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The aim of the SATG was to produce a triage scale for use throughout South Africa. The group was multi-disciplinary and comprised doctors, nurses a
...
nd paramedics. The result of the SATG’s activities is the South African Triage Scale (SATS), a physiology and symptom based scale which prioritises into one of four colours and can be used in hospital Emergency Centres as well as in the pre-hospital setting. The SATS has been validated in the public, private health care setting as well as pre-hospital.
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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0002439
South Sudan has a high burden – among the highest in sub-Saharan Africa – of neglected tropical
...
diseases (NTDs). This adversely affects the health and social and economic well-being of people in the country. The prevention, control and eventual elimination of many NTDs depend heavily on improved access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and, once there is access, on sound sanitation and hygiene practices. This is especially the case in NTD endemic communities.
more
21 May 2021. he Practical Approach to Care Kit – PACK – is used by nurses, doctors and community health workers in their everyday work to care for patients at the clinic and in the community – PACK Adult, PACK Adolescent, PACK Child and PACK C
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ommunity.
PACK Adult is also known as APC (Adult Primary Care) outside of the Western Cape. Both form part of the the Ideal Clinic initiative: www.idealhealthfacility.org.za
PACK Home is designed for people seeking more information about how to care for their own health and the health of their family at home.
Available in English, Afrikaans and isiXhosa
more
For the primary health worker in a low/middle-income country (LMIC) setting, delivering quality primary care is challenging. This is often complicated by clinical guidance that is out of date, incon
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sistent and informed by evidence from high-income countries that ignores LMIC resource constraints and burden of disease. The Knowledge Translation Unit (KTU) of the University of Cape Town Lung Institute has developed, implemented and evaluated a health systems intervention in South Africa, and localised it to Botswana, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Brazil, that simplifies and standardises the care delivered by primary health workers while strengthening the system in which they work. At the core of this intervention, called Practical Approach to Care Kit (PACK), is a clinical decision support tool, the PACK guide. This paper describes the development of the guide over an 18-year period and explains the design features that have addressed what the patient, the clinician and the health system need from clinical guidance, and have made it, in the words of a South African primary care nurse, ‘A tool for every day for every patient’. It describes the lessons learnt during the development process that the KTU now applies to further development, maintenance and in-country localisation of the guide: develop clinical decision support in context first, involve local stakeholders in all stages, leverage others’ evidence databases to remain up to date and ensure content development, updating and localisation articulate with implementation.
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PNAS 119 (8) e2113947119 | https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2113947119
Environmental exposure to active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) can have negative effects on the health of ecosystems and huma
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ns. While numerous studies have monitored APIs in rivers, these employ different analytical methods, measure different APIs, and have ignored many of the countries of the world. This makes it difficult to quantify the scale of the problem from a global perspective. Furthermore, comparison of the existing data, generated for different studies/regions/continents, is challenging due to the vast differences between the analytical methodologies employed. Here, we present a global-scale study of API pollution in 258 of the world’s rivers, representing the environmental influence of 471.4 million people across 137 geographic regions. Samples were obtained from 1,052 locations in 104 countries (representing all continents and 36 countries not previously studied for API contamination) and analyzed for 61 APIs. Highest cumulative API concentrations were observed in sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia, and South America. The most contaminated sites were in low- to middle-income countries and were associated with areas with poor wastewater and waste management infrastructure and pharmaceutical manufacturing. The most frequently detected APIs were carbamazepine, metformin, and caffeine (a compound also arising from lifestyle use), which were detected at over half of the sites monitored. Concentrations of at least one API at 25.7% of the sampling sites were greater than concentrations considered safe for aquatic organisms, or which are of concern in terms of selection for antimicrobial resistance. Therefore, pharmaceutical pollution poses a global threat to environmental and human health, as well as to delivery of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
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Internationally, there is a growing concern over antimicro-bial resistance (AMR) which is currently estimated to ac-count for more than 700,000 deaths per year worldwide. If no appropriate measures are taken to halt its pro-gress, AMR will cost approximately 10 million lives andabout US$100 trillion
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per year by 2050. In contrast tosome other health issues, AMR is a problem that con-cerns every country irrespective of its level of incomeand development as resistant pathogens do not respect borders.Despite the threat presented by AMR, the 2014 WorldHealth Organization (WHO) and the recent O’Neill re-port describe significant gaps in surveillance, standardmethodologies and data sharing. The 2014 WHOreport identified Africa and South East Asia as the regions without established AMR surveillance systems.
