Posted 21/01/2020. Naomi Muinga and colleagues report on challenges and the progress made in implementing digital health systems in Kenyan public hospitals. Their focus is on systems used primarily for financial management but are also being used for clinical services. They show that the available infrastructure needs to be strengthened to achieve the full benefits of electronic systems.

Posted 17/01/2020. Malaria is no longer a common cause of febrile illness in many regions of the tropics. Yoel Lubell and colleagues consider the costs and benefits of multiplex malaria/CRP tests that are now commercially available in terms of (i) the improved health outcomes for patients with bacterial illnesses; (ii) the costs of antimicrobial resistance averted; or (iii) the economic benefits of better management of remaining malaria cases and shorter malaria elimination campaigns. They conclude that a multiplexed malaria/CRP test could be highly cost-effective and utilize the well-established funding and distribution systems already in place for malaria RDTs.

Posted 14/01/2020. Vu Thi Ngoc Bich and colleagues analyse the antibiotic resistance gene profiles among humans, animals, and their food and water in a rural Vietnamese community. Colistin resistance genes are predominantly found in both human and animal faeces, and a higher positive proportion of carbapenemase is reported – encoding genes among water and food samples when compared to human and animal faeces. This work is a collaboration between OUCRU and Radboudumc, Maastricht University in the Netherlands and NIHE in Vietnam.