Ebola infection control in Sierra Leonean health clinics: A large cross-agency cooperative project.

The Ebola virus disease outbreak occurring in West Africa has resulted in at least 199 cases of Ebola in Sierra Leonean health care workers, many as a result of transmission occurring in health facilities. The Ministry of Health and Sanitation of Sierra Leone recognized that improvements in infection prevention and control (IPC) were necessary at all levels of health care delivery. To this end, the U.

Improving malaria treatment and prevention in India by aiding district managers to manage their programmes with local information: a trial assessing the impact of Lot Quality Assurance Sampling on programme outcomes.

Objectives: This paper reports the first trial of Lot Quality Assurance Sampling (LQAS) assessing associations between access to LQAS data and subsequent improvements in district programming. This trial concerns India's approach to addressing an increase in malaria-attributable deaths by training community health workers to diagnose, treat and prevent malaria, while using LQAS to monitor sub-district performance and make programme improvements.

Methods: The Ministry of Health introduced LQAS into four matched high malaria burden districts (Annual Parasite Incidence >5) (N > 5 million).

Putting the C back into the ABCs: a multi-year, multi-region investigation of condom use by Ugandan youths 2003-2010.

A major strategy for preventing transmission of HIV and other STIs is the consistent use of condoms during sexual intercourse. Condom use among youths is particularly important to reduce the number of new cases and the national prevalence. Condom use has been often promoted by the Uganda National AIDS Commission.

Can health workers reliably assess their own work? A test-retest study of bias among data collectors conducting a Lot Quality Assurance Sampling survey in Uganda.

Background: Lot Quality Assurance Sampling (LQAS) is a classification method that enables local health staff to assess health programmes for which they are responsible. While LQAS has been favourably reviewed by the World Bank and World Health Organization (WHO), questions remain about whether using local health staff as data collectors can lead to biased data.

Methods: In this test-retest research, Pallisa Health District in Uganda is subdivided into four administrative units called supervision areas (SA).

Improving the collection of knowledge, attitude and practice data with community surveys: a comparison of two second-stage sampling methods.

Background: Second-stage sampling techniques, including spatial segmentation, are widely used in community health surveys when reliable household sampling frames are not available. In India, an unresearched technique for household selection is used in eight states, which samples the house with the last marriage or birth as the starting point. Users question whether this last-birth or last-marriage (LBLM) approach introduces bias affecting survey results.