Insufficient nurses caring for sick babies on hospitals’ neonatal units in Kenya seriously undermine efforts to deliver high quality, safe care and make reducing neonatal mortality rates very difficult . Led by David Gathara, the Kenyan and Oxford team conducted the first ever direct observational study of which tasks nurses were able to perform and quantified how much care is missed. Previous work on missed nursing care largely conducted in rich countries has relied on questionnaires so this new work is an important advance.

Posted 11/06/2019. Remaining foci of malaria transmission are often in forests, where vectors tend to bite during daytime and outdoors thus reducing the effectiveness of insecticide treated bednets. Limited periods of exposure suggest that chemoprophylaxis could be a promising strategy to protect forest workers against malaria. Lorenz Von Seidlein and colleagues discuss which antimalarial drug regimens are most appropriate, how frequently the chemoprophylaxis should be delivered, and how to motivate forest workers to use and adhere to malaria prophylaxis.

Posted 07/06/2019. Juan Carrique-Mas and colleagues quantified the retail prices of the most common antimicrobials used in chicken farms in Vietnam. By comparing these costs with antibiotics for human use, they conclude that extreme low prices of antimicrobials for animal production may be a major factor driving excessive use. The authors advocate for a taxing system that restricts the use of critically important antimicrobials in agriculture.