Qualitative assessment of community health workers’ perspective on their motivation in community-based primary health care in rural Malawi
Background: Community Health Workers (CHWs) have a positive impact on the provision of community-based primary health care through screening, treatment, referral, psychosocial support, and accompaniment. With a broad scope of work, CHW programs must balance the breadth and depth of tasks to maintain CHW motivation for high-quality care delivery. Few studies have described the CHW […]
Intention to use maternity waiting home and associated factors among pregnant women in Gamo Gofa zone, Southern Ethiopia, 2019
Background A maternity waiting home is a temporary residence in which pregnant women from remote areas wait for their childbirth. It is an approach targeted to advance access to emergency obstetric care services especially, in hard-to-reach areas to escalate institutional delivery to reduce complications that occur during childbirth. Apart from the availability of this service, […]
Low immunization coverage in Wonago district, southern Ethiopia: A community-based cross-sectional study
Introduction Immunization is a cost-effective intervention that prevented more than 5 million deaths worldwide from 2010 to 2015. Despite increased vaccination coverage over the past four decades in many African countries, including Ethiopia, universal coverage has not yet been reached. Only 39% of children aged 12–23 months received full vaccinations in Ethiopia, according to the […]
The Burden of Undernutrition and Its Associated Factors Among Children Below 5 Years of Age in Bambao Region, Comoros
Background: Undernutrition remains a major public health problem in low- and middle-income countries and Comoros is no exception. This study aimed to examine the prevalence and identify the risk factors of undernutrition among children under-five years in Bambao region, Comoros. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in Bambao region among 837 under-five years and their […]
Impact of monovalent rotavirus vaccine on diarrhoea-associated post-neonatal infant mortality in rural communities in Malawi: a population-based birth cohort study
Background: Rotavirus is a major contributor to child mortality. The effect of rotavirus vaccine on diarrhoea mortality has been estimated in middle-income but not low-income settings, where mortality is high and vaccine effectiveness in reducing admissions to hospital is lower. Empirical population-based mortality studies have not been done in any setting. Malawi introduced monovalent rotavirus […]
Chronic disease outcomes after severe acute malnutrition in Malawian children (ChroSAM): a cohort study
Background Tackling severe acute malnutrition (SAM) is a global health priority. Heightened risk of non-communicable diseases (NCD) in children exposed to SAM at around 2 years of age is plausible in view of previously described consequences of other early nutritional insults. By applying developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD) theory to this group, we […]
The chicken or the egg? Exploring bidirectional associations between Newcastle disease vaccination and village chicken flock size in rural Tanzania
© 2017 de Bruyn et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The study design, protocols and research instruments for this program were approved by the National […]
Re-evaluation of population-level protection conferred by a rotavirus vaccine using the ‘fried-egg’ approach in a rural setting in Bangladesh
Background: Vaccine herd protection assessed in a cluster-randomized trial (CRT) may be masked by disease transmission into the cluster from outside. However, herd effects can be unmasked using a ‘fried-egg’ approach whereby the analysis, restricted to the innermost households of clusters, ‘yolk’, creates an insulating ‘egg-white’ periphery. This approach has been demonstrated to unmask vaccine […]
Circulation of a Meaban-like virus in yellow-legged gulls and seabird ticks in the Western Mediterranean Basin
In recent years, a number of zoonotic flaviviruses have emerged worldwide, and wild birds serve as their major reservoirs. Epidemiological surveys of bird populations at various geographical scales can clarify key aspects of the eco-epidemiology of these viruses. In this study, we aimed at exploring the presence of flaviviruses in the western Mediterranean by sampling […]
Food security reduces multiple HIV infection risks for high-vulnerability adolescent mothers and non-mothers in South Africa: a cross-sectional study
Introduction: Adolescent girls and young women, including adolescent mothers, in Southern Africa have high HIV seroconversion and transmission. We need to know which risks drive HIV infections, and what can reduce these risks. Methods: We interviewed 1712 adolescent girls and young women (11–23 years), including 1024 adolescent mothers who had conceived before age 20 and […]
