Global health partnerships: building multi-national collaborations to achieve lasting improvements in maternal and neonatal health

Abstract Background In response to health care challenges worldwide, extensive funding has been channeled to the world’s most vulnerable health systems. Funding alone is not sufficient to address the complex issues and challenges plaguing these health systems. To see lasting improvement in maternal and infant health outcomes in the developing world, a global commitment to the sharing of knowledge and resources through international partnerships is critical. But partnerships that merely introduce western medical techniques and protocols to low resource settings, without heeding the local contexts, are misguided and unsustainable. Forming partnerships with mutual respect, shared vision, and collaborative effort is needed to ensure that all parties, irrespective of whether they belong to resource rich or resource poor settings, learn from each other so that meaningful and sustained system strengthening can take place. Methods In this paper, we describe the partnership building model of an international NGO, Kybele, which is committed to achieving childbirth safety through sustained partnerships in low resource settings. The Kybele model adapts generic stages of successful partnerships documented in the literature to four principles relevant to Kybele’s work. A multiple-case study approach is used to demonstrate how the model is applied in different country settings. Results The four principle of Kybele’s partnership model are robust drivers of successful partnerships in diverse country settings. Conclusions Much has been written about the need for multi-country partnerships to achieve sustainable outcomes in global health, but few papers in the literature describe how this has been achieved in practice. A strong champion, support and engagement of stakeholders, co-creation of solutions with partners, and involvement of partners in the delivery of solutions are all requirements for successful and sustained partnerships

Comparing the genetic typing methods for effective surveillance and rabies control in Georgia

A full nucleoprotein gene sequencing of 68 isolates collected from passive rabies surveillance system in Georgia between 2015 and 2016 identified two distinct dog rabies phylogroups, GEO_V1 and GEO_V2, which both belonged to the cosmopolitan dog clade. GEO_V1 was found throughout the country and was further divided into four sub-phylogroups that overlapped geographically; GEO_V2 was found in the southeast region and was closely related to dog rabies in Azerbaijan. A sequence analysis of the full N gene, partial nucleoprotein gene of N-terminal and C-terminal, and the amplicon sequences of pan-lyssavirus RT-qPCR LN34 showed that all four sequencing approaches provided clear genetic typing results of canine rabies and could further differentiate GEO_V1 and GEO_V2. The phylogenetic analysis results vary and were affected by the length of the sequences used. Amplicon sequencing of the LN34 assay positive samples provided a rapid and cost-effective method for rabies genetic typing, which is important for improving rabies surveillance and canine rabies eradication globally

High-amplitude and high-frequency oscillations of temperature and current in SOI structure

Interconnected oscillations of current, lattice temperature and electron-hole pair concentration were observed in silicon on insulator (SOI) structures upon heating with current at extremely high power. They occur because of the joint action of two competing mechanisms: temperature dependent thermal generation of electron-hole pairs and pair concentration decreasing by current flowing in silicon film through a non-uniform temperature field

High-Amplitude and High-Frequency Oscillations of Temperature, Electron-Hole pair concentration, and Current in SOI Structures

Interacting oscillations of the current, lattice temperature, and concentration of thermally generated electron–hole pairs were discovered in silicon films of silicon-on-insulator structures upon their heating with extremely high current. The nature of the oscillations discovered is fundamentally different from what has yet been known. They occur owing to two competing processes: the thermal generation of electron–hole pairs, and the pair concentration reduction caused by the current flowing through the silicon film with nonuniform temperature field. In our experiments the current density reached 1.5x10^5 A/cm2 and the specific power dissipated in the silicon film exceeded 3.6 GW/cm3.We observed the oscillation frequencies up to 3 MHz and variations of the current and pair concentration were more than tenfold, while the temperature varied from 700–740 to 950–1300 K