Narratives of women presenting with abortion complications in Southwestern Nigeria: A qualitative study
Unsafe abortion continues to impact negatively on women’s health in countries with restrictive abortion laws. It remains one of the leading causes of maternal mortality and morbidity. Paradoxically, modern contraceptive prevalence remains low and the unmet need for contraception continues to mirror unwanted pregnancy rates in many countries within sub- Saharan Africa. This qualitative study […]
Essential newborn care practices for healthy newborns at a district hospital in Pemba, Tanzania: a cross-sectional observational study utilizing video recordings
Background: High-quality essential newborn care (ENC) can improve newborn health and reduce preventable newborn mortality. The World Health Organization recommends specific ENC interventions. Video recordings have potential as a tool for assessment of clinical care also in low and middle-income countries. Objective: To use video observations of healthy newborns to describe ENC practices in a […]
Promotion of early and exclusive breastfeeding in neonatal care units in rural Rwanda: a pre- and post-intervention study
Background: Early initiation of breastfeeding after birth and exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months improves child survival, nutrition and health outcomes. However, only 42% of newborns worldwide are breastfed within the first hour of life. Small and sick newborns are at greater risk of not receiving breastmilk and often require additional support for feeding. […]
Option B+ Program for the Prevention of Vertical Transmission of HIV: A Case Study in Johannesburg, South Africa
Background: South Africa’s National Department of Health adopted WHO’s 2013 consolidated guidelines on ARVs for HIV treatment and prevention in 2015, including changes for Prevention from Mother-to-Child Transmission (PMTCT) through Option B+, aimed to reduce the HIV prevalence rate amongst women by placing them on lifelong treatment, irrespective of their CD4 count. As a result, […]
Community perspectives on HIV, violence and health surveillance in rural South Africa: A participatory pilot study
Background South Africa faces a complex burden of disease consisting of infectious and non-communicable conditions, injury and interpersonal violence, and maternal and child mortality. Inequalities in income and opportunity push disease burdens towards vulnerable populations, a situation to which the health system struggles to respond. There is an urgent need for health planning to account […]
Community attitudes and gendered influences on decision making around contraceptive implant use in rural Papua New Guinea
Background: Despite targeted interventions to improve contraceptive implant acceptability and uptake in rural Papua New Guinea (PNG), ongoing use of this method remains limited. Previous literature has suggested community attitudes and intrinsic factors within the decision-making process may be negatively impacting on implant uptake, however these elements have not previously been studied in detail in […]
Health system, socio-cultural, economic, environmental and individual factors influencing bed net use in the prevention of malaria in pregnancy in two Ghanaian regions
Background: Improving maternal health remains a priority to the Ghanaian government. Consequently, it has implemented the World Health Organization recommendation of distributing free long-lasting insecticidal nets (LLINs) to pregnant women-one of the effective strategies to combating malaria in pregnancy. However, the burden of negative outcomes of malaria in pregnancy such as low birth weight and […]
A multilevel analysis of factors associated with teenage pregnancy in ethiopia
Background: A significant number of girls in Ethiopia begin childbearing at an early age. Teenage pregnancy is the main contributor to maternal and child morbidity and mortality, and the vicious cycle of ill-health and poverty. However limited evidence exists about individual-and community-level factors affecting teenage pregnancy in Ethiopia. Methods: This study used data from the […]
The stuff that dreams are made of: HIV-positive adolescents’ aspirations for development: HIV-positive
Background: The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) commit to strengthening collaborations between governments and civil society. Adolescents are among the key target populations for global development initiatives, but research studies and programmes rarely include their direct perspectives on how to promote health and wellbeing. This article explores how both the methods and the findings of participatory […]
Opening the ‘implementation black-box’ of the user fee exemption policy for caesarean section in Benin: A realist evaluation
To improve access to maternal health services, Benin introduced in 2009 a user fee exemption policy for caesarean sections. Similar to other low- and middle-income countries, its implementation showed mixed results. Our study aimed at understanding why and in which circumstances the implementation of this policy in hospitals succeeded or failed. We adopted the realist […]
