Outcomes of older adults undergoing allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation with post-transplant cyclophosphamide based prophylaxis.

This study evaluates the feasibility of using post-transplant cyclophosphamide (PTCY) prophylaxis in allo-hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) for adults aged 65 and older. PTCY is increasingly used to prevent graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) across all donor types, but concerns remain about potential risks, especially in older patients. Fifty-seven adults aged 65 or older with hematological malignancies, undergoing their first allo-HCT with PTCY prophylaxis between January 2011 and January 2023 were included.

The impact of COVID-19 on essential health service provision for endemic infectious diseases in the South-East Asia region: A systematic review.

Background: There is increasing evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted adversely on the provision of essential health services. The South East Asia region (SEAR) has experienced extremely high rates of COVID-19 infection, and continues to bear a significant proportion of communicable disease burden worldwide.

Methods: We conducted a systematic literature review of quantitative evidence to estimate the impact of COVID-19 on the provision of essential prevention, detection, treatment, and management services for five high-burden infectious diseases across the SEAR.

The impact of COVID-19 on essential health service provision for noncommunicable diseases in the South-East Asia region: A systematic review.

Background: COVID-19 has had a profound impact on the health systems of the 11 countries of the WHO South East Asia Region. We conducted a systematic review of studies that used quantitative and comparative approaches to assess the impact of the pandemic on the service provision of four noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) (cancer, cardiovascular disease, chronic respiratory diseases, and diabetes) in the region.

Methods: A systematic search was conducted in PubMed, Embase, MedRxiv, and WHO COVID-19 databases in December 2021.

Trends in Influenza Infections in Three States of India from 2015-2021: Has There Been a Change during COVID-19 Pandemic?

The COVID-19 pandemic and public health response to the pandemic has caused huge setbacks in the management of other infectious diseases. In the present study, we aimed to (i) assess the trends in numbers of samples from patients with influenza-like illness and severe acute respiratory syndrome tested for influenza and the number and proportion of cases detected from 2015−2021 and (ii) examine if there were changes during the COVID-19 period (2020−2021) compared to the pre-COVID-19 period (2015−2019) in three states of India. The median (IQR) number of samples tested per month during the pre-COVID-19 period was 653 (395−1245), compared to 27 (11−98) during the COVID-19 period (p value < 0.

Performance of an Emergency Road Ambulance Service in Bhutan: Response Time, Utilization, and Outcomes.

An efficient ambulance service is a vital component of emergency medical services. We determined the emergency ambulance response and transport times and ambulance exit outcomes in Bhutan. A cross-sectional study involving real-time monitoring of emergency ambulance deployments managed by a central toll-free (112) hotline (20 October 2021 to 20 January 2022) was carried out.

Perspectives on deployment of humanitarian workers through operational partnerships during the acute emergency health response to the Rohingya refugee crisis in Cox's Bazar.

Background: The unprecedented influx of Rohingya refugees into Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, in 2017 led to a humanitarian emergency requiring large numbers of humanitarian workers to be deployed to the region. The World Health Organization (WHO) contributed to this effort through well-established deployment mechanisms: the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN) and the Standby Partnerships (SBP). The study captures the views and experiences of those humanitarian workers deployed by WHO through operational partnerships between December 2017 and February 2019 with the purpose of identifying challenges and good practice during the deployment process, and steps to their improvement.

Novel Use of Capture-Recapture Methods to Estimate Completeness of Contact Tracing during an Ebola Outbreak, Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2018-2020.

Despite its critical role in containing outbreaks, the efficacy of contact tracing, measured as the sensitivity of case detection, remains an elusive metric. We estimated the sensitivity of contact tracing by applying unilist capture-recapture methods on data from the 2018-2020 outbreak of Ebola virus disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. To compute sensitivity, we applied different distributional assumptions to the zero-truncated count data to estimate the number of unobserved case-patients with any contacts and infected contacts.

Healthcare-associated outbreaks of bacterial infections in Africa, 2009-2018: A review.

