Hepatitis B serology testing and vaccination for Gambian healthcare workers: A pilot study.

Background: Hepatitis B infection is a significant global health threat contributing to healthcare worker (HCW) harm, threatening already precarious health systems.

Aim: To document self-reported hepatitis B vaccination history and serology results.

Setting: A select group of high-risk HCWs in a tertiary care hospital in Banjul, the Gambia.

District-Level Forecast of Achieving Trachoma Elimination as a Public Health Problem By 2030: An Ensemble Modelling Approach.

Assessing the feasibility of 2030 as a target date for global elimination of trachoma, and identification of districts that may require enhanced treatment to meet World Health Organization (WHO) elimination criteria by this date are key challenges in operational planning for trachoma programmes. Here we address these challenges by prospectively evaluating forecasting models of trachomatous inflammation-follicular (TF) prevalence, leveraging ensemble-based approaches. Seven candidate probabilistic models were developed to forecast district-wise TF prevalence in 11 760 districts, trained using district-level data on the population prevalence of TF in children aged 1-9 years from 2004 to 2022.

Tropical Data: Approach and Methodology as Applied to Trachoma Prevalence Surveys.

Purpose: Population-based prevalence surveys are essential for decision-making on interventions to achieve trachoma elimination as a public health problem. This paper outlines the methodologies of Tropical Data, which supports work to undertake those surveys.

Methods: Tropical Data is a consortium of partners that supports health ministries worldwide to conduct globally standardised prevalence surveys that conform to World Health Organization recommendations.

The Gambia has eliminated trachoma as a public health problem: Challenges and successes.

Trachoma is the leading infectious cause of blindness in the world and has been known to be a major public health problem in The Gambia for over 60 years. Nationwide blindness surveys, including trachoma, in 1986 and 1996 provided the foundation for a comprehensive plan to implement a trachoma elimination strategy. Impact and pre-validation surveillance surveys in 2011-13 demonstrated that active trachoma was below WHO threshold for elimination but trichiasis remained a public health problem.

Global progress toward the elimination of active trachoma: an analysis of 38 countries.

Background: Global elimination of trachoma as a public health problem was targeted for 2020. We reviewed progress towards the elimination of active trachoma by country and geographical group.

Methods: In this retrospective analysis of national survey and implementation data, all countries ever known to be endemic for trachoma that had either implemented at least one trachoma impact survey shown in the publicly available Trachoma Atlas, or are in Africa were invited to participate in this study.

Seeking diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers for childhood bacterial pneumonia in sub-Saharan Africa: study protocol for an observational study.

Introduction: Clinically diagnosed pneumonia in children is a leading cause of paediatric hospitalisation and mortality. The aetiology is usually bacterial or viral, but malaria can cause a syndrome indistinguishable from clinical pneumonia. There is no method with high sensitivity to detect a bacterial infection in these patients and, as result, antibiotics are frequently overprescribed.

A retrospective study to assess the evaluation of living related kidney donors and their outcomes following nephrectomy at Kenyatta National Hospital.

Background: Kidney transplantation is the renal replacement therapy of choice for end stage renal disease. To ensure safety regular audit of the donation process is necessary. The aim of this study was to assess the evaluation of potential living related kidney donors and document their outcomes following nephrectomy.

Cross-Sectional Surveys of the Prevalence of Follicular Trachoma and Trichiasis in The Gambia: Has Elimination Been Reached?

Background: The Gambia's National Eye Health Programme has made a concerted effort to reduce the prevalence of trachoma. The present study had two objectives. The first was to conduct surveillance following mass drug administrations to determine whether The Gambia has reached the World Health Organization's (WHO) criteria for trachoma elimination, namely a prevalence of trachomatous inflammation-follicular (TF) of less than 5% in children aged 1 to 9 years.