Publications by authors named "Chalilwe Chungu"

Systematic screening for TB in children, especially among those at high risk of TB, can promote early diagnosis and treatment of TB. The World Health Organization (WHO) recently recommended C-Reactive Protein as a TB screening tool in adults and adolescents living with HIV (PLHIV). Thus, we aimed to assess the performance of point-of-care (POC) CRP as a screening tool for TB in children.

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Article Synopsis
  • Zambia has a high burden of tuberculosis (TB), particularly in children, with many remaining undiagnosed while healthcare workers' knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) towards childhood TB were assessed.
  • Data collected from 237 healthcare workers in Lusaka revealed that many lack proper training in TB, and the majority scored poorly in KAP evaluations, although a considerable proportion showed good knowledge and practices.
  • Analysis showed that clinical officers and those with 1-5 years of experience had better attitudes towards childhood TB, while medical doctors had lower odds of showing good attitudes compared to other healthcare workers.
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Background: Lopinavir/ritonavir plasma concentrations are profoundly reduced when co-administered with rifampicin. Super-boosting of lopinavir/ritonavir is limited by nonavailability of single-entity ritonavir, while double-dosing of co-formulated lopinavir/ritonavir given twice-daily produces suboptimal lopinavir concentrations in young children. We evaluated whether increased daily dosing with modified 8-hourly lopinavir/ritonavir 4:1 would maintain therapeutic plasma concentrations of lopinavir in children living with HIV receiving rifampicin-based antituberculosis treatment.

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The number of children newly infected with HIV dropped by 50%, from 320 000 in 2010 to 160 000 in 2021. Despite progress, ongoing gaps persist in diagnosis, continuity of care, and treatment optimization. In response, the United States President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief created the Faith-based Action for Scaling-Up Testing and Treatment for Epidemic Response (FASTER).

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Introduction: In high TB burden settings, it is estimated that 10-20% of total notifications should be children, however, currently only 6-8% of the total TB notifications in Zambia are children. We assessed whether the implementation of a multicomponent strategy, at primary healthcare facilities, that systematically targets barriers at each step of the childhood TB diagnostic cascade can increase childhood TB case detection.

Methods: We conducted a controlled, interrupted time series analysis to compare childhood TB case notifications before (January 2018-December 2019), and during implementation (January 2020-September 2021) in two intervention and two control Level 1 hospitals in Lusaka, Zambia.

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Munchausen syndrome by proxy is a form of abuse in which an adult, usually the mother, deceives health workers by exaggerating, falsifying or directly inducing psychological or physical symptoms in the child victim for psychological gratification. In 2013, the American Academy of Pediatrics coined the term 'caregiver-fabricated illness in a child' to describe this form of child abuse. A 7-year-old girl had many encounters with health workers over a period of 4 years and presented with evolving clinical features including refractory seizures and red urine for which she was followed up as a case of acute intermittent porphyria.

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Within Zambia, a landlocked country in southern-central Africa, the highest prevalence of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection is in Lusaka Province (population 3.2 million), where approximately 340,000 persons are estimated to be infected (1). The 2016 Zambia Population-based HIV Impact Assessment (ZAMPHIA) estimated the adult HIV prevalence in Lusaka Province to be 15.

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