio, in Lomé the capital. It is a very young service, created less than 5 years ago. Urological emergencies were previously managed by general surgeons, for lack of urologists. The influx of patients with urological pathologies has increased with the arrival of urologists. The update on urological emergencies having been made in Lomé, we therefore wanted to take stock of urological emergencies at the teaching hospital of Kara. Objective: To describe the epidemiological, clinical, and therapeutic aspects of urological emergencies received at the teaching hospital of Kara. Patients and Methods: This was a descriptive study with retrospective data collection. The study took place in the urology department, and in the surgical emergency department of the teaching hospital of Kara, over a period of 18 months, from January 2021 to June 2022. The on-call medical team consisted of the intern in on-call medicine, and an on-call urologist, whom the intern called upon when he received a urological emergency. Pediatric urological emergencies were managed by the pediatric surgeon and were not considered in our study. The operating room register, the surgical emergency consultation register, the urology department consultation register, and the records of patients hospitalized in the urology department were used for data collection. The following parameters were studied: age, sex, type of urological emergency, and therapeutic management;epi info 7 software was used for data processing. Results: The average age of the patients was 52.5 ± 19.6 years with extremes ranging from 16 years to 102 years. Note that 57.7% of the patients were over 50 years old. The sex ratio was 8.9. Urinary retention was the most common urological emergency in 47.7% (52) of cases;follow-up of infectious pathologies in 30.2% (33) of cases. Among the patients who had been seen for urinary retention, 84.6% (44) of the cases had presented with acute urinary retention. Urethral catheterization was the type of care most received by patients, in 30.2% (33) of cases;follow-up of medical treatment in 27.5% (30) of cases. The most common etiology of urinary retention was prostate tumours, in 71.1% (37) of cases, followed by urethral stricture in 15.3% (8) of cases. We also found in our series, traumatic emergencies in 10% of cases;these were traumatic urethral injuries, traumatic injuries of external genitalia, traumatic injury of bladder, and traumatic injury of kidney in respectively: 4.5% (5);2.7% (3);1.8% (2);and 0.9% (1) of cases. Torsion of the spermatic cord was found in 2.7% (3) of cases. Conclusion: Urine retention is the most common urological emergency at Kara University Hospital. They are most often found in elderly males. Urethral catheterization was the most common type of care.

Obstetric Emergencies: Frequency, Socio-Demographic Aspects and Risk Factors at the Labe Regional Hospital Maternity Unit (Guinea)

Introduction: Obstetric emergencies are clinical situations of a serious nature, often dangerous, which develop unexpectedly, threatening the vital prognosis of the mother and/or foetus in the short term. The aim of this study was to contribute to a review of obstetric emergencies at the Labé Regional Hospital maternity unit. Methods: This was a prospective descriptive and analytical study conducted over a period of 6 months in the maternity unit of the Labé Regional Hospital. It concerned all patients admitted to the department for obstetric emergencies. Results: Obstetric emergencies accounted for 20% of obstetric admissions. The mean age of the patients was 25.12 ± 7.15 years, with extremes of 14 and 45 years. The patients were housewives (42.52%), 42.86% did not attend school and 77.41% were from urban areas. The poor were the most numerous (43.52%). The ambulance was the means of transport in only 9% of cases. Acute foetal distress, pre-eclampsia, bony dystocia and post-partum haemorrhage were the most common types of emergency in our series, with frequencies of 27.57%, 22.59%, 17.94% and 10.63% respectively. The risk factors identified were age, origin, gestational age and the state of the maternal pelvis. Conclusion: Obstetric emergencies are frequent in our study site and represent a major concern for patients, providers and the community alike. In order to reduce the frequency of obstetric emergencies, young girls should be enrolled in school, the legal age for marriage should be respected, quality antenatal care should be provided in basic health facilities, and proper planning and spacing of pregnancies should be implemented.

Public Sentiment Analysis of Social Security Emergencies Based on Feature Fusion Model of BERT and TextLevelGCN

At present, the emotion classification method of Weibo public opinions based on graph neural network cannot solve the polysemy problem well, and the scale of global graph with fixed weight is too large. This paper proposes a feature fusion network model Bert-TextLevelGCN based on BERT pre-training and improved TextGCN. On the one hand, Bert is introduced to obtain the initial vector input of graph neural network containing rich semantic features. On the other hand, the global graph connection window of traditional TextGCN is reduced to the text level, and the message propagation mechanism of global sharing is applied. Finally, the output vector of BERT and TextLevelGCN is fused by interpolation update method, and a more robust mapping of positive and negative sentiment classification of public opinion text of “Tangshan Barbecue Restaurant beating people” is obtained. In the context of the national anti-gang campaign, it is of great significance to accurately and efficiently analyze the emotional characteristics of public opinion in sudden social violence events with bad social impact, which is of great significance to improve the government’s public opinion warning and response ability to public opinion in sudden social security events. .

