Publications by authors named "Milagritos D Tapia"

Introduction: Malnutrition contributes to 45% of all childhood deaths globally, but these modelled estimates lack direct measurements in countries with high malnutrition and under-5 mortality rates. We investigated malnutrition's role in infant and child deaths in the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance (CHAMPS) network.

Methods: We analysed CHAMPS data from seven sites (Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Mozambique, Sierra Leone and South Africa) collected between 2016 and 2023.

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  • The study investigates the role of meningitis in child mortality under five years old, particularly focusing on data from six sub-Saharan African countries and Bangladesh.
  • It employs post-mortem minimally invasive tissue sampling (MITS) to identify the causes of death and pathogens responsible for meningitis in this age group from December 2016 to December 2023.
  • Findings reveal that meningitis contributed to 7% of child deaths, with common pathogens identified being Acinetobacter baumannii and Klebsiella pneumoniae, particularly affecting neonates and infants.
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  • The study investigated the prevalence and characteristics of human metapneumovirus (hMPV) in children with severe pneumonia across seven African and Asian countries, finding a significant correlation between hMPV and pneumonia cases compared to community controls.
  • HMPV was more frequently detected in hospitalized pneumonia cases (6.9%) than in controls (2.3%), with a notable negative association with RSV and a positive association with bacterial infections.
  • The majority of hMPV-positive cases were infants under one year, with low mortality rates similar to those of RSV-positive cases, indicating that hMPV pneumonia is challenging to distinguish from RSV pneumonia in clinical settings.
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Objectives: ZR-202-CoV and ZR-202a-CoV are novel recombinant vaccines containing 25 µg of the prototype (Wuhan strain) or B.1.351 strain (Beta variant) SARS-CoV-2 S-protein expressed in CHO cells, respectively, adjuvanted with Al(OH) and CpG-ODN.

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Data were gathered through a collaborative initiative to investigate impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdowns on child and maternal health, economic hardships, and access to care for children and pregnant women by the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance (CHAMPS) Network. The data were gathered in Bamako, the capital city of Mali (population ∼2.9 million) between August and September of 2022 through a Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS).

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Importance: The emergence of acute neurological symptoms in children necessitates immediate intervention. Although low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) bear the highest burden of neurological diseases, there is a scarcity of diagnostic and therapeutic resources. Therefore, current understanding of the etiology of neurological emergencies in LMICs relies mainly on clinical diagnoses and verbal autopsies.

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Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines reduce severe disease and mortality and may lessen transmission, measured by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) viral load (VL). Evaluating vaccine associations in VL at COVID-19 diagnosis in 4 phase 3 randomized, placebo-controlled vaccine trials, July 2020 to July 2021, VL reductions were 2.78 log10 copies/mL (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.

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  • The study investigates the prevalence of rectovaginal group B Streptococcus (GBS) colonization in pregnant women during labor and its transmission to newborns in selected low-income and middle-income African and South Asian countries.
  • Conducted across 11 maternity and obstetric facilities, the research involved collecting samples from 6,514 HIV-negative pregnant women at least 37 weeks gestation to analyze GBS culture and serotyping.
  • The findings revealed a 24.1% rate of maternal GBS colonization, with the highest prevalence in Mali (41.1%) and the lowest in Ethiopia (11.6%), highlighting significant regional variations in GBS rates among pregnant women.
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In resource-limited settings where vital registration and medical death certificates are unavailable or incomplete, verbal autopsy (VA) is often used to attribute causes of death (CoD) and prioritize resource allocation and interventions. We aimed to determine the CoD concordance between InterVA and CHAMPS's method. The causes of death (CoDs) of children <5 were determined by two methods using data from seven low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) enrolled in the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance (CHAMPS) network.

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Introduction: Determining aetiology of severe illness can be difficult, especially in settings with limited diagnostic resources, yet critical for providing life-saving care. Our objective was to describe the accuracy of antemortem clinical diagnoses in young children in high-mortality settings, compared with results of specific postmortem diagnoses obtained from Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance (CHAMPS).

Methods: We analysed data collected during 2016-2022 from seven sites in Africa and South Asia.

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Measles deaths highlight immunization program gaps. In the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance study in Mali, we observed a rise in under-5 measles-related deaths in 2022 that corresponded with increased measles cases at the same time and a decline in measles vaccine coverage in Mali in 2020.

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Background: While maternal pertussis vaccination is a strategy to reduce infant morbidity, safety and immunogenicity data are limited in sub-Saharan Africa. We aimed to evaluate the safety of a single dose of tetanus, diphtheria and acellular pertussis vaccine (Tdap) vaccine compared to tetanus and diphtheria vaccine (Td) vaccine in pregnant women in Bamako, Mali and to assess the pertussis toxin (PT) antibody response at birth.

Methods: In this phase 2, single-centre, randomised, double-blind, active-controlled study, from 23 January 2019 to 10 July 2019, healthy 18-39 year old women in the second trimester of a singleton pregnancy were randomised 2:1 to receive Tdap or Td.

