Neonatal indicator data in Tanzania District Health Information System: evaluation of availability and quality of selected newborn indicators, 2015-2022.

Background: The Every Newborn Action Plan (ENAP) indicators are essential in monitoring neonatal healthcare coverage and quality. The District Health Information System (DHIS2), an open-source platform in over 80 countries, supports health data collection and analysis, enabling progress tracking at national and subnational levels. This study evaluates the availability and quality of maternal and newborn health indicators, explicitly focusing on ENAP indicators within Tanzania's DHIS2.

Sex differences in survival from melanoma of the skin: The role of age, anatomic location and stage at diagnosis: A CONCORD-3 study in 59 countries.

Background: CONCORD-3 highlighted wide disparities in population-based 5-year net survival for cutaneous melanoma during 2000-2014. Studies showed a survival advantage in women, but the reasons are not completely understood. We aim to estimate trends in age-standardised 5-year net survival by sex and to examine the role of age, anatomic location and stage on the survival advantage for women worldwide.

Consent and violence amongst men in the context of sexualised drug use: A systematic scoping review.

Sexualised drug use (SDU) is a highly prevalent phenomenon of increasing public health significance in communities of men who have sex with men (MSM). This prospectively registered PRISMA-ScR-adherent systematic scoping review examines the current state of knowledge surrounding violence amongst MSM in the context of SDU. A broad search was conducted across four databases, with no restrictions.

Challenges in estimating the counterfactual placebo HIV incidence rate from a registration cohort: The PrEPVacc trial.

Background: There is increasing recognition that the interpretation of active-controlled HIV prevention trials should consider the counterfactual placebo HIV incidence rate, that is, the rate that would have been observed if the trial had included a placebo control arm. The PrEPVacc HIV vaccine and pre-exposure prophylaxis trial (NCT04066881) incorporated a pre-trial registration cohort partly for this purpose. In this article, we describe our attempts to model the counterfactual placebo HIV incidence rate from the registration cohort.

Leptospirosis, melioidosis, and rickettsioses in the vicious circle of neglect.

The global priorities in the field of infectious diseases are constantly changing. While emerging viral infections have regularly dominated public health attention, which has only intensified after the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous bacterial diseases have previously caused, and continue to cause, significant morbidity and mortality-deserving equal attention. Three potentially life-threatening endemic bacterial diseases (leptospirosis, melioidosis, and rickettsioses) are a huge public health concern especially in low- and middle-income countries.

All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality in Children With Congenital Zika Syndrome in Brazil.

Importance: Congenital Zika syndrome (CZS) can lead to a range of developmental and neurological issues, which increases the risk of early death. However, the all-cause and cause-specific mortality in children with CZS in the first 5 years of life remain unknown.

Objective: To compare the hazard of all-cause and cause-specific mortality before age 5 years among children with and without CZS in Brazil.

Monitoring molecular markers associated with antimalarial drug resistance in south-east Senegal from 2021 to 2023.

Background: Since 2006, artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) have been introduced in Senegal in response to chloroquine resistance (CQ-R) and have shown high efficacy against Plasmodium falciparum. However, the detection of the PfKelch13R515K mutation in Kaolack, which confers artemisinin resistance in vitro, highlights the urgency of strengthening antimalarial drug surveillance to achieve malaria elimination by 2030.

Objective: To assess the proportion of P.

A global review of national guidelines of post-exposure prophylaxis for the prevention of HIV.

Introduction: The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends the use of antiretroviral drugs as post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) for preventing HIV acquisition for occupational and non-occupational exposures. To inform the development of global WHO recommendations on PEP, we reviewed national guidelines of PEP for their recommendations.

Methods: Policies addressing PEP from 38 WHO HIV priority countries were obtained by searching governmental and non-governmental websites and consulting country and regional experts; these countries were selected based on HIV burden, new HIV acquisitions and the number of HIV-associated deaths.

Cerebral Malaria in Adults: A Retrospective Descriptive Analysis of 80 Cases in a Tertiary Hospital in The Gambia, 2020-2023.

Background And Aim: Cerebral malaria in Gambian children has been studied but there is limited information on CM in adults. The study assesses the clinical features and outcome of CM in adult patients admitted at the Edward Francis Small Teaching Hospital.

Method: This was a retrospective review of all adult patients with malaria admitted to the internal medicine department from October 18, 2020 to February 2, 2022.

Remedial, institutional or radical? Explaining community responses to violence against women in an NGO programme to prevent violence in Mumbai, India.

Despite ambitions in development and global health policy to transform communities into supportive environments for women facing risks of violence, our understanding of how to best engage communities remains incomplete. In particular, there is little evidence on the types of strategies that communities employ to address violence against women (VAW). We aimed to describe and analyse the processes involved in community responses to incidents of VAW in a non-governmental organisation (NGO) violence prevention programme in Mumbai, India.

Young people's experiences of informal kinship care in Luwero, Uganda.

