Impact evaluation of a quality improvement intervention on maternal and child health outcomes in Northern Ghana: early assessment of a national scale-up project

To evaluate the influence of the early phase of Project Fives Alive!, a national child survival improvement project, on key maternal and child health outcomes

Global Research Priorities to Better Understand the Burden of Iatrogenic Harm in Primary Care: An International Delphi Exercise

There is a need to identify and reach agreement on key foci for patient safety research in primary care contexts and understand how these priorities differ between low-, middle-, and high-income settings. We conducted a modified Delphi exercise, which was distributed to an international panel of experts in patient safety and primary care. Family practice and pharmacy were considered the main contexts on which to focus attention in order to advance patient safety in primary care across all income categories. Other clinical contexts prioritised included community midwifery and nursing in low-income countries and care homes in high-income countries. The sources of patient safety incidents requiring further study across all economic settings that were identified were communication between health care professionals and with patients, teamwork within the health care team, laboratory and diagnostic imaging investigations, issues relating to data management, transitions between different care settings, and chart/patient record com- pleteness. This work lays the foundation for a range of research initiatives that aim to promote a more comprehensive appreciation of the burden of unsafe primary care, develop understanding of the main areas of risk, and identify interventions that can enhance the safety of primary care provision internationall

Situation analysis of parasitological and entomological indices of onchocerciasis transmission in three drainage basins of the rain forest of South West Cameroon after a decade of ivermectin treatment

BACKGROUND: Community-Directed Treatment with Ivermectin (CDTI) is the main strategy adopted by the African Programme for Onchocerciasis control (APOC). Recent reports from onchocerciasis endemic areas of savannah zones have demonstrated the feasibility of disease elimination through CDTI. Such information is lacking in rain forest zones. In this study, we investigated the parasitological and entomological indices of onchocerciasis transmission in three drainage basins in the rain forest area of Cameroon [after over a decade of CDTI]. River basins differed in terms of river number and their flow rates; and were characterized by high pre-control prevalence rates (60-98%). METHODS: Nodule palpation and skin snipping were carried out in the study communities to determine the nodule rates, microfilarial prevalences and intensity. Simulium flies were caught at capture points and dissected to determine the biting, parous, infection and infective rates and the transmission potential. RESULTS: The highest mean microfilaria (mf) prevalence was recorded in the Meme (52.7%), followed by Mungo (41.0%) and Manyu drainage basin (33.0%). The same trend was seen with nodule prevalence between the drainage basins. Twenty-three (23/39) communities (among which 13 in the Meme) still had mf prevalence above 40%. All the communities surveyed had community microfilarial loads (CMFL) below 10 mf/skin snip (ss). The infection was more intense in the Mungo and Meme. The intensity of infection was still high in younger individuals and children less than 10 years of age. Transmission potentials as high as 1211.7 infective larvae/person/month were found in some of the study communities. Entomological indices followed the same trend as the parasitological indices in the three river basins with the Meme having the highest values. CONCLUSION: When compared with pre-control data, results of the present study show that after over a decade of CDTI, the burden of onchocerciasis has reduced. However, transmission is still going on in this study site where loiasis and onchocerciasis are co-endemic and where ecological factors strongly favour the onchocerciasis transmission. The possible reasons for this persistent and differential transmission despite over a decade of control efforts using ivermectin are discussed. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13071-015-0817-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Adolescent self-harm in Ghana: a qualitative interview-based study of first-hand accounts

Background: Recent prevalence studies suggest that self-harm among adolescents in sub-Saharan Africa is as common as it is in high income countries. However, very few qualitative studies exploring first-person accounts of adolescent self-harm are available from sub-Saharan Africa. We sought to explore the experiences and first-person perspectives of Ghanaian adolescents reporting self-harm - for deeper reflections on the interpretive repertoires available in their cultural context for making sense of self-harm in adolescents. Methods: Guided by a semi-structured interview protocol, we interviewed one-to-one 36 adolescents (24 in-school adolescents and 12 street-connected adolescents) on their experiences of self-harm. We applied experiential thematic analysis to the data. Results: Adolescents’ description of the background to their self-harm identified powerlessness in the family context and unwanted adultification in the family as key factors leading up to self-harm among both in-school and street-connected adolescents. Adolescents’ explanatory accounts identified the contradictory role of adultification as a protective factor against self-harm among street-connected adolescents. Self-harm among in-school adolescents was identified as a means of “enactment of tabooed emotions and contestations”, as a “selfish act and social injury”, as “religious transgression”, while it was also seen as improving social relations. Conclusions: The first-person accounts of adolescents in this study implicate familial relational problems and interpersonal difficulties as proximally leading to self-harm in adolescents. Self-harm in adolescents is interpreted as an understandable response, and as a strong communicative signal in response to powerlessness and family relationship difficulties. These findings need to be taken into consideration in the planning of services in Ghana and are likely to be generalisable to many other countries in sub-Saharan Africa

Comparing children's care work across majority and minority worlds

Comparative qualitative methodologies that investigate children's lives in sharply contrasting socio-economic, political and welfare contexts are relatively unusual. Yet within an increasingly interdependent globalised world, comparative research and dialogue across binaries seems ever more important. In this chapter, we critically reflect on global conceptualisations of young caregiving and discuss the methodological and ethical challenges that arose in our comparative study of children caring for a parent/relative living with HIV in Tanzania and the UK. We discuss the potential problems and benefits of using the term "young carer" and suggest that levels of support and recognition of children's caring roles in particular countries do not follow a simple Majority/Minority world binary, but rather reveal a more complex picture. We argue that developing global perspectives that work across geographical, linguistic and disciplinary boundaries can facilitate greater understanding of the commonalities and diversities of children's caring lives globally

Randomized, controlled, double-blind trial with ivermectin on Loa loa microfilaraemia : efficacy of a low dose (similar to 25 mu g/kg) versus current standard dose (150 mu g/kg)

Neurological. serious adverse events (SAEs) following ivermectin treatment may occur in individuals harbouring high Loa loa microfilarial densities and are of major concern in the context of mass ivermectin distributions organized in Africa for onchocerciasis and lymphatic filariasis control. As those SAEs are induced by the rapid and massive microfilaricidal effect of a standard dose of ivermectin (150 mu g/kg), we performed a randomized, controlled, double-blind trial to determine whether ivermectin given as: (a) a single tow dose of 1.5 mg (i.e. 25 mu g/kg for a 60 kg person); or (b) two doses of 1.5 mg given at a 2 week interval leads to a more progressive decrease in Loa microfilarial toads compared with the standard dosage. A tow dose of ivermectin brought about a significantly smaller decrease in Loa microfilaraemia than the standard dose. However, this decrease was not sufficiently different from that obtained after the standard dose to be acceptable to public health programmes, which require a wide safety margin. A second tow dose of ivermectin given 15 days after the first dose did not lead to a further decrease in Loa microfilaraemia. Lastly, the variability in the response observed in the group treated with 25 mu g/kg suggests that even lower doses would have no effect on a significant number of patients. Ivermectin given at a low dose (<= 25 mu g/kg) is probably not adequate to prevent the occurrence of post-treatment neurological SAEs