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Background: is a leading cause of acute watery diarrhea, dysentery, and diarrhea-attributed linear growth faltering, a precursor to stunting and lifelong morbidity. Several promising vaccines are in development and field efficacy trials will require a consortium of potential vaccine trial sites with up-to-date diarrhea incidence data.

Methods: The Enterics for Global Health (EFGH) surveillance study will employ facility-based enrollment of diarrhea cases aged 6-35 months with 3 months of follow-up to establish incidence rates and document clinical, anthropometric, and financial consequences of diarrhea at 7 country sites (Mali, Kenya, The Gambia, Malawi, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Peru).

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Background: Comparative costs of public health interventions provide valuable data for decision making. However, the availability of comprehensive and context-specific costs is often limited. The Enterics for Global Health (EFGH) surveillance study-a facility-based diarrhea surveillance study across 7 countries-aims to generate evidence on health system and household costs associated with medically attended diarrhea in children.

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  • Molecular diagnostics have revealed a higher prevalence of shigellosis from human fecal samples than traditional culture methods, highlighting the need for improved identification of its causes.* -
  • The study involves testing dried blood spots for specific antibodies to determine immune responses in individuals with shigellosis and comparing these responses among various case types to identify patterns.* -
  • The findings aim to enhance our understanding of shigellosis, establish baseline immunity, and ultimately aid in the development of effective vaccines against diarrhea.*
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  • The EFGH surveillance study aims to accurately estimate diarrhea incidence in children aged 6-35 months by considering both the population at risk and those who don't seek medical care.
  • It will utilize a combination of facility-based surveillance and population-based surveys to determine the size of the target population and healthcare-seeking behaviors.
  • The study design addresses challenges like discrepancies in coverage, seasonal changes, and variations in health-seeking behavior to improve the accuracy of its findings over a 24-month period.
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Background: In 2002, the Centre pour le Développement des Vaccins du Mali (CVD-Mali) was established as a partnership between the Mali Ministry of Health and the University of Maryland, Baltimore. Since its creation, CVD-Mali has been dedicated to describing the epidemiology of infectious diseases, supporting the development of vaccines, and training a team of local researchers. CVD-Mali participated in the Global Enteric Multicenter Study from 2007 to 2010 and the Vaccine Impact on Diarrhea in Africa study from 2015 to 2018, where the importance of as an enteric pathogen was established.

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Delays in illness recognition, healthcare seeking, and in the provision of appropriate clinical care are common in resource-limited settings. Our objective was to determine the frequency of delays in the "Three Delays-in-Healthcare", and factors associated with delays, among deceased infants and children in seven countries with high childhood mortality. We conducted a retrospective, descriptive study using data from verbal autopsies and medical records for infants and children aged 1-59 months who died between December 2016 and February 2022 in six sites in sub-Saharan Africa and one in South Asia (Bangladesh) and were enrolled in Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance (CHAMPS).

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Background: Malaria is a leading cause of childhood mortality worldwide. However, accurate estimates of malaria prevalence and causality among patients who die at the country level are lacking due to the limited specificity of diagnostic tools used to attribute etiologies. Accurate estimates are crucial for prioritizing interventions and resources aimed at reducing malaria-related mortality.

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  • The CHAMPS Network investigates childhood deaths, focusing on pneumonia's role and the pathogens involved in cases from six sub-Saharan African countries and Bangladesh from December 2016 to December 2022.
  • Out of 1,120 deaths analyzed, pneumonia was identified as a contributing factor in 40.6%, with most victims being around 9 months old, and 82.9% of these cases had identifiable pathogens.
  • Among the pneumonia deaths, community-acquired pneumonia was responsible for 67.3%, with leading pathogens including Streptococcus pneumoniae and Klebsiella pneumoniae, while 32.7% were linked to hospital-acquired pneumonia.
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Background: Most childhood deaths globally are considered preventable through high-quality clinical care, which includes adherence to clinical care recommendations. Our objective was to describe adherence to World Health Organization recommendations for the management of leading causes of death among children.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective, descriptive study examining clinical data for children aged 1-59 months who were hospitalized and died in a Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance (CHAMPS) catchment, December 2016-June 2021.

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Introduction: In high mortality settings, prophylactic azithromycin has been shown to improve birth weight and gestational age at birth when administered antenatally, to reduce the incidence of neonatal infections when administered intrapartum, and to improve survival when administered in infancy. Questions remain regarding whether azithromycin can prevent stillbirths, and regarding the optimal strategy for the delivery of azithromycin to pregnant women and their infants.

Methods And Analysis: Sauver avec l'Azithromycine en Traitant les Femmes Enceintes et les Enfants (SANTE) is a 2×2 factorial, individually randomised, placebo-controlled, double-masked trial in rural Mali.

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Importance: The number of deaths of children younger than 5 years has been steadily decreasing worldwide, from more than 17 million annual deaths in the 1970s to an estimated 5.3 million in 2019 (with 2.8 million deaths occurring in those aged 1-59 months [53% of all deaths in children aged <5 years]).

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