There is strong evidence that outside parental care, informal kinship care is the most practiced, sustainable and affordable form of childcare in SSA (sub-Saharan Africa). As a longstanding cultural tradition, informal kinship care embraces childcare as the responsibility of all extended family members, and often the wider community. However, over the past decades, informal kinship care has become gradually strained by political, economic and social conditions, such as: legacies of colonialism, increasing levels of poverty and inequality, instability, or infectious diseases.

'They went for the test together but came back separately': a constructivist grounded theory perspective on male engagement in antenatal HIV testing in Bamenda, Cameroon.

Introduction: Male engagement in HIV testing during pregnancy significantly contributes towards the prevention of maternal seroconversion and paediatric HIV acquisition. Despite this, men especially the male partners of pregnant women have been consistently missing in the HIV prevention cascade. The factors accounting for sub-optimal levels in male engagement intersect but reasons for this are poorly understood.

Conference report of the 2024 Antimicrobial Resistance Meeting.

The Antimicrobial Resistance - Genomes, Big Data and Emerging Technologies Conference explored key topics including measuring the burden of AMR, global public health pathogen genomics infrastructure and surveillance, translation and implementation of genomics for AMR control, use of techniques such as wastewater surveillance, mathematical and statistical modelling, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to aid understanding of AMR. This report describes research presented during plenary sessions and discussions, keynote presentations and posters.

Recombinant production platform for Group A Streptococcus glycoconjugate vaccines.

Group A Streptococcus (Strep A) is a human-exclusive bacterial pathogen killing annually more than 500,000 patients, and no current licensed vaccine exists. Strep A bacteria are highly diverse, but all produce an essential, abundant, and conserved surface carbohydrate, the Group A Carbohydrate, which contains a rhamnose polysaccharide (RhaPS) backbone. RhaPS is a validated universal vaccine candidate in a glycoconjugate prepared by chemical conjugation of the native carbohydrate to a carrier protein.

Measuring the duration of kangaroo mother care for neonates: a scoping review.

Objectives: Kangaroo mother care (KMC) is high impact for survival of low birth weight neonates, but there are few rigorous evaluations of duration required for impact. We conducted a scoping review of KMC duration measurement methods and assessed their validation.

Design: Scoping review in accordance with Joanna Briggs Institute guidance for conducting scoping review.

Challenges and opportunities of artificial intelligence in African health space.

The application of artificial intelligence (AI) to healthcare in Africa has the potential to transform productivity, diagnosis, disease surveillance, and resource allocation by improving accuracy and efficiency. However, to fully realize its benefits, it is necessary to consider issues concerning data privacy, equity, infrastructure integration, and ethical policy development. The use of these tools may improve the detection of diseases, the distribution of resources, and the continuity of care.

Surgical Management of Gestational Gigantomastia: A Case Report Highlighting Therapeutic Intervention.

Gigantomastia is an exceedingly rare condition characterized by extraordinary growth of breasts during pregnancy, and its underlying etiology remains elusive. Although surgical intervention is the primary treatment modality, there have been emerging prospects for utilizing adjunctive medical therapies, such as bromocriptine, to address this challenging condition. Herein, we report the case of a 26-year-old woman who experienced abrupt and asymmetric bilateral breast enlargement commencing in the second month of her pregnancy.

Data-driven discovery of associations between prescribed drugs and dementia risk: A systematic review.

Abstract: Recent clinical trials on slowing dementia progression have led to renewed focus on finding safer, more effective treatments. One approach to identify plausible candidates is to assess whether existing medications for other conditions may affect dementia risk. We conducted a systematic review to identify studies adopting a data-driven approach to investigate the association between a wide range of prescribed medications and dementia risk.

Navigating vaccine confidence: A mixed methods study investigating healthcare providers' perspectives across four non-EU European regions.

Background: Vaccine confidence remains a global public health challenge, especially highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Public trust in vaccines is crucial, with healthcare providers (HCPs) playing a pivotal role in navigating this sensitive topic. This requires an understanding of HCPs' perceptions of vaccines.

Incorporating Community Case Management in Risk-Based Surveillance for Malaria Elimination in the Dominican Republic.

As countries strive for malaria elimination, it is crucial to gather sufficient evidence to confirm the absence of transmission. Routine surveillance data often lack the sensitivity to detect community transmission at low levels. In the Dominican Republic, community health workers (CHWs) have been deployed in malaria foci to perform active case detection.

Mortality among 5 to 19-year-olds in rural Mali.

The unique healthcare needs of 5 to 9-year-olds and adolescents (10-19 years) in low- and middle-income countries have been largely neglected. We generated estimates of 5 to 9-year-old and adolescent mortality in rural Mali, a setting with high under-five mortality, and aimed to define associated individual and household risk factors. We analysed cross-sectional baseline household survey data from the ProCCM trial (NCT02694055) conducted in Bankass District, Mali collected in December 2016 and January 2017.