Assessing availability, prices, and market share of quality-assured malaria ACT and RDT in the private retail sector in Nigeria and Uganda.

Background: An estimated 50% of suspected malaria cases in sub-Saharan Africa first seek care in the private sector, especially in private medicine retail outlets. Quality of care in these outlets is generally unknown but considered poor with many patients not receiving a confirmatory diagnosis or the recommended first-line artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT). In 2010, a subsidy pilot scheme, the Affordable Medicines Facility malaria, was introduced to crowd out the use of monotherapies in favour of WHO-pre-qualified artemisinin-based combinations (WHO-PQ-ACTs) in the private health sector.

Quality issues with malaria rapid diagnostic test accessories and buffer packaging: findings from a 5-country private sector project in Africa.

Background: Use of antigen-detecting malaria rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) has increased exponentially over the last decade. WHO's Global Malaria Programme, FIND, and other collaborators have established a quality assurance scheme to guide product selection, lot verification, transport, storage, and training procedures. Recent concerns over the quality of buffer packaging and test accessories suggest a need to include these items in product assessments.

Treatment outcomes of new tuberculosis patients hospitalized in Kampala, Uganda: a prospective cohort study.

Background: In most resource limited settings, new tuberculosis (TB) patients are usually treated as outpatients. We sought to investigate the reasons for hospitalisation and the predictors of poor treatment outcomes and mortality in a cohort of hospitalized new TB patients in Kampala, Uganda.

Methods And Findings: Ninety-six new TB patients hospitalised between 2003 and 2006 were enrolled and followed for two years.

Wasting among Uganda men with pulmonary tuberculosis is associated with linear regain in lean tissue mass during and after treatment in contrast to women with wasting who regain fat tissue mass: prospective cohort study.

Background: Nutritional changes during and after tuberculosis treatment have not been well described. We therefore determined the effect of wasting on rate of mean change in lean tissue and fat mass as measured by bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA), and mean change in body mass index (BMI) during and after tuberculosis treatment.

Methods: In a prospective cohort study of 717 adult patients, BMI and height-normalized indices of lean tissue (LMI) and fat mass (FMI) as measured by BIA were assessed at baseline, 3, 12, and 24 months.

Household ventilation and tuberculosis transmission in Kampala, Uganda.

Objective: To test the feasibility of measuring household ventilation and evaluate whether ventilation is associated with tuberculosis (TB) in household contacts in Kampala, Uganda.

Design: Adults with pulmonary TB and their household contacts received home visits to ascertain social and structural household characteristics. Ventilation was measured in air changes per hour (ACH) in each room by raising carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels using dry ice, removing the dry ice, and measuring changes in the natural log of CO₂ (lnCO2) over time.