Valorization of recycled wastes in pavement preventive maintenance: A review on reclaimed asphalt pavement and recycled waste tire.

Pavement preventive maintenance (PPM) is critical to ensuring traffic efficiency, road user experience, and safety. However, it imposes significant costs in annual road infrastructure budgets because it requires high-quality and natural material resources. This study provides a systematic and comprehensive review on the use of recycled wastes as an alternative for the natural materials used in PPM mixes.

Immunisation coverage and factors associated with incomplete immunisation in children under two during the COVID-19 pandemic in Sierra Leone.

Background: Routine childhood immunisation is one of the most important life-saving public health interventions. However, many children still have inadequate access to these vaccines and millions remain (partially) unvaccinated globally. As the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted health systems worldwide, its effects on immunisation have become apparent.

Lessons From the COVID-19 Pandemic Response Implementation: A Case Study of South Sudan and Sierra Leone.

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic caused havoc to health systems worldwide and in countries that already had weak health systems. There are lessons to be learned that could contribute to improved response preparedness to future public health emergencies, but there is little documentation on best practices in fragile countries. We describe lessons from South Sudan and Sierra Leone during the COVID-19 response implementation.

Using photovoice methodology to uncover individual-level, health systems, and contextual barriers to uptake of second dose of measles containing vaccine in Western Area Urban, Sierra Leone, 2020.

Background: Vaccination coverage for the second dose of the measles-containing vaccine (MCV2) among children has remained stagnant in Sierra Leone at nearly 67% since its introduction in 2015. Identifying community-specific barriers faced by caregivers in accessing MCV2 services for their children and by health workers in delivering MCV2 is key to informing strategies to improve vaccination coverage.

Methods: We used Photovoice, a participatory method using photographs and narratives to understand community barriers to MCV2 uptake from March- September 2020.

Coverage of intermittent preventive treatment of malaria in infants after four years of implementation in Sierra Leone.

Background: Intermittent Preventive Treatment of malaria in infants (IPTi) is a malaria control strategy consisting of the administration of an anti-malarial drug alongside routine immunizations. So far, this is being implemented nationwide in Sierra Leone only. IPTi has been renamed as Perennial Malaria Chemoprevention -PMC-, accounting for its recently recommended expansion into the second year of life.