Measures to strengthen primary health-care systems in low- and middle-income countries.

Primary health care offers a cost-effective route to achieving universal health coverage (UHC). However, primary health-care systems are weak in many low- and middle-income countries and often fail to provide comprehensive, people-centred, integrated care. We analysed the primary health-care systems in 20 low- and middle-income countries using a semi-grounded approach.

Creating the Foundation for Health System Resilience in Northern Nigeria.

-The experience of a donor-supported Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health (RMNCH) program in four states of Northern Nigeria illustrates how a Complex Adaptive System (CAS) approach to health system strengthening can lead to health systems becoming more resilient. The program worked with the array of political, cultural and social determinants which interact to shape the health system and its functionality. It worked in an environment marked by weak governance with little public accountability and by very limited management capability in inadequately regulated markets.

The Millennium Development Goals fail poor children: the case for equity-adjusted measures.

Daniel Reidpath and colleagues use the fourth Millennium Development Goal (MDG) as an illustrative example to highlight the potential to neglect equity in the race to achieve the MDGs.

Simplification and improvement of height-based azithromycin treatment for paediatric trachoma.

Recent data showing that azithromycin is safe at higher dosages than previously documented provide an opportunity to explore several important improvements in the efficiency and effectiveness of height-based treatment of paediatric trachoma. The purpose of this study is to examine the feasibility of a single standardised schedule for application in any trachoma-endemic region. Data for 60813 children from Asia, North and sub-Saharan Africa were analysed.

Integration of trachoma control into primary health care: the Tanzanian experience.

Tanzania was among the first countries to launch a trachoma control program with support from the International Trachoma Initiative (ITI) using surgery, antibiotics, facial cleanliness, and environmental improvement (SAFE) strategy with azithromycin. More than one million children less than 10 years of age in Tanzania have active disease and an estimated 54,000 people have trichiasis. Since 2000, Tanzania has implemented major health sector reform that have been carried out in three phases in 114 districts.

The global elimination of blinding trachoma: progress and promise.

Trachoma is the world's leading cause of preventable blindness. It affects approximately 150 million people living in the world's poorest, rural communities and causes an estimated loss of $2.9 billion in productivity annually.

The possibility of eliminating blinding trachoma.

Global elimination of blinding trachoma, the world's leading preventable cause of blindness, now seems possible. The disease, which persists most severely in the poorest parts of Africa and Asia, is already eliminated in North America and Europe. On a scientific basis, the case for elimination was outlined at a WHO global scientific meeting in 1996.

Height as a proxy for weight in determining azithromycin treatment for paediatric trachoma.

Azithromycin (Zithromax, Pfizer Inc., New York, NY, USA) is effective in the control of blinding trachoma. Community-based azithromycin treatment is recommended by the World Health Organization as part of a multipronged strategy aimed at the global elimination of binding trachoma by the year 2020.

Resource allocation to prevent trachomatous low vision among older individuals in rural areas of less developed countries.

Trachomatous low vision can be prevented by treating or preventing infection or through surgery to treat trichiasis. Resource allocation to prevent trachomatous low vision should be directed to those interventions that are the most cost-effective. In order to assess which of many potential interventions are the more cost-effective, data on the epidemiology of the disease, the effectiveness of community- and facility-based interventions, and the cost of the interventions are required.