Monitoring child mortality through community health worker reporting of births and deaths in Malawi: Validation against a household mortality survey
Background: The rate of decline in child mortality is too slow in most African countries to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of reducing under-five mortality by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015. Effective strategies to monitor child mortality are needed where accurate vital registration data are lacking to help governments assess and report on progress in […]
Improving lives by accelerating progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals for adolescents living with HIV: a prospective cohort study
Background: Low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) face major challenges in achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for vulnerable adolescents. We aimed to test the UN Development Programme’s proposed approach of development accelerators—provisions that lead to progress across multiple SDGs—and synergies between accelerators on achieving SDG-aligned targets in a highly vulnerable group of adolescents in […]
Time to first antenatal care visit among pregnant women in Ethiopia: secondary analysis of EDHS 2016; application of AFT shared frailty models
Background: The survival of pregnant women is one of great interest of the world and especially to a developing country like Ethiopia which had the highest maternal mortality ratios in the world due to low utilization of maternal health services including antenatal care (ANC). Survival analysis is a statistical method for data analysis where the […]
Implementing a social accountability approach for maternal, neonatal, and child health service performances in Ethiopia: A pre-post study design
Background: Social accountability approaches, such as the community scorecard (CSC), can improve the performance of health systems in low-income countries by providing a mechanism for obtaining and incorporating community input. This longitudinal study assessed the effects of CSCs implemented by primary health care units (PHCUs) on health system performance in Ethiopia. Methods: This study used […]
Determinants of infant nutritional status in Dabat district, North Gondar, Ethiopia: A case control study
Background: Malnutrition is the top cause of global burden of disease, disability and mortality among infants. Over two-thirds of deaths of children globally occur during the first year of life (infancy). Malnutrition among infants is substantially high in Ethiopia. Therefore, this study is aimed to assess determinants of infant nutritional status. Methods: A community based […]
Rights based approaches to sexual and reproductive health in low and middle-income countries: A systematic review
Introduction The Sustainable Development Goals, which are grounded in human rights, involve empowering women and girls and ensuring that everyone can access sexual and reproductive health and rights (Goal 5). This is the first systematic review reporting interventions involving rights-based approaches for sexual and reproductive health issues including gender-based violence, maternity, HIV and sexually transmitted […]
Exclusive breastfeeding prenatal intentions among HIV-positive mothers in Blantyre, Malawi: A correlation study
Background: Exclusive breastfeeding is an important component of child survival and prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV in resource-poor settings like Malawi. In Malawi, children under the age of six months are exclusively breastfed for an average duration of 3.7 months. This falls short of the recommendations by the World Health Organization as well as the […]
Emergency hysterectomy in a tertiary care hospital: Indications, surgical outcomes and challenges: A 2year retrospective descriptive cross-sectional study
Introduction: emergency hysterectomy (EH) remains a life-saving procedure in cases of lifethreatening obstetric hemorrhage and other gynaecological emergencies. We aim to determine the indications, surgical outcomes and challenges of EH in our tertiary centre. Methods: an ethically approved retrospective descriptive cross-sectional study on all EHs performed at a tertiary hospital during the period of 1st […]
Providing HIV Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT) Services to Migrants During the COVID-19 Pandemic in South Africa: Insights of Healthcare Providers
Background: In March 2020, COVID-19 entered South Africa, resulting in 2.9 million cases, the country took preventative and precautionary measures to control the spread of COVID-19 infection. These measures limited population mobility especially for migrant women living with HIV (WLWH) and the provision of PMTCT services. The purpose of this research was to explore the […]
Full immunization coverage and associated factors among children age 12-23 months in Ethiopia: systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies
Background: Millions of children in developing countries remained unvaccinated and under-vaccinated. This study was aimed to determine the pooled full vaccination coverage and associated factors in Ethiopia. Methods: This review and meta-analysis were included observational studies conducted from 2013 to 2020. The international online databases as well as gray literatures were retrieved from April 15 […]
