Enablers and barriers to post-discharge follow-up among women who have undergone a caesarean section: experiences from a prospective cohort in rural Rwanda.

Background: Caesarean sections account for roughly one third of all surgical procedures performed in low-income countries. Due to lack of standardised post-discharge follow-up protocols and practices, most of available data are extracted from clinical charts during hospitalization and are thus sub-optimal for answering post-discharge outcomes questions. This study aims to determine enablers and barriers to returning to the hospital after discharge among women who have undergone a c-section at a rural district hospital in Rwanda.

Improved quality of life following direct-acting antiviral treatment for chronic hepatitis C infection in Rwanda: Results from a clinical trial in sub-Saharan Africa (the SHARED study).

Around 71 million people are living with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, with approximately 14% residing in sub-Saharan Africa. Direct-acting antiviral (DAA) therapies offer clear benefits for liver-related morbidity and mortality, and data from high-income settings suggest that DAA treatments also provide significant benefits in terms of health-related quality of life (HRQL). In this study, we assessed the effect of DAA treatment on HRQL for individuals treated for HCV in a clinical trial in Rwanda.

Validating the Global Surgery Geographical Accessibility Indicator: Differences in Modeled Versus Patient-Reported Travel Times.

Background: Since long travel times to reach health facilities are associated with worse outcomes, geographic accessibility is one of the six core global surgery indicators; this corresponds to the second of the "Three Delays Framework," namely "delay in reaching a health facility." Most attempts to estimate this indicator have been based on geographical information systems (GIS) algorithms. The aim of our study was to compare GIS derived estimates to self-reported travel times for patients traveling to a district hospital in rural Rwanda for emergency obstetric care.

Short-term risk of HIV disease progression and death in Ugandan children not eligible for antiretroviral therapy.

Background: Increasing numbers of HIV-infected children not yet eligible for antiretroviral therapy (ART) are entering health care in Africa. We sought to characterize the risk of short-term disease progression in this population.

Methods: In a cohort of HIV-infected ART-naive and -ineligible Ugandan children older than 1 year, the rates of clinical/immunologic progression within 2 years were assessed using Kaplan-Meier survival analysis and multivariate Cox proportional-hazards modeling.