Mortality by Admission Diagnosis in Children 1-60 Months of Age Admitted to a Tertiary Care Government Hospital in Malawi.

Diagnosis-specific mortality is a measure of pediatric healthcare quality that has been incompletely studied in sub-Saharan African hospitals. Identifying the mortality rates of multiple conditions at the same hospital may allow leaders to better target areas for intervention. In this secondary analysis of routinely collected data, we investigated hospital mortality by admission diagnosis in children aged 1-60 months admitted to a tertiary care government referral hospital in Malawi between October 2017 and June 2020.

Relationship between distance of referring facilities and haemoglobin change in children in Malawi.

Background: Anaemia is a significant cause of mortality in children in sub-Saharan Africa where blood transfusion is often available only at referral hospitals. Understanding the pattern of referrals by health facilities is essential to identify the delays that affect child survival.

Aim: To determine if there was a correlation between change in haemoglobin (Hb) level and distance from referring facilities to Kamuzu Central Hospital (KCH) in Malawi, and whether distance affected mortality rates.

Implementation of Targeted Point of Care HIV Testing in a Pediatric Emergency Department.

Unlabelled: HIV infection rates are increasing among adolescents. Despite guidelines recommending annual HIV screening among sexually active adolescents, 3.6% of adolescents tested for other sexually transmitted infections (STI) in a pediatric emergency department (PED) were screened for HIV.

The Medical Resuscitation Committee: Interprofessional Program Development to Optimize Care for Critically Ill Medical Patients in an Academic Pediatric Emergency Department.

Provision of optimal care to critically ill patients in a pediatric emergency department is challenging. Specific challenges include the following: (a) patient presentations are highly variable, representing the full breadth of human disease and injury, and are often unannounced; (b) care team members have highly variable experience and skills and often few meaningful opportunities to practice care delivery as a team; (c) valid data collection, for quality assurance/improvement and clinical research, is limited when relying on traditional approaches such as medical record review or self-report; (d) specific patient presentations are relatively uncommon for individual providers, providing few opportunities to establish and refine the requisite knowledge and skill; and (e) unscientific or random variation in care delivery. In the current report, we describe our efforts for the last decade to address these challenges and optimize care delivery to critically ill patients in a pediatric emergency department.

Opportunities for earlier HIV diagnosis in a pediatric ED.

Objectives: Emergency department (ED) HIV screening is recommended but challenging to implement and of uncertain effectiveness in pediatric EDs (PEDs). We sought to determine whether there were opportunities for earlier HIV diagnosis in the PED for a cohort of young adults diagnosed with HIV.

Methods: This retrospective cohort study reviewed PED records of a group of young adults receiving HIV care in an urban hospital setting.