Background: Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) are a major global public health problem, increasing the transmission of drug-resistant infections. In Africa, the prevalence of HAIs among all hospital inpatients is estimated to be between 3% and 15%, but outbreaks are infrequently reported. Failure to detect and/or report outbreaks can increase the risk of ongoing infections and recurrent outbreaks.

Towards the elimination of dog-mediated rabies: development and application of an evidence-based management tool.

Background: International organizations advocate for the elimination of dog-mediated rabies, but there is only limited guidance on interpreting surveillance data for managing elimination programmes. With the regional programme in Latin America approaching elimination of dog-mediated rabies, we aimed to develop a tool to evaluate the programme's performance and generate locally-tailored rabies control programme management guidance to overcome remaining obstacles.

Methods: We developed and validated a robust algorithm to classify progress towards rabies elimination within sub-national administrative units, which we applied to surveillance data from Brazil and Mexico.

Integration of animal health and public health surveillance sources to exhaustively inform the risk of zoonosis: An application to visceral leishmaniasis data in Brazil.

Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is a parasitic disease that is endemic in more than 80 countries, and leads to high fatality rates when left untreated. We investigate the relationship of VL cases in dogs and human cases, specifically for evidence of VL in dogs leading to excess cases in humans. We use surveillance data for dogs and humans for the years 2007-2011 to conduct both spatial and spatio-temporal analyses.

Unbiased assessment of disease surveillance utilities: A prospect theory application.

Objectives: We contribute a new methodological approach to the ongoing efforts towards evaluating public health surveillance. Specifically, we apply a descriptive framework, grounded in prospect theory (PT), for the evaluation of decisions on disease surveillance deployment. We focus on two attributes of any surveillance system: timeliness, and false positive rate (FPR).

Cystic echinococcosis in South America: a call for action.

Cystic echinococcosis (CE) or hydatidosis, a parasitic zoonosis caused by a cestode of the family Taeniidae, species Echinococcus granulosus, is endemic in Argentina, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, and southern Brazil. This report presents CE figures for these five countries in 2009 - 2014 and proposes indicators to measure national control programs. Nearly 5 000 new CE cases were diagnosed annually in the five countries during the study period.

A Practitioner-Driven Research Agenda for Syndromic Surveillance.

Syndromic surveillance has expanded since 2001 in both scope and geographic reach and has benefited from research studies adapted from numerous disciplines. The practice of syndromic surveillance continues to evolve rapidly. The International Society for Disease Surveillance solicited input from its global surveillance network on key research questions, with the goal of improving syndromic surveillance practice.

Essential oil mediated synthesis of silver nanocrystals for environmental, anti-microbial and antioxidant applications.

Our quest for a green, non-toxic and environmentally benign synthetic design for the fabrication of metal nanoparticles has led to the use of essential oil present in plant parts as the bioreductant. In this report, silver particles at nanoscale have been synthesized using essential oil present in the leaves of Coleus aromaticus at physiological pH and at 373 K. UV-vis spectra of the colloid display strong plasmon bands centred around 396-411 nm, characteristic of silver nanoparticles.

Catalytically and biologically active silver nanoparticles synthesized using essential oil.

There are numerous reports on phytosynthesis of silver nanoparticles and various phytochemicals are involved in the reduction and stabilization. Pure explicit phytosynthetic protocol for catalytically and biologically active silver nanoparticles is of importance as it is an environmentally benign green method. This paper reports the use of essential oil of Myristica fragrans enriched in terpenes and phenyl propenes in the reduction and stabilization.

Manganese speciation in Diplodon chilensis patagonicus shells: a XANES study.

X-ray absorption near-edge spectroscopy (XANES) at the Mn K-edge was used to investigate the environment of Mn in situ within the growth increments of the long-lived freshwater bivalve species Diplodon chilensis patagonicus. Single XANES spectra and Mn Kalpha fluorescence distributions were acquired at submillimetre resolution (up to 100 microm x 50 microm), at Mn concentrations below the weight percent range (100-1000 microg g(-1)) in a high Ca matrix. The position and intensity of the pre-edge feature in the shell spectrum resembles best that of the Mn(II)-bearing reference compounds, suggesting that this is the oxidation state of Mn in the bivalve shells.