Background: Retaining clients on antiretroviral therapy (ART) is challenging, especially during the first year on ART. Mobile health (mHealth) interventions show promise to close retention gaps. We aimed to assess reach (who received the intervention?) and effectiveness (did it work?) of a hybrid two-way texting (2wT) intervention to improve ART retention at a large public clinic in Lilongwe, Malawi.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Retaining clients on antiretroviral therapy (ART) is challenging especially during the first year on ART. Mobile health (mHealth) interventions show promise to close retention gaps. We aimed to assess reach (who received the intervention?) and effectiveness (did it work?) of a hybrid two-way texting (2wT) intervention to improve ART retention at a large public clinic in Lilongwe, Malawi.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Early retention of people living with HIV (PLHIV) in antiretroviral therapy (ART) programs is critical to improve individual clinical outcomes and viral load suppression. Although many mobile health (mHealth) interventions aim to improve retention in care, there is still lack of evidence on mHealth success or failure, including from patient's perspectives. We describe the human-centered design (HCD) process and assess patient usability and acceptability of a two-way texting (2wT) intervention to improve early retention among new ART initiates at Lighthouse Trust clinic in Lilongwe, Malawi.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Ticks transmit several diseases that result in high morbidity and mortality in livestock. Tick-borne diseases are an economic burden that negatively affect livestock production, cost countries billions of dollars through vaccine procurement and other disease management efforts. Thus, understanding the spatial distribution of tick hotspots is critical for identifying potential areas of high tick-borne disease transmission and setting up priority areas for targeted tick disease management.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnthrax is an important but neglected zoonosis in southern Africa and elsewhere which occurs naturally in herbivorous wildlife and livestock. Fatal outbreaks in animals are spaced by potentially extended periods of non-activity during which the bacterium is maintained in soil. The ecology of the pathogen in the multi-host system and the environment is still not fully understood.
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