How much do Blantyre dispensers in hospital and community pharmacies know about the new Malaria treatment guidelines?

ObjectiveTo determine the knowledge of dispensers in hospital and community pharmacies within Blantyre on new malaria treatment guidelines.MethodsAn interviewer administered questionnaire was used for data collection and the questions focused on the knowledge of dispensers on the new malaria treatment guidelines and whether the subjects were involved in the preparation or implementation of the guidelines or had undertaken any training on how to dispense the new anti-malarial medicines.ResultsNone of the participants had been involved in the preparation of the treatment guidelines and only 45.5% of the participants had undertaken the pre-implementation training. Ninety percent of the interviewees had knowledge concerning the appropriate treatment of malaria in pregnancy. However, as many as 90.9% of the interviewed participants could not mention any possible five or more side-effects of LA and only 13.6% knew how to properly manage the possible effects. Only 27.3% knew the correct dose regimen of LA and none of them knew the condition of taking LA with a fatty meal for improved absorption.Conclusion and RecommendationsLack of involvement of the pharmaceutical personnel working in hospital and community pharmacies, from the preparation of new malaria treatment guidelines to their implementation, inadequate training and qualifications of the dispensing personnel contributed to their lack of knowledge and skill on how to rationally dispense the medicines. Pharmaceutical personnel dispensing in the pharmacies need to be involved from the beginning in the preparation of treatment guidelines. Adequate training should be provided and followed by continuous professional education

Critical Care Units in Malawi: A Cross-Sectional Study

Background: The global burden of critical illness falls disproportionately outside high-income countries. Despite younger patient populations with similar or lower disease severity, critical illness outcomes are poor outside high-income countries. A lack of data limits attempts to understand and address the drivers of critical care outcomes outside high-income countries. Objectives: We aim to characterize the organization, available resources, and service capacity of public sector critical care units in Malawi and identify barriers to improving care. Methods: We conducted a secondary analysis of the Malawi Emergency and Critical Care Survey, a cross-sectional study performed from January to February 2020 at all four central hospitals and a simple random sample of nine out of 24 public sector district hospitals in Malawi, a predominantly rural, low-income country of 19.6 million in southern Africa. Data from critical care units were used to characterize resources, processes, and barriers to care. Findings: There were four HDUs and four ICUs across the 13 hospitals in the Malawi Emergency and Critical Care Survey sample. The median critical care beds per 1,000,000 catchment was 1.4 (IQR: 0.9 to 6.7). Absent equipment was the most common barrier in HDUs (46% [95% CI: 32% to 60%]). Stockouts was the most common barriers in ICUs (48% [CI: 38% to 58%]). ICUs had a median 3.0 (range: 2 to 8) functional ventilators per unit and reported an ability to perform several quality mechanical ventilation interventions. Conclusions: Although significant gaps exist, Malawian critical care units report the ability to perform several complex clinical processes. Our results highlight regional inequalities in access to care and support the use of process-oriented questions to assess critical care capacity. Future efforts should focus on basic critical care capacity outside of urban areas and quantify the impact of context-specific variables on critical care mortality

Healthcare professionals' level of medication knowledge in Africa:A systematic review

OBJECTIVE: Understanding how much healthcare professionals (HCPs) know about medication can help to devise strategies to improve rational medication use. This study aimed to synthesis information on the level of medication knowledge of HCPs in Africa. METHOD: We performed a systematic literature study in Embase and PubMed. We included original studies quantifying HCPs' medication knowledge, published between 2012 and 2016. We extracted disease focus, country, number and type of HCPs included and all medication-related knowledge questions and scored the quality of papers. The outcome measure was the percentage HCPs who correctly answered medication knowledge questions. RESULTS: We identified 64 studies from 12 African countries, comprising 13,911 HCPs, mostly nurses/midwifes and physicians. We extracted 306 medication-related knowledge questions, and only 52% (SD 28) of HCPs correctly answered them. Knowledge questions were mainly about medication prescribed for communicable diseases (70%), followed by non-communicable diseases (11%), and family Planning/Gynecology (10%). Most papers concluded that there was a considerable medication knowledge gap among HCPs. CONCLUSION: We found a low level of medication knowledge across different disease areas, countries and HCPs. This underlines the continuous need to strengthen the undergraduate and postgraduate education in (clinical) pharmacology and therapeutics in Africa

Dataset in support of the Southampton doctoral thesis : Understanding social capital and the role it plays in food security in Malawi

Qualitative fieldwork notes from focus group discussions (FGDs) in support of Chapter 5 of doctoral thesis &quot;Bonding, bridging and linking social capital combinations for food access; A gendered case study exploring temporal differences in Southern Malawi.&quot; This research paper has been submitted to the Journal of Rural Studies.The FGDs were conducted with a seasonal calendar at the start, FGD and ranking exercise at the end (available in this data notes). The research themes in this data were conducted based on questions around food security, social capital, temporal changes, gender and weather, to explore how social capital typologies are used to access food. </span

Additional file 1 of Critical care capacity and care bundles on medical wards in Malawi: a cross-sectional study

Additional file 1: Table S1. Wards Reporting Adequate Ability to Perform Key Critical Care Signal Functions