I was encouraged to read this piece about SciELO and open access in Latin America. I have reproduced the text below (open access) or you can read direct online here:

https://thewinnower.com/papers/1670-open-access-in-latin-america-a-paragon-for-the-rest-of-the-world

Open Access in Latin America: a Paragon for the Rest of the World

Juan Pablo Alperin et al.

Latin America is one of the world’s most progressive regions in terms of open access and adoption of sustainable, cooperative models for disseminating research; models that ensure that researchers and citizens have access to the results of research conducted in their region.

SciELO is a remarkable decentralized publishing platform harboring over 1,200 peer-reviewed journals from fifteen countries located in four continents – South America. Central-North America, Europe and Africa. Redalyc, based in Mexico, is another extraordinary system hosting almost 1,000 journals from fourteen Latin American countries plus Spain and Portugal. Governments around the world spend billions of dollars on infrastructure to support research excellence; platforms such as SciELO and Redalyc are extensions of this much larger investments in research. They reflect an enlightened understanding in Latin America that the wide dissemination of and access to research results is as important as the research itself. The rest of the world would do well to take note.

In a recent blog post, these two initiatives were discredited by Jeffrey Beall. In the post, Beall compared the two publishing platforms to favelas, resulting in a mean-spirited insult to both favela dwellers on the one hand, and SciELO and Redalyc on the other. Rather than maligning these initiatives, they should be held up as examples of best practice for the rest of the world.

Furthermore, just because some in North America do not know about SciELO and Redalyc does not render them irrelevant. This is an extremely elitist and narrow view of the world. Although these platforms may not be well known in some places, SciELO and Redalyc do raise the visibility and accessibility of the journals they host, particularly with their local communities. If these journals were published by the big commercial publishers, the vast majority of researchers in Latin America would simply not have access to the articles in those journals. What value is visibility, if people cannot access the articles?

One of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which were finalized on August 1, 2015, is to “Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation”. Both Scielo and Redalyc are excellent exemplars of this type of infrastructure. These types of networked meta-publishers allow for central governance of policies, procedures and controls, but are intentionally decentralized to support the development of local capacity and infrastructure ensuring greater sustainability and alignment with local policies and priorities. What Beall advocates for, namely to let powerful foreign players come in and take over local capacity building, is exactly the opposite of what sustainable development is about.

For these reasons, we believe that SciELO and Redalyc are very nice neighbourhoods indeed!

—

Let’s build a future where people are no longer dying for lack of healthcare knowledge – Join HIFA: www.hifa2015.org  

Microblogging tools such as Twitter provide powerful ways to share published research papers and other web content.

Twitter is easy to use and – unlike email – it needn’t add to your workload. A Twitter “feed” is like a stream you can step in an out of and, when you want to sail a little boat down that stream you send a tweet. You can simply write a short message, but it’s far more powerful if you include in your message a web link to some substantive content, eg a journal article or another web page.

You make the stream yourself by selecting (“following”) the Twitter accounts that interest you. 1000s of academic journals, health organisations, universities, news media, and individuals now have Twitter accounts. You can find them by searching on twitter or – more easily – by typing something like “Trish Groves BMJ twitter” into Google or another search engine.

You don’t have reply or respond to anyone if you don’t want to. Tweeters aren’t messaging you personally; they’re broadcasting. You can control how much you want to interact with Twitter, and you can decide what to watch, when to switch it on and off, and when to broadcast something yourself.

Here’s a broadcasting analogy that might help. Imagine you’re watching the news on TV and, at the bottom of the screen, there’s a running caption of headlines (sometimes called a “ticker”). When you see a headline that catches your attention, you click on it and the newsreader switches to that story. You may not have that kind of service on your TV (yet!), but I hope this helps to understand the concept of Twitter.

Two free resources about the uses of twitter in academia are:

Teaching Tips for academics

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/files/2011/11/Published- Twitter_Guide_Sept_2011.pdf

A Powerpoint presentation by me, for early career health researchers:

http://www.slideshare.net/TrishGroves1/blogging-tweeting-sharing-your-work-to-reach-policy-makers

Best wishes

Trish (I’m @trished on Twitter if you’d like to follow me)

Dr Trish Groves

Head of Research, BMJ

& Editor-in-chief, BMJ Open

BMJ, BMA House, Tavistock Square, London, WC1H 9JR

T: 020 7383 6018

E: tgroves@bmj.com

W: bmj.com/company

twitter@trished

pinterest.com/trishedpin

How can we prevent the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals from failing?

