Publications by authors named "S Makiala"
Introduction: Rift Valley Fever (RVF) has caused outbreaks in Africa, impacting human health and animal trade. Recently, sporadic detections among humans and animals in East Africa have replaced large-scale outbreaks. We assessed RVF knowledge levels in East and Central Africa across countries with different epidemiological profiles.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The coronavirus pandemic again highlighted the need for robust health care facility infection prevention and control (IPC) programmes. WHO guidelines on the core components (CCs) of IPC programmes provides guidance for facilities, but their implementation can be difficult to achieve in resource-limited settings. We aimed to gather evidence on an initial WHO IPC implementation experience using a mixed methods approach.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- In October 2020, a study in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, aimed to determine the true prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in the general population, revealing a much higher level of infection than the officially reported cases.
- The serosurvey involved 1233 participants and found a weighted, age-standardized seroprevalence of 16.6%, with the majority being women and a mean age of 32.4 years.
- The study highlighted an infection-to-case ratio of 292:1, emphasizing the need for ongoing serosurveys to inform public health policies regarding COVID-19 response measures.
The recent large outbreaks of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in West Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have highlighted the need for rapid diagnostic tests to control this disease. In this study, we clinically evaluated a previously developed immunochromatography-based kit, QuickNavi-Ebola. During the 2018 outbreaks in DRC, 928 blood samples from EVD-suspected cases were tested with QuickNavi-Ebola and the WHO-approved GeneXpert.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: In 2017, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) recorded its eighth Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak, approximately 3 years after the previous outbreak.
Methods: Suspect cases of EVD were identified on the basis of clinical and epidemiological information. Reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) analysis or serological testing was used to confirm Ebola virus infection in suspected cases.