Publications by authors named "Kahabi G Isangula"

Background: Maternal and neonatal deaths remain a major public health issue worldwide. Income Generation Associations (IGAs) could form a critical entry point to addressing poverty-related contributors. However, there have been limited practical interventions to leverage the power of IGAs in addressing the challenges associated with maternal care and childcare.

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Background: Respiratory diseases, including active tuberculosis (TB), asthma, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), constitute substantial global health challenges, necessitating timely and accurate diagnosis for effective treatment and management.

Objective: This research seeks to develop and evaluate a noninvasive user-friendly artificial intelligence (AI)-powered cough audio classifier for detecting these respiratory conditions in rural Tanzania.

Methods: This is a nonexperimental cross-sectional research with the primary objective of collection and analysis of cough sounds from patients with active TB, asthma, and COPD in outpatient clinics to generate and evaluate a noninvasive cough audio classifier.

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Introduction: Nurses are often on the frontline of disaster management, providing care to patients with emerging physical, mental, and emotional turbulence, and acting as educators for health promotion and disaster prevention in both rural and urban contexts. However, the literature suggests that nurses are inadequately prepared for disaster response. This study examined preparedness for disaster response among nurses in rural and urban primary healthcare settings in Tanzania.

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Article Synopsis
  • There is increasing evidence showing that the nurse-client relationships in maternal and child health (MCH) are not good, which affects client satisfaction and healthcare outcomes.
  • A human-centered design (HCD) approach was used to create a prototype intervention by having MCH nurses and clients collaborate on solutions after identifying key issues through focus groups and interviews.
  • The main challenges identified included inadequate training in communication and patient-centered care in nursing school curricula, leading to recommendations for curriculum improvements that were well-received during validation meetings.
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Introduction: There is increasing evidence that improving patient trust in doctors can improve patients' use of healthcare services, compliance and continuing engagement with care -particularly for chronic diseases. Consequently, much of the current literature on trust in therapeutic relationships focuses on factors shaping doctors' trustworthiness. However, few studies on this issue have been conducted among rural populations in low-income Africa, where health service delivery, cultural norms and patient expectations differ from those in high-income countries.

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Background: Newborn resuscitation is a life-saving intervention for birth asphyxia, a leading cause of neonatal mortality. Improving provider newborn resuscitation skills is critical for delivering quality care, but the retention of these skills has been a challenge. Tanzania implemented a national newborn resuscitation using the Helping Babies Breathe (HBB) training program to help address this problem.

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Objectives: This first-ever country-level study assesses the implementation of the Helping Babies Breathe (HBB) program in 15 of Tanzania's mainland regions by measuring coverage, adoption and retention of provider skills, acceptability among providers, and barriers and challenges to at-scale implementation.

Methods: Longitudinal facility-level follow-up visits assessed provider resuscitation knowledge and skills in using objective structured clinical examinations and readiness of facilities to resuscitate newborns, in terms of birth attendants trained and essential equipment available and functional. Focus group discussions were held with providers to determine the acceptability, challenges, and barriers to implementation of the HBB program.

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Background: Helping Babies Breathe (HBB) has become the gold standard globally for training birth-attendants in neonatal resuscitation in low-resource settings in efforts to reduce early newborn asphyxia and mortality. The purpose of this study was to do a first-ever activity-based cost-analysis of at-scale HBB program implementation and initial follow-up in a large region of Tanzania and evaluate costs of national scale-up as one component of a multi-method external evaluation of the implementation of HBB at scale in Tanzania.

Methods: We used activity-based costing to examine budget expense data during the two-month implementation and follow-up of HBB in one of the target regions.

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Objectives: Worldwide, there has been renewed emphasis on reducing neonatal mortality in low-resource countries. The Helping Babies Breathe (HBB) programme has been shown to reduce newborn deaths. The aim of this study is to present provider-level perceptions and experiences of the HBB programme implemented at-scale in Tanzania and identify key lessons learned for scalability in similar and other settings.

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Objective: To validate a simplified objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) tool for evaluating the competency of birth attendants in low-resource countries who have been trained in neonatal resuscitation by the Helping Babies Breathe (HBB) program.

Methods: A prospective cross-sectional study of the OSCE tool was conducted among trained birth attendants working at dispensaries, health centers, or hospitals in five regions of Tanzania between October 1, 2013, and May 1, 2014. A 13-item checklist was used to assess clinical competency in a simulated newborn resuscitation scenario.

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