July 30, 2015

James Patterson, Florian Koch, Kathryn Bowen

… the soon-to-be-adopted SDGs are likely to fail unless far more attention is given to addressing governance challenges crucial to their implementation.

In the broadest sense, governance refers to how societies make decisions and take action. It is about the mechanisms we use to work together in society to solve shared problems. For the SDGs, this involves considering how government, business, non-governmental organizations, civil society and researchers will work together.

Governance fundamentally underpins our ability to get things done in society yet there numerous failures in governance everywhere: weak safeguards in the global financial system, coups against elected national governments, the multi-decadal struggle to take global action to manage greenhouse gas emissions and climate change…

Three key challenges that urgently need to be addressed are:

First, how can we bring together the right stakeholders at the right time in the right place?

Sustainable development inherently involves many different stakeholders operating at many different scales, from national governments, to transnational corporations, to local and international NGOs, to small villages, and many more.

It can be tough to get the relevant stakeholders working together at the right time and place to solve complex poverty and sustainability problems… How do governments, the private sector, and communities interact… and how does this differ in different contexts? Just consider the differences between China and the United States or between countries across Africa…

Second, how do we make difficult trade-offs?…

Climate change (Goal 13) is a classic example. Those affected in the short term, such as fossil fuel companies and their workers, will perceive themselves as “losers” if they are forced to change, even though society as a whole will be a “winner” in the long-term by avoiding the tremendous risks and impacts of runaway climate change…

Achieving the SDGs will require national governments, the private sector, the nonprofit sector, and communities to make difficult decisions based on thoughtful and genuine commitment to the SDGs. Unless there is a strong willingness to do so, the SDGs risk being relegated to the ‘too hard’ basket.

Third, how do we build in accountability for action?

… we need powerful ways of feeding this information back into the policy and political arena to hold responsible stakeholders to account. This chiefly includes governments, but also other key stakeholders in the private sector, NGOs, and even civil society. If we don’t create these sorts of ‘feedback loops’ to hold each other to account, how will we make sure that the SDGs are actually being implemented?

So after September when the dust settles and the ink dries on the SDGs, the job has really only just begun.

This article emerged from discussions at a recent international scientific meeting on the role of science and the Sustainable Development Goals, and was written collaboratively by the co-authors listed as well as the following contributors: Dr. Jess Vogt (DePaul University, USA), Dr. Nick Cradock-Henry (Landcare Research, New Zealand), Dr. Tiina Häyhä (Stockholm Resilience Centre, Sweden and PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, The Netherlands), Dr. El Mostafa Jamea (MENA Renewables and Sustainability Institute, Morocco), and Dr. Fabiana Barbi (University of Campinas, Brazil).

—

Best wishes, Neil

Let’s build a future where people are no longer dying for lack of healthcare knowledge – Join HIFA: www.hifa2015.org  

Many authors do not pay much attention to the terms of the agreements they sign with publishers.

As a librarian working with an international collaboration, I have often been surprised to find that a request for a copy of an article is for the use of the author herself/himself!   Previously, authors were routinely provided with several copies of the published article.  Now that is often not the case, and the author must purchase reprints (including electronic reprints).  If the author’s institutional library does not have a subscription to the journal, even that option is closed.

I am not denying that journals provide valuable effort and resources in the publishing and scholarly communication process.  However, not providing the author with a copy of the article seems to border the immoral.

Authors do have choices.  Those on this list who work with researchers on journal selection, or publish themselves, should consider this factor in making the decision as to what journal to publish in.  If journals are not selected, it may be worth a short note to the editor describing the decision not to submit to his/her journal.

A classic article on the subject:  Ted Bergstrom’s “Free Labor for Costly Journals?”

http://escholarship.org/uc/item/1wf0r099#page-1

It is more than 10 years old, but we’re still working on a solution!

