Maternal health leaders' perceptions of barriers to midwife-led care in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Somalia, and Uganda.

Objective: To identify and examine barriers to midwife-led care in Eastern Africa and how these barriers can be reduced DESIGN: A qualitative inductive study with online focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews using content analysis SETTING: The study examines midwife-led care in Ethiopia, Malawi, Kenya, Somalia, and Uganda -five African countries with an unmet need for midwives and a need to improve maternal and neonatal health outcomes.

Participants: Twenty-five participants with a health care profession background and current position as a maternal and child health leader from one of the five study countries.

Findings: The findings demonstrate barriers to midwife-led care connected to organisational structures, traditional hierarchies, gender disparities, and inadequate leadership.

Faecal sludge containment characteristics and their implications on safe desludging in unplanned settlements of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

In unplanned urban settlements, where onsite sanitation systems are the norm, desludging of faecal sludge (FS) containments is a necessity because of the lack of land space to enable new construction. Poorly designed toilet facilities however may jeopardize the progress towards attainment of safely managed sanitation. This study examined FS characteristics and containment design and their effect on safe desludging with a case of two selected unplanned settlements of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.