Epidemiological Aspect and Evaluation of the Management of Urologic Emergencies at the Urology Unit of Labe Regional Hospital

Aim: To contribute to improving the management of urological emergencies at Labé Regional Hospital. Patients and Method: This was a dynamic, descriptive study lasting six months from July 1 to December 31, 2017. Results: Urological emergencies represented 45.14% (n = 218) of all admissions to the urology unit. The mean age of our patients was 56.60 years with extremes of fifteen days and 93 years. The 71 - 80 age group was the most represented with 28.03% (n = 61) followed by 61 - 70 years with 24.31% (n = 53). Our patients’ activities were dominated by agriculture, with 35.77% (n = 88), and the city center was most affected by urological emergencies, with 39.44% of cases (n = 86). 70.18% (n = 153) of our patients had bladder retention on admission, and 53.21% (n = 116) underwent urethral catheterization, including 3 women. The etiology of bladder retention in these 3 women was dominated by two cases of bladder lithiasis and one case of neurological bladder. Conclusion: The management of urological emergencies requires specific material and human resources. Their knowledge will enable us to better understand this problem and could serve as a basis for a broad reflection on the organization of the management of urological emergencies in our region.

Analysis of CDC’s Role in Public Health Emergencies

Objective:To explore the role of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC)in public health emergencies.Methods:The details of 12 public health events that occurred between January 2021 to December 2022 were analyzed to explore the roles of the CDC.Results:There were 160 patients involved in 10 public health events in 2021 and 48 patients involved in 2 public health events in 2022.Besides,the proportion of school public health events in 2022 was 0%,which was lower than in 2021,which was 80%(P<0.05).99.38%of patients during public health events were sent to the hospital promptly in 2022,which was higher than that in 2021,which was 81.25%(P<0.05).Furthermore,the average time taken for the CDC to control public health events in 2022 was 20.11±1.62 hours,and the average time taken to send inspection reports was shorter than that in 2021.The public satisfaction score was also higher in 2022 compared to 2021(P<0.05).Conclusion:The role of the CDC is to control infectious diseases.Therefore,it is important to pinpoint the existing problems in the strategies implemented by the CDC so that more improvements can be made to better prevent infectious diseases.

Survey on the Status Quo of Emergency Response Capabilities of Public Health Emergencies in Grassroots Disease Control Institutions in a Certain Area

Objective:To survey and study the emergency response capabilities of grassroots disease control institutions in a certain area for public health emergencies,and to put forward suggestions for rectification.Methods:The study was carried out from March 2022 to March 2023.Field surveys,questionnaire surveys,and interviews were used to investigate and analyze the emergency response capabilities of public health emergencies in 5 county Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDCs)in the region.Results:Through the survey,it was found that the professional level of the existing emergency team personnel of the grassroots disease control institutions in this region needs to be improved.There was an overall lack of emergency plans,and the compliance rate of the equipment,inspection,and testing items was low.The health emergency system of the CDCs in the region and the ability of the talent team need to be further improved.Conclusion:The emergency response capacity of grassroots disease control institutions in this region needs to be improved.For this reason,government departments need to increase investment and strengthen the construction of talent teams and hardware settings,and grassroots disease control institutions need to strengthen the construction of the public health emergency system to improve the ability to respond to public health emergencies.

Multimodal sentiment analysis for social media contents during public emergencies

Purpose:Nowadays,public opinions during public emergencies involve not only textual contents but also contain images.However,the existing works mainly focus on textual contents and they do not provide a satisfactory accuracy of sentiment analysis,lacking the combination of multimodal contents.In this paper,we propose to combine texts and images generated in the social media to perform sentiment analysis.Design/methodology/approach:We propose a Deep Multimodal Fusion Model(DMFM),which combines textual and visual sentiment analysis.We first train word2vec model on a large-scale public emergency corpus to obtain semantic-rich word vectors as the input of textual sentiment analysis.BiLSTM is employed to generate encoded textual embeddings.To fully excavate visual information from images,a modified pretrained VGG16-based sentiment analysis network is used with the best-performed fine-tuning strategy.A multimodal fusion method is implemented to fuse textual and visual embeddings completely,producing predicted labels.Findings:We performed extensive experiments on Weibo and Twitter public emergency datasets,to evaluate the performance of our proposed model.Experimental results demonstrate that the DMFM provides higher accuracy compared with baseline models.The introduction of images can boost the performance of sentiment analysis during public emergencies.Research limitations:In the future,we will test our model in a wider dataset.We will also consider a better way to learn the multimodal fusion information.Practical implications:We build an efficient multimodal sentiment analysis model for the social media contents during public emergencies.Originality/value:We consider the images posted by online users during public emergencies on social platforms.The proposed method can present a novel scope for sentiment analysis during public emergencies and provide the decision support for the government when formulating policies in public emergencies.