Best wishes,

Pam Sieving

Save the Children, UNHCR and UNICEF, on behalf of the IATT to address HIV in humanitarian settings are pleased to share with you two new resources on prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) in humanitarian settings:

1)  PMTCT in humanitarian settings: lessons learned and recommendations: Part 1

http://www.emtct-iatt.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/PART-I_PMTCT-in-Humanitarian-Settings-7-July-2015.pdf

2)  PMTCT in humanitarian settings: implementation guide: Part 2

http://www.emtct-iatt.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/PART-II_PMTCT-in-Humanitarian-Settings-7-July-2015.pdf

The first document is a synthesis of experiences from the field, based on a systematic literature review, existing guidelines and grey literature on PMTCT programming in humanitarian action. Over 50 key informant interviews were held with United Nations and Non-governmental Organization representatives with experience developing policies and implementing PMTCT programmes in humanitarian settings.

The second document is a practical series of tools based on Part I developed to improve the implementation of PMTCT services in humanitarian settings but which can be adapted to different contexts. The guide focuses on PMTCT health service delivery including preparedness actions for shocks, and on continuation, or where possible initiation, of ART during the PMTCT risk period or for life.

Many thanks to all of you who helped to contribute to the documents. We recognize that there is more to be learned and we need to learn from each other. Please do help to continue the discussion on PMTCT in humanitarian settings so that we can promote the integration of this guidance  into the way we implement regular programmes.

– What platforms have you used to implement PMTCT services in emergencies? What were some successes? Some challenges? What components from your development programme did you continue which enabled you to continue your programme? What did you need to change or adapt?

– Have emergencies, or preparing for emergencies, provided opportunities to integrate HIV services into broader health services? How so? What more needs to done?

We look forward to hearing from you.

Warm regards,

Sarah Karmin (UNICEF), Alice Fay (Save the Children), and Elizabeth Tarney (UNHCR) on behalf of the IATT on HIV and Emergencies

I thought that this story may interest members. It raises a number of interesting questions, including the medical information etc that will be provided with the drugs, especially if custom made.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/04/fda-first-prescription-drug-3d-printing

Two short extracts from the article:

“The Food and Drug Administration has approved the first prescription drug made through 3D printing: a dissolvable tablet that treats seizures.”

“Doctors are increasingly turning to 3D printing to create customized implants for patients with rare conditions and injuries, including children who cannot be treated with adult-size devices. The FDA held a workshop last year for medical manufacturers interested in the technology.”

“The first 3D-printed pill opens up a world of downloadable medicine” – from the Guardian newspaper

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2015/aug/05/the-first-3d-printed-pill-opens-up-a-world-of-downloadable-medicine

HIFA profile: Julie N Reza is a writer, editor and consultant specialising in global healthcare and related fields (www.globalbiomedia.com).

The 2030 agenda that was approved this week has “Ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreements”.

The new 2030 Agenda is a framework of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with a total of 179 Targets spanning economic, environmental and social development. They lay out a plan for all countries to actively engage in making our world better for its people and the planet https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/7891TRANSFORMING%20OUR%20WORLD.pdf

The 2030 Agenda includes access to information, universal literacy, safeguarding of cultural and natural heritage, as well as access to Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) being strongly represented across the agenda. Target 16.10 strongly stipulates “Ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreements”

Health is very much present in the agenda as the whole of Goal 3. “Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages” is there in addition to the extensive links between health and other targets in the agenda. WHO has just published its Global Reference List of 100 Core Health Indicators, 2015 http://www.who.int/healthinfo/indicators/2015/en/ .

The 2030 Agenda will help all UN Member States focus their attention on poverty eradication, climate change, and the development of people. It is clear that libraries, information services, ICTs and all other information infrastrcutre faciities, services and plocies will contribute to this agenda.

The official version of the post-2015 Development Agenda will be adopted by Heads of State at the United Nations Summit in New York, September 25-27 2015.

Kind regards.

Najeeb Al-Shorbaji

Director, Knowledge, Ethics and Research

World Health Organization,

20 Avenue Appia

Geneva 27,

there are guidelines and checklists available to help researchers to write abstracts for journal articles and conference papers including:

PRISMA for Abstracts: Reporting Systematic Reviews in Journal and Conference Abstracts

http://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/prisma-abstracts/

CONSORT for reporting randomised trials in journal and conference abstracts

http://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/consort-abstracts/

Draft STROBE checklist for reporting observational study conference abstracts

http://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/strobe-abstracts/

There are many other reporting guidelines available to help researchers to write up their studies and these can be accessed through the EQUATOR Network website at: http://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/

I am an Information Specialist/Librarian working with the EQUATOR Network and we are always happy to help – please do get in touch if you would like more information about the different reporting guidelines available for writing up health research studies.