Tadesseet al. BMC Infectious Diseases (2017) 17:616 DOI 10.1186/s12879-017-2713-1
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Improving Infection Prevention and Control Practices at Health Facilities in Resource-Limited Settings
recommended
SIAPS Technical Report. This report summarizes key accomplishments and lessons learned in implementing SIAPS’ approach to improving IPC practices in four countries: South Africa, Namibia, Jordan,
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and Ethiopia. All activities address SIAPS’s overall objective to build or enhance national and facility capacity to develop, implement, and monitor IPC programs by focusing on the principles of health systems strengthening.
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Gambiense human African trypanosomiasis is a deadly infectious disease affecting West and Central Africa, South Sudan and Uganda, and transmitted between humans by tsetse flies. The disease has caus
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ed several major epidemics, the latest one in the 1990s. Thanks to recent innovations such as rapid diagnostic tests for population screening, a single-dose oral treatment and a highly efficient vector control strategy, interruption of transmission of the causative parasite is now within reach. If indeed gHAT has an exclusively human reservoir, this could even result in eradication of the disease. Even if there were an animal reservoir, on the basis of epidemiological data, it plays a limited role. Maintaining adequate postelimination surveillance in known historic foci, using the newly developed tools, should be sufficient to prevent any future resurgence.
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Health and Socio-Economic Impacts of Physical Distancing for Covid-19 in Africa
Barasa, E.; et al.
KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme and African Academy of Sciences
(2020)
CC
Physical distancing measures are important to reduce COVID-19 transmission. However, when stringently applied, they can result in negative health and socio-economic impacts. This report draws on a rapid review
...
of available literature, case studies from across Africa and expert knowledge to make recommendations on adapting classic physical distancing measures to the contextual realities in Africa and on mitigating potential negative impacts.
more
The burden of severe asthma in sub-Saharan Africa: Findings from the African Severe Asthma Project
Kirenga, B.J.; Chakaya, J.; Yimer, G. et al.
Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: Global
(2024)
CC
Severe asthma is associated with high morbidity, mortality, and health care utilization, but its burden in Africa is unknown. This article wants to determine the burden (prevalence,
mortality, and
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activity and work impairment) of severe asthma in 3 countries in East Africa: Uganda, Kenya, and Ethiopia using the American Thoracic Society/European Respiratory Society case definition of severe asthma.
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Report of the WHO/Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Consultation. The Consultation was organized back-to-back with the first annual meeting of the International Coordinating Group
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of the BMGF-funded project for human and dog rabies elimination in developing countries, held at WHO headquarters, Geneva, Switzerland, from 5 to 7 October 2009. This allowed the Consultation to benefit from the participation of the national coordinators and advisers of the BMGF-funded projects in the Philippines, South Africa (KwaZulu-Natal) and the United Republic of Tanzania
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Health and Socio-Economic Impacts of Physical Distancing for Covid-19 in Africa. Policy Brief
Barasa, E.; et al.
KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme and African Academy of Sciences
(2020)
CC
Physical distancing measures are important to reduce COVID-19 transmission. However, when stringently applied, they can result in negative health and socio-economic impacts. This report draws on a rapid review
...
of available literature, case studies from across Africa and expert knowledge to make recommendations on adapting classic physical distancing measures to the contextual realities in Africa and on mitigating potential negative impacts.
more
Integrating Clinical Research into Epidemic Response: The Ebola Experience
Gerald Keusch, Keith McAdam, Patricia Cuff, Michelle Mancher, and Emily R. Busta
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
(2017)
C1
The 2014–2015 Ebola epidemic in western Africa was the longest and most deadly Ebola epidemic in history, resulting in 28,616 cases and 11,310 deaths in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. The Ebola virus has been known since 1976, when two separat
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e outbreaks were identified in the Democratic Republic of Congo (then Zaire) and South Sudan (then Sudan). However, because all Ebola outbreaks prior to that in West Africa in 2014–2015 were relatively isolated and of short duration, little was known about how to best manage patients to improve survival, and there were no approved therapeutics or vaccines. When the World Heath Organization declared the 2014-2015 epidemic a public health emergency of international concern in August 2014, several teams began conducting formal clinical trials in the Ebola affected countries during the outbreak.
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Guidelines for Diagnosing and Managing Disseminated Histoplasmosis among People Living with HIV
recommended
Histoplasmosis is a disease caused by the fungus Histoplasma capsulatum. This disease is highly endemic in some regions of North America, Central America, and South America and is also reported in c
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ertain countries of Asia and Africa. It often affects people with impaired immunity, including people living with HIV, among whom the most frequent clinical presentation is disseminated histoplasmosis. The symptoms of disseminated histoplasmosis are non-specific and may be indistinguishable from those of other infectious diseases, especially disseminated tuberculosis (TB), thus complicating diagnosis and treatment. Histoplasmosis is one of the most frequent opportunistic infections caused by fungal pathogens among people living with HIV in the Americas and may be responsible for 5–15% of AIDS-related deaths every year in this Region. These guidelines aim to provide recommendations for the diagnosis, treatment, and management of disseminated histoplasmosis in persons living with HIV
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This report was developed by the WHO TB Vaccine Accelerator Finance and Access working group, co-led by WHO, Gavi and the Government of South Africa
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. It sets out the working group’s shared vision for equitable access to novel TB vaccines and will advance a shared understanding of the current landscape and its possible evolution in the future. It identifies six urgently needed solutions to accelerate access and financing and highlights the roles of different stakeholders to support the implementation of these solutions.
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WHO today released its first roadmap to tackle postpartum haemorrhage (PPH) – defined as excessive bleeding after childbirth - which affects millions of women annually and is the world’s leading cause
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of maternal deaths.
Despite being preventable and treatable, PPH results in around 70 000 deaths every year. For those who survive, it can cause disabilities and psychological trauma that last for years.
“Severe bleeding in childbirth is one of the most common causes of maternal mortality, yet it is highly preventable and treatable,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “This new roadmap charts a path forward to a world in which more women have a safe birth and a healthy future with their families.”
The Roadmap aims to help countries address stark differences in survival outcomes from PPH, which reflect major inequities in access to essential health services. Over 85% of deaths from PPH happen in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Risk factors include anaemia, placental abnormalities, and other complications in pregnancy such as infections and pre-eclampsia.
Many risk factors can be managed if there is quality antenatal care, including access to ultrasound, alongside effective monitoring in the hours after birth. If bleeding starts, it also needs to be detected and treated extremely quickly. Too often, however, health facilities lack necessary healthcare workers or resources, including lifesaving commodities such as oxytocin, tranexamic acid or blood for transfusions.
“Addressing postpartum haemorrhage needs a multipronged approach focusing on both prevention and response - preventing risk factors and providing immediate access to treatments when needed - alongside broader efforts to strengthen women’s rights,” said Dr Pascale Allotey, WHO Director for Sexual and Reproductive Health and HRP, the UN’s special programme on research development and training in human reproduction. “Every woman, no matter where she lives, should have access to timely, high quality maternity care, with trained health workers, essential equipment and shelves stocked with appropriate and effective commodities – this is crucial for treating postpartum bleeding and reducing maternal deaths.”
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Accessed 7 July 2015
