The Relationship Between Psychosocial Interventions and Child Wellbeing in Zambia.

Psychosocial factors contribute to persistence of poverty, but are rarely addressed in poverty reduction programs. We use mixed methods to investigate the relationship between a psychosocial behaviour change approach-empowered worldview (EWV), and investment decisions in children wellbeing among smallholder farmers in Zambia. Three years after exposure to EWV, logistic regression model results suggest that exposure to EWV was associated with an increased probability of parents providing basic needs of children including school fees, clothes, and food.

Feasibility of using infant testing during immunization to estimate HIV mother-to-child-transmission rates in Zambia.

Background: This study piloted the feasibility of infant testing in immunization services as a strategy for estimating MTCT rates among the population of HIV exposed infants at national and subnational levels in Zambia.

Methods: The study recruited a cross-sectional nationally representative sample of 8042 caregiver-baby pairs in 38 high volume immunization sites in 7 towns across 3 provinces of Zambia. All mothers who brought their children below the age of one year for immunization at the study facilities were invited to participate in the study.

Success in Africa: People with disabilities share their stories.

Background: Whereas most narratives of disability in sub-Saharan Africa stress barriers and exclusion, Africans with disabilities appear to show resilience and some appear to achieve success. In order to promote inclusion in development efforts, there is a need to challenge narratives of failure.

Objectives: To gather life histories of people with disabilities in three sub-Saharan African countries (Kenya, Uganda and Sierra Leone) who have achieved economic success in their lives and to analyse factors that explain how this success has been achieved.

From end of life to chronic care: the provision of community home-based care for HIV and the adaptation to new health care demands in Zambia.

Unlabelled: Aim We present the evolution of primary-level HIV and AIDS services, shifting from end of life to chronic care, and draw attention to the opportunities and threats for the future of Zambia's nascent chronic care system.

Background: Although African governments struggled to provide primary health care services in the context of a global economic crisis, civil society organisations (CSO) started mobilising settlement residents to respond to another crisis: the HIV and AIDS pandemic. These initiatives actively engaged patients, families and settlement residents to provide home-based care to HIV-infected patients.

Postnatal Care Experiences and Barriers to Care Utilization for Home- and Facility-Delivered Newborns in Uganda and Zambia.

Objectives The objective of this study was to examine experiences with, and barriers to, accessing postnatal care services, in the context of a maternal health initiative. Methods As part of a larger evaluation of an initiative to promote facility deliveries in 8 rural districts in Uganda and Zambia, 48 focus groups were held with recently-delivered women with previous home and facility deliveries (6 per district). Data on postnatal care experiences were translated, coded and analyzed using thematic content analysis techniques.

Evaluation Of A Maternal Health Program In Uganda And Zambia Finds Mixed Results On Quality Of Care And Satisfaction.

Saving Mothers, Giving Life is a multidonor program designed to reduce maternal mortality in Uganda and Zambia. We used a quasi-random research design to evaluate its effects on provider obstetric knowledge, clinical confidence, and job satisfaction, and on patients' receipt of services, perceived quality, and satisfaction. Study participants were 1,267 health workers and 2,488 female patients.

The emergence and evolution of HIV counselling in Zambia: a 25-year history.

HIV-related counselling practices have evolved since emerging in Zambia in 1987. Whereas, initially, the goal of HIV counselling was to provide psychological support to the dying and their families, as knowledge about HIV grew, counselling objectives expanded to include behavioural change, encouraging safer sexual practices, encouraging disclosure, convincing people to test, treatment adherence and shaping HIV-positive people's sexual and reproductive choices. This paper highlights a number of key shifts in counselling practices in Zambia over the last 25 years, demonstrating the relationship between those shifts, changes in medical technology, (inter)national political will and the epidemiological maturity of the disease.

Task sharing in Zambia: HIV service scale-up compounds the human resource crisis.

Background: Considerable attention has been given by policy makers and researchers to the human resources for health crisis in Africa. However, little attention has been paid to quantifying health facility-level trends in health worker numbers, distribution and workload, despite growing demands on health workers due to the availability of new funds for HIV/AIDS control scale-up. This study analyses and reports trends in HIV and non-HIV ambulatory service workloads on clinical staff in urban and rural district level facilities.

How HIV/AIDS scale-up has impacted on non- HIV priority services in Zambia.

Background: Much of the debate as to whether or not the scaling up of HIV service delivery in Africa benefits non-HIV priority services has focused on the use of nationally aggregated data. This paper analyses and presents routine health facility record data to show trend correlations across priority services.

Methods: Review of district office and health facility client records for 39 health facilities in three districts of Zambia, covering four consecutive years (2004-07).

Health workforce responses to global health initiatives funding: a comparison of Malawi and Zambia.

Background: Shortages of health workers are obstacles to utilising global health initiative (GHI) funds effectively in Africa. This paper reports and analyses two countries' health workforce responses during a period of large increases in GHI funds.

Methods: Health facility record reviews were conducted in 52 facilities in Malawi and 39 facilities in Zambia in 2006/07 and 2008; quarterly totals from the last quarter of 2005 to the first quarter of 2008 inclusive in Malawi; and annual totals for 2004 to 2007 inclusive in Zambia.