With best wishes,

Shona Kirtley

EQUATOR Knowledge and Information Manager|Senior Research Information Specialist

In recognition of the importance of breastfeeding for newborn lives, Global Health Media Project has produced a new set of videos designed to help breastfeeding mothers. The videos are being released over the course of this week to mark and support World Breastfeeding Week.

Breastfeeding is a skill that is learned most effectively by “seeing and doing”.  The power of visuals is vitally important for mothers learning how to breastfeed.  Our nine new videos—narrated in English, French, Spanish, and (soon) Swahili—will help mothers by providing practical information on “how to” skills and problem management.

The videos are intended primarily for mothers in the developing world, but may be helpful for breastfeeding mothers worldwide. The topics are: Breastfeeding in the First Hours After Birth Positions for Breastfeeding, Attaching Your Baby at the Breast, Is Your Baby Getting Enough Milk, Increasing Your Milk Supply, How to Express Breastmilk, Storing Breastmilk Safely, What to Do About Breast Pain, and What To Do About Nipple Pain. They can be viewed on-line as well as downloaded free-of-charge in several sizes through this link: http://globalhealthmedia.org/videos/breastfeeding/

Thanks and kind regards,

Deb

Deborah Van Dyke, Director

Global Health Media Project

802-496-7556

UN Concludes Post-2015 Negotiations in New York

On Sunday 2nd August, after more than three years of negotiations and intense involvement from many stakeholders, including IFLA, the Member States of the United Nations agreed the final version of the post-2015 Development Agenda – now known as 2030 Agenda.

The new 2030 Agenda is a framework of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with a total of 179 Targets spanning economic, environmental and social development. They lay out a plan for all countries to actively engage in making our world better for its people and the planet.

IFLA welcomes the 2030 Agenda and is pleased to see access to information, universal literacy, safeguarding of cultural and natural heritage, as well as access to Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) strongly represented across it. We are particularly pleased to the see the strong mention of access to information in Target16.10:

“Ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreements”

The new vision

The 2030 Agenda will help all UN Member States focus their attention on poverty eradication, climate change, and the development of people. Libraries can support many aspects of its vision and the supporting SDGs. Libraries are key public institutions which have a vital role to play in furthering development on every level of society.

The Agenda also creates a UN Interagency Task Force on Science Technology and Innovation. The Task Force will look at information and technology transfer mechanisms world-wide and collect these in one place to ensure access to information, knowledge, best practises and lessons learned are available to all. IFLA welcomes the creation of this task force, and will continue our advocacy to ensure our views and the expertise of the information community are taken to account in its creation.

Outstanding concerns

All Member States have agreed to the new Agenda, however follow-up is voluntary and the Agenda represents political rather than legal commitments.

Furthermore, IFLA would like to stress the importance of integrating the results and ongoing achievements of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) within the Means of Implementation of the new Agenda.

What is next?

Leading up to the UN Summit to launch the new development 2030 Agenda in September 2015, IFLA will work on a detailed analysis of the SDGs and provide information on how libraries can contribute to reaching them.

We will also actively participate in monitoring the progress made on the access to information target (Target16.10), other relevant targets, and ensure appropriate data regarding libraries as access points will be included. We will publish a Development and Access to Information (DA2I) report which furthermore will strengthen the monitoring of the impact of access to information on the SDGs.

The 2030 Agenda will be implemented at national levels. We would like to encourage you to continue your active work in engaging with your governments and their National Development Plans and ensure libraries, as information, skills and ICT providers as well as agents to safeguard cultural heritage, are represented in these.

The official version of the post-2015 Development Agenda will be adopted by Heads of State upon during the United Nations Summit in New York, September 25-27 2015. IFLA will continue to raise awareness during the Summit for access to information and the essential role libraries play in fulfilling this.

Thanks to you

IFLA together with you, our network, and the signatories of the Lyon Declaration we advocated and promoted access to information as an essential aspect to ensure the success of the post-2015 Development Agenda. The hard work done by all of us means that the new framework offers libraries a great opportunity to help fulfil their country’s National Development Plans by showing how their activities and skills can support the newly established SