Publications by authors named "Michael P Masika"
Article Synopsis
- Trachoma is aimed for global elimination by 2030, with a focus on using IgG antibody measurements in children for monitoring and decision-making in public health programs.
- There are no existing guidelines for using serology in trachoma control, highlighting a larger issue in the field of disease elimination and epidemiology.
- Researchers analyzed IgG levels in 63,911 children from various regions to determine seroconversion rates and proposed a method to assess when population transmission falls below or exceeds intervention thresholds, aiding trachoma program strategies.
Article Synopsis
- Trachomatous trichiasis (TT) is a painful eye problem that can cause blindness, and women are affected more than men.
- Researchers studied data from 20 African countries to see how men and women are treated for TT and if there are differences.
- The results showed that women are more likely to have complications after surgery and are more likely to refuse surgery, suggesting there are some gender differences in how TT is managed.
Background: Trachoma is the commonest infectious cause of blindness worldwide. Efforts are being made to eliminate trachoma as a public health problem globally. However, as prevalence decreases, it becomes more challenging to precisely predict prevalence.
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- Trachoma is a serious eye disease that can cause blindness, and improving water, sanitation, and hygiene (WaSH) is important to help prevent it.
- The study looked at how increasing access to clean water for washing faces and using toilets can reduce the number of children with trachoma.
- Findings suggest that having at least 65% of people using clean water for washing and 85% using proper toilets can help lower trachoma cases significantly.
Article Synopsis
- - Trichiasis, where eyelashes touch the eye, can lead to blindness, making accurate prevalence data across affected regions essential for resource distribution.
- - A study collected district-level data from 44 countries, refining estimates using the most reliable sources, standardizing for age and sex, and incorporating expert assessments when data was scarce.
- - The 2016 global trichiasis estimate was 2.8 million cases, lower than earlier figures due to improved data quality, enhanced management services, and declines in active trachoma incidence.
Background: Whilst previous work has identified clustering of the active trachoma sign "trachomatous inflammation-follicular" (TF), there is limited understanding of the spatial structure of trachomatous trichiasis (TT), the rarer, end-stage, blinding form of disease. Here we use community-level TF prevalence, information on access to water and sanitation, and large-scale environmental and socio-economic indicators to model the spatial variation in community-level TT prevalence in Benin, Cote d'Ivoire, DRC, Guinea, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Sudan and Uganda.
Methods: We fit binomial mixed models, with community-level random effects, separately for each country.