Bulletin of the World Health Organization

A new approach to treating post-partum haemorrhage is having a substantial impact on maternal deaths. Tatum Anderson reports.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Professor Abla Mehio Sibai talks to Lynn Eaton about the need for cross-disciplinary approaches to supporting healthy ageing and the challenges posed by the collapsing public sector in Lebanon.

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No abstract text is available yet for this article.

OBJECTIVE: To conduct a systematic review of verbal autopsy studies in low- and middle-income countries to estimate the fraction of deaths due to cardiovascular disease. METHOD: We searched MEDLINE®, Embase® and Scopus databases for verbal autopsy studies in low- and middle-income countries that reported deaths from cardiovascular disease. Two reviewers screened the studies, extracted data and assessed study quality. We calculated cause-specific mortality fractions for cardiovascular disease for each study, both overall and according to age, sex, geographical location and type of cardiovascular disease...

In health systems with little public funding and decentralized procurement processes, the pricing and quality of anti-cancer medicines directly affects access to effective anti-cancer therapy. Factors such as differential pricing, volume-dependent negotiation and reliance on low-priced generics without any evaluation of their quality can lead to supply and demand lags, high out-of-pocket expenditures for patients and poor treatment outcomes. While pooled procurement of medicines can help address some of these challenges, monitoring of the procurement process requires considerable administrative investment...

OBJECTIVE: To estimate the prevalence of individual chronic conditions and multimorbidity among adults admitted to hospital in countries in sub-Saharan Africa. METHODS: We systematically searched MEDLINE®, Embase®, Global Index Medicus, Global Health and SciELO for publications reporting on patient cohorts recruited between 1 January 2010 and 12 May 2023. We included articles reporting prevalence of pre-specified chronic diseases within unselected acute care services (emergency departments or medical inpatient settings)...

The role of health practitioner regulation in ensuring patient safety is well recognized. Less recognized is the role of regulation in addressing broader health system priorities. These goals include managing the costs, capacities and distribution of health professional education institutions; ensuring the competence and equitable distribution of health workers; informing workforce planning and mobilization; enabling the use of digital technologies; and addressing challenges related to the international mobility of health workers...

Global dengue incidence has increased dramatically over the past few decades from approximately 500 000 reported cases in 2000 to over 5 million in 2019. This trend has been attributed to population growth in endemic areas, rapid unplanned urbanization, increasing global connectivity, and climate change expanding the geographic range of the Aedes spp . mosquito, among other factors. Reporting dengue surveillance data is key to understanding the scale of the problem, identifying important changes in the landscape of disease, and developing policies for clinical management, vector control and vaccine rollout...

In the run-up to World Breastfeeding Week, Maria Asuncion Silvestre talks to Gary Humphreys about supporting and protecting exclusive breastfeeding as part of evidence-based neonatal care.

OBJECTIVE: To assess how national antimicrobial susceptibility data used to inform national action plans vary across surveillance platforms. METHODS: We identified available open-access, supranational, interactive surveillance platforms and cross-checked their data in accordance with the World Health Organization's (WHO's) Data Quality Assurance: module 1. We compared platform usability and completeness of time-matched data on the antimicrobial susceptibilities of four blood isolate species: Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae , Staphylococcus aureus and Streptococcus pneumoniae from WHO's Global Antimicrobial Resistance and Use Surveillance System, European Centre for Disease Control's (ECDC's) network and Pfizer's Antimicrobial Testing Leadership and Surveillance database...

Human African trypanosomiasis is a life-threatening parasitic infection endemic to sub-Saharan Africa. Around 95% of cases are due to Trypanosoma brucei gambiense , found in western and central Africa. Clinical signs and symptoms are nonspecific, current diagnostic tests are not sufficiently accurate, and parasitological confirmation of infection requires microscopic examination of body fluids and specialized techniques for concentrating parasites. Moreover, current treatment is not recommended on the basis of suspicion alone because it is not sufficiently safe...

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Having caused devastating epidemics during the 20th century, the incidence of life-threatening human African trypanosomiasis has fallen to historically low levels as a result of sustained and coordinated efforts over the past 20 years. Humans are the main reservoir of one of the two pathogenic trypanosome subspecies, Trypanosoma brucei gambiense , found in western and central Africa. The expected advent of a safe and easy-to-use treatment to be given to seropositive but microscopically unconfirmed individuals would lead to further depletion; in the meantime, the presence of T...

Rhodesiense human African trypanosomiasis is a lethal parasitic infection caused by Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense and transmitted by tsetse flies in eastern and southern Africa. It accounts for around 5% of all cases of human African trypanosomiasis. Currently, there is no simple serological test for rhodesiense human African trypanosomiasis and diagnosis relies on microscopic confirmation of trypanosomes in samples of blood or other tissues. The availability of a simple and accurate diagnostic test would aid the control, surveillance and treatment of the disease...

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OBJECTIVE: To assess the association between health insurance coverage and sociodemographic characteristics, and the use of modern contraception in Indonesia. METHOD: We used data from the 2021 Indonesian family planning census which included 38 408 597 couples. Contraception is covered by the national health insurance scheme: members are non-contributory (for poor families who do not make any monetary contribution) or contributory (for better-off families who pay for the insurance)...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.2471/BLT.23.030723.].