Infectious Diseases of Poverty (2020) 9:74
To detect acute schistosomiasis, low-intensity infections, or to verify the success of treatment with
praziquantel, highly sensitive test methods are required. The aim of this study was therefore to demonstrate the
performance of Schistosoma mansoni spec...ific DNA detection in serum and urine using real-time polymerase chain
reaction (PCR) in an endemic area before and after treatment.
more
PLoS ONE 13(8): e0202499. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0202499
This was a school-based cross-sectional study conducted in 2015 among 305 school children aged 7–16 years from two primary schools located in Ilemela and Magu Districts, north-western Tanzania. Single stool and urine samples w...ere collected from each participant and examined for the presence of Schistosoma mansoni eggs, parasite antigen, and parasite DNA using KK thick smears, POC-CCA tests, and real-time PCR, respectively.
more
Spiritual care has formed an integral part of palliative care since its inception. People with advanced illnesses, however, frequently report that their spiritual needs are not attended to by their medical care team. The present study examines and describes the impact of a spiritual care training pr...ogram on practice and cultural change in our Canadian hospice.
more
In reviewing State Parties report on the implementation of the Charter, the Committee has identified children on the move as an emerging child protection issue in African, and therefore commissioned a study in view of making recommendations to tackle the problem in Member States. The Committee obse...rved that there were challenges with regard to upholding the rights and welfare of children on the move and that there are gaps on the type of protection measures and treatment that is be accorded to such children within our beloved Continent.
The study presents key drivers of the children on the move, migration routes, challenges faced by children on the move, policy and institutionalized content protecting children on the move and finally the way forward.
more
High levels of storage iron may increase malaria susceptibility. This risk has not been investigated in semi-immune adolescents. We investigated whether baseline iron status of nonpregnant adolescent girls living in a high malaria transmission area in Burkina Faso affected malaria risk during the fo...llowing rainy season. For this prospective study, we analysed data from an interim safety survey, conducted six months into a randomised iron supplementation trial. We used logistic regression to model the risk of P. falciparum infection prevalence by microscopy, the pre-specified interim safety outcome, in relation to iron status, nutritional indicators and menarche assessed at recruitment.
more
The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent public health guidance to reduce the spread of the diseasehave wide-reaching implications for children’s health and wellbeing. Furthermore, paediatric emergency departments(EDs) have rapidly adapted provision of care in response to the pandemic. This qualitativ...e study utilized insight frommultidisciplinary frontline staff to understand the changes in paediatric emergency healthcare utilization duringCOVID-19 the experiences of working within the restructured health system.
more
COVID-19 infection affects all age groups including newborns, however, literature is scarce on the fetal and neonatal outcomes of babies exposed in-utero, especially in Africa. The objectiveof this study was to document the perinatal outcomes of COVID-19 pregnancies and del...iveries that occurredduring the pandemic in Nigeria.
more
Health is routinely considered in strategic environmental assessment (SEA) and environmental impact assessment (EIA), following requirements of European Union directives and the Protocol on Strategic Environmental Assessment to the Convention on Environmental Impact Assessment in a Trans...boundary Context (Espoo Convention). Policy-makers and other sources report that these assessments mostly adopt a biophysical perspective and that few cases consider or define health in a manner which is consistent with the WHO Constitution, by considering the wider social, economic, behavioural and institutional aspects of health. This systematically conducted review of over 333 SEA and EIA cases in the WHO European Region shows that while about 80% of assessments pursue a narrow, biophysical interpretation of health, around 10% consider wider determinants when defining health, and another 10% consider wider determinants of health in the actual assessment. Twelve case studies are presented, literature is reviewed and implications for practice are considered.
more
A manual for impact assessments. The SCH Practical and Precision Assessment (SPPA) strategy is an evidence-based approach for conducting impact assessments for SCH. The SPPA was identified by programme managers and SCH experts from the African region as a feasible and sufficiently accurate approach ...after reviewing and discussing the results of a multi-country study. This manual describes the resulting Practical and Precision Assessments approach and includes a discussion of the underlying concepts, factors to consider when determining what approach is appropriate, and how to interpret the collected data. The manual also includes annexes with standard operating procedures for conducting the stool and urine analyses.
more
For humanitarian organisations to respond effectively to complex crises, they require access to up-to-date evidence-based guidance. The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the importance of updating global guidance to context-specific and evolving needs in humanitarian settings. Our study aimed to under...stand the use of evidence-based guidance in humanitarian responses during COVID-19. Primary data collected during the rapidly evolving pandemic sheds new light on evidence-use processes in humanitarian response.
more
Health needs of displaced Syrians in refugee hosting countries have become increasingly complex in light of the protracted Syrian conflict. The primary aim of this study was to identify the primary health needs of displaced Syrians in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and Syria.
During the COVID-19 health crisis, community pharmacists had an enhanced role in supporting health-care systems that were overburdened by managing seriously ill patients. This study was undertaken to determine the patterns of community supply of antiviral and antibacterial agents from community phar...macies during the COVID-19 pandemic in selected countries in eastern Europe and central Asia. Nine countries – Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, North Macedonia, the Russian Federation, Serbia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan – participated in this cross-sectional study.
more
WHO has published the first-ever guidance on the clinical management of diphtheria. The only previously available guidance was an operational protocol. The new guidance followed the rigorous process for developing guidance at WHO.
It addresses the use of Diphtheria Antitoxin (DAT) in the treatmen...t of diphtheria. There is a worldwide shortage of DAT and evidence based recommendations on the use of DAT were requested by many Member States.
