Innovations, adaptations, and accelerations in the delivery of HIV services during COVID-19.

During 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the delivery of HIV prevention and treatment services globally. To mitigate the negative consequences of the pandemic, service providers and communities adapted and accelerated an array of HIV interventions to meet the needs of people living with HIV and people at risk of acquiring HIV in diverse geographical and epidemiological settings. As a result of these adaptations, services such as HIV treatment showed programmatic resilience and remained relatively stable in 2020 and into the first half of 2021.

Leading causes of death and high mortality rates in an HIV endemic setting (Kisumu county, Kenya, 2019).

Background: In resource-limited settings, underlying causes of death (UCOD) often are not ascertained systematically, leading to unreliable mortality statistics. We reviewed medical charts to establish UCOD for decedents at two high volume mortuaries in Kisumu County, Kenya, and compared ascertained UCOD to those notified to the civil registry.

Methods: Medical experts trained in COD certification examined medical charts and ascertained causes of death for 456 decedents admitted to the mortuaries from April 16 through July 12, 2019.

Scenario-driven forecasting: modeling peaks and paths. Insights from the COVID-19 pandemic in Belgium.

The recent 'outburst' of COVID-19 spurred efforts to model and forecast its diffusion patterns, either in terms of infections, people in need of medical assistance (ICU occupation) or casualties. Forecasting patterns and their implied end states remains cumbersome when few (stochastic) data points are available during the early stage of diffusion processes. Extrapolations based on compounded growth rates do not account for inflection points nor end-states.

Predicting patient nurse-level intensity for a subsequent shift in the intensive care unit: A single-centre prospective observational study.

Background: A dynamic optimized nurse staffing model for the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), requires a tool for monitoring nurse-level intensity with validated cut-offs to identify patients requiring 1:1, 2:1 or 3:1 patient-to-nurse ratios.

Objectives: We aimed to determine the Nursing Activities Score (NAS) cut-off values which can best distinguish between high, average and lower nurse-level intensity as unanimously perceived by care providers, and to evaluate whether these NAS cut-offs allow to predict nurse-level intensity in the next shift or the same shift the next day.

Design: A prospective observational study.

Assessing the impact of antiretroviral therapy on tuberculosis notification rates among people with HIV: a descriptive analysis of 23 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, 2010-2015.

Background: HIV is a major driver of the tuberculosis epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. The population-level impact of antiretroviral therapy (ART) scale-up on tuberculosis rates in this region has not been well studied. We conducted a descriptive analysis to examine evidence of population-level effect of ART on tuberculosis by comparing trends in estimated tuberculosis notification rates, by HIV status, for countries in sub-Saharan Africa.