Posted 26/07/2023. Critical illnesses cause several million deaths annually, many occurring in low-resource settings. Despite great efforts and investments, lower income countries faced constraints in upscaling critical care during the COVID-19 pandemic. Rosanna Mazhar, Jacquie Oliwa and colleagues explore how Kenya\u2019s efforts to do so were operationalised, offering insights into some of the challenges faced.
\n \n\n \n \nPosted 10/05/2023. Although yellow fever vaccine provides a lifelong protection to most people, little research was done on HIV population. Josephine Bendera and colleagues evaluate the immunogenicity of fractional and standard doses of yellow fever vaccine on the HIV population. They demonstrate that fractional doses of vaccine are safe, effective and immunologically non inferior to standard doses in HIV-infected individuals.
\n \n\n \n \nPosted 19/04/2023. Lizah Nyawira and colleagues examined how health sector coordination influences the efficiency of the Kenyan health system. The study found that duplication, fragmentation, and misalignment of functions compromised coordination. This compromised efficiency by increasing transaction costs, impairing the implementation of health programs with negative impacts on health system performance.
\n \n\n \n \nPosted 14/04/2023. Angela Moturi and colleagues investigate the accuracy of routine data in assessing rapid diagnostic test availability for enhancing healthcare accessibility in Kenya. They address concerns over non-reporting of data by triangulating information from routine systems and a health facility survey. Contrary to expectations, the study finds that non-reporting persists despite established capacity.
\n \n\n \n \nPosted 24/03/23. Lynne Elson of KEMRI-Wellcome Trust and colleagues used thermography to help define a new disease severity classification for tungiasis (sand flea disease). In the process they found when children spent many months at home during COVID-19 school closures, the prevalence and severity of tungiasis increased.
\n \n\n \n \nPosted 21/03/23. A collaborative study between Abdirahman Abdi's lab at KEMRI-Wellcome Trust, Kenya, and Prof Marti\u2019s Lab of Glasgow University, UK, has characterised the human environmental factors that drive malaria parasites, Plasmodium falciparum to invest into the transmission to the next host or continued replication within the current host to maximise survival.
\n \n\n \n \nPosted 03/03/2023. Nadia Tagoe, Sassy Molyneux and colleagues conducted a case study involving three health research capacity strengthening (HRCS) consortia to critically examine their decision-making processes, strategies for resolving management tensions and potential implications for consortia outcomes. The researchers propose an evidence-informed management framework for consortia leaders to use to support decision-making to optimise research capacity gains.
\n \n\n \n \nPosted 10/05/2022. In this study, Reagan Mogire and colleagues found that vitamin D deficiency was associated with a 98% increased risk of iron deficiency in African children and also influenced hepcidin and other markers of iron status. Both nutrients should be considered in strategies to manage their deficiencies in Africa.
\n \n\n \n \nPosted 24/01/2023. Snakebite is a priority NTD that causes 94,000 deaths each year and many more cases of severe disability. In research led by PhD student Michael Abouyannis at KWTRP and LSTM, global academics, policy makers, and the Kilifi snakebite patient group developed a globally relevant set of core outcome measures to support future clinical trials.
\n \n\n \n \nPosted 13/01/2023. Nancy Kagwanja and colleagues highlight the influence of social norms, structures, and actor power practices on responsiveness. Power practices were rooted in actors\u2019 lived experiences which included social and organizational power relationships, personal characteristics, and worldviews. Our findings emphasize the need to consider actors\u2019 lived experiences when intervening to strengthen responsiveness.
\n \n\n \n \nPosted 13/12/2022. Pregnant women in sub-Saharan Africa experience the highest levels of maternal mortality and stillbirths due to predominantly avoidable causes. However, Antenatal care (ANC) can prevent, detect, alleviate, or manage these causes. To inform planning, Peter Macharia and colleagues modelled ANC4+ coverage stratified by household wealth, maternal education, and spatial access to healthcare in East Africa.
\n \n\n \n \nPosted 31/03/2021. Patient safety is a key goal of WHO but identifying harms and developing strategies to deliver safe care has been given little attention. Mike English and colleague describe a \u2018portfolio\u2019 approach to safety improvement in four broad categories: prioritising critical processes, improving the organisation of care, control of risks and enhancing responses to hazardous situations that we believe is relevant to low resource settings. We focus attention on the possible roles of practitioner groups and professional associations as key to advancing patient safety through collaboration and skill development in this field
\n \n\n \n \nPosted 18/06/2021. Grace Irimu and colleagues show that newborns account for 46% of admissions and 66% of deaths among children 0-13years in Kenyan hospitals. Most deaths are caused by preventable and treatable causes. The authors call for need to prioritize newborn care for Kenya to achieve the SDGs target.
\n \n\n \n \nPosted 12/02/2021. The majority of digital health projects have failed to translate into scaled, routine services, leaving many health leaders cautious and uncertain of how to proceed. Chris Paton and colleagues identify factors that can influence successful and sustainable integration of digital health within local health systems in low resource settings.
\n \n\n \n \nPosted 11/05/2022. Yingxi Zhao and colleagues used data from a national health facility assessment to understand the capacity of Kenya internship hospital to provide internship training for medical doctors. They highlight the major gaps in staffing, equipment and service availability in those hospitals and call for more stringent and regular review and re-accreditation of internship hospitals to provide appropriate and well-resourced training.
\n \n\n \n \nPosted 08/01/2021. Patient safety is much less well studied in low-resource settings than in higher income settings. Mike English and colleagues suggest how concepts being employed to advance patient safety thinking in higher income settings could be usefully applied by practitioners in low-resource settings. The ability to diagnose system weaknesses should become a core skill for those leading teams, wards, departments or facilities in low-resource settings
\n \n\n \n \nPosted 07/07/2020. In a country with 25 million newborns, children and adolescents, how many paediatricians are there and where are they? This paper by Mike English and colleagues seeks to start a debate on how to deliver paediatric services in LMIC in the future.
\n \n\n \n \nPosted 03/08/2022. Naomi Muinga and colleagues report on a process of implementing a co-designed, paper-based newborn monitoring chart in a network of hospitals in Kenya. While the chart was well-received, challenges with full uptake persist and offer opportunities to strengthen the process as well as future implementations.
\n \n\n \n \nPosted 27/08/2021. Demographic and epidemiological changes have prompted thinking on the need to broaden the child health agenda to include care for paediatric complex and chronic conditions, however such expansion is threatened by workforce shortages. Yingxi Zhao and colleagues reviewed how task sharing could support expanded paediatrics services provision in LMICs, especially beyond acute infectious diseases and malnutrition that are widely and historically shifted.
\n \n\n \n \nPosted 22/02/2022. In many sub-Saharan African countries, including Kenya, the use of mortality and morbidity audits in maternal and perinatal/neonatal care as an avenue for learning and improving care delivery is sub-optimal due to structural, organizational, and human barriers. In this exploratory qualitative study, Joyline Jepkosgei and colleagues examined process-related factors that generally influence M&M audits including health workers\u2019 interactions and their experiences, institutional cultures, and broader health system contextual influences, which remain inadequately explored.
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