Impact of prepackaging antimalarial drugs on cost to patients and compliance with treatment

OBJECTIVE: To examine the extent to which district health teams could reduce the burden of malaria, a continuing major cause of mortality and morbidity, in a situation where severe resource constraints existed and integrated care was provided. METHODS: Antimalarial drugs were prepackaged into unit doses in an attempt to improve compliance with full courses of chemotherapy. FINDINGS:Compliance improved by approximately 20% in both adults and children. There were 50% reductions in cost to patients, waiting time at dispensaries and drug wastage at facilities. The intervention, which tended to improve both case and drug management at facilities, was well accepted by health staff and did not involve them in additional working time. CONCLUSION:The prepackaging of antimalarials at the district level offers the prospect of improved compliance and a reduction in the spread of resistance

Performance of maize populations under different nitrogen rates in northern Ghana

This study evaluated grain yield performance, stability and agronomic nitrogen-use efficiency (AE) of twelve maize populations under three nitrogen (N) rates at two locations in the Guinea and Sudan savannah zones of Ghana in 2014 and 2015. The N rates used were 0, 30, and 90 kg N ha−1. Computations were made for grain yield and AE. Populations × nitrogen interactions were significant for grain yield and AE at the three N rates. The mean yield of the populations under 0, 30, and 90 kg N ha−1 were 1.42, 4.12, and 6.80 t ha−1, respectively. Mean AE of the populations under low-N and high-N was 90.34 and 59.73 kg kg−1, respectively. Populations LNP-Syn-W, TZPB-LN-Syn and IWD-C2-Syn-F2 were efficient under both low-N and high-N inputs and produced 229.17 kg ha−1 and 572.5 kg ha−1 more grains than the average yield of all the populations under low-N and high-N, respectively. The results of this study indicated that the highest response to selection of N-efficient maize populations is achieved under low-N when the grain yield reduction at low-N is 39% of those of high-N environments. Keywords: Grain yield stability, Low soil nitrogen, Nitrogen use efficiency, Genotype × nitrogen interactio