The guidance also includes new recommendations on antibiotics. In patients with suspected or confirmed diphtheria, WHO recommends using macrolide antibiotics (azithromycin, erythromycin) rather than penicillin antibiotics.
This clinical practice guideline has been rapidly developed recognizing the global increase in diphtheria outbreaks. Outbreaks of diphtheria in Nigeria, Guinea and neighbouring countries in 2023 have highlighted the urgent need for evidence-based clinical practice guidelines for the treatment of diphtheria. Given the sporadic nature of outbreaks, many clinicians in the affected regions have never managed acute diphtheria and its related complications. Diphtheria remains a neglected disease and vaccination is the top priority. At the same time, for patients with diphtheria, access to antibiotics, DAT and supportive care can be lifesaving.
more
Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease 2017, 2(4), 50
This is a cross-sectional analysis of baseline data in a longitudinal study on asymptomatic, LF antigen-positive and -negative young people in Myanmar. Rapid field screening was used to identify antigen-positive cases and a group of antige...n-negative controls of similar age and gender were invited to continue in the study. ... Results demonstrate that sub-clinical changes associated with infection can be detected in asymptomatic cases. Further exploration of these low-cost devices in clinical and research settings on filariasis-related lymphedema are warranted.
https://doi.org/10.3390/tropicalmed2040050
more
The full range and scale of all forms of violence against children are only now becoming visible, as is the evidence of the harm it does. This book documents the outcomes and recommendations of the process of the United Nations Secretary-General’s Study on Violence against Children. ‘The Study... is the first comprehensive, global study on all forms of violence against children.
It builds on the model of the study on the impact of armed conflict on children, prepared by Graça Machel and presented to the General Assembly in 1996, and follows the World Health Organization’s 2002 World Report on Violence and Health.1
more
Bull World Health Organ 2018;96:450–461 | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.2471/BLT.17.206466
The aim of our study was to determine whether an intervention designed
to involve the male partners of pregnant women in Burkina Faso in facility-based maternity care influences care-seeking and healthy practi...ces after childbirth.
more
The Mapping Antimicrobial Resistance and Antimicrobial Use Partnership (MAAP) project has conducted a multi-year, multi-country study that provides stark insights on the under-reported depth of the antimicrobial resistance (AMR) crisis across Africa and lays out urgent policy recommendations to addr...ess the emergency.
MAAP reviewed 819,584 AMR records from 2016-2019, from 205 laboratories across Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Eswatini, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. MAAP also reviewed data from 327 hospital and community pharmacies and 16 national-level AMC datasets.
more
Background: COVID-19 is a global public health crisis that affects all sectors; studying the impact of this pandemic on the delivery of cardiology services in Africa is crucial as COVID-19-related cardiovascular complications may worsen the CVD burden in this already highly affected and resource-lim...ited continent
Methods: This was a cross-sectional e-survey study conducted amongst cardiologists in African countries. The primary outcome was the change in service delivery in African cardiology units during the on-going COVID-19 pandemic. The secondary outcomes were the satisfaction of cardiologists with regards to the workload and factors associated with this satisfaction.
Results: There was a significant reduction in working time and the number of patients consulted by week during this pandemic (p<0.001). In general, there was a decrease in the overall activities in cardiovascular care delivery. The majority of cardiology services (76.5%) and consulting programs (85%) were adjusted to the pandemic. Only half of the participants were satisfied with their workload. Reconfiguration of the consultation schedule was associated with a reduced satisfaction of participants (p=0.02).
Conclusions: COVID-19 is associated with an overall reduction in cardiology services rendered in Africa. Since the cardiovascular burdens continue to increase in this part of the World and the risk of cardiovascular complications linked to SARS COV2 remains unchanged cardiology, departments in Africa should anticipate a significant surge of cardiology services demanded by patients after the COVID-19 pandemic.
more
The Mapping Antimicrobial Resistance and Antimicrobial Use Partnership (MAAP) project has conducted a multi-year, multi-country study that provides stark insights on the under-reported depth of the antimicrobial resistance (AMR) crisis across Africa and lays out urgent policy recommendations to addr...ess the emergency.
MAAP reviewed 819,584 AMR records from 2016-2019, from 205 laboratories across Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Eswatini, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. MAAP also reviewed data from 327 hospital and community pharmacies and 16 national-level AMC datasets.
more
Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are a growing public health problem in Ghana and other African countries. Strokes and other CVDs have become a leading cause of death due to increasing risk factors such as hypertension. According to the Global Burden of Disease study (GBD), ischaemic heart disease was... the fourth leading cause of death in Ghana in 2016. The prevalence of hyper-
tension, a major risk factor for CVDs, is increasing rapidly and ranges from 19% to 48%, according to the Ghana Health Service Annual Report, 2017, due to rising life expectancy and the increasing prevalence of contributing factors such as overweight/obesity. Early diagnosis and adequate management of the risk factors can reduce the fatal consequences of CVDs.
At the heart of improving risk assessment and management of CVDs are nationally approved guidelines, which facilitate standardisation of care approaches.
These guidelines developed by experts from all levels of health care and stakeholders capture all recommended approaches and necessary information for clinicians and other healthcare workers on CVDs. They also serve as a practical guide for assessing and managing the most important CVDs prevalent in Ghana and can be used at all levels of care namely health facilities without a doctor; with a general practitioner and with a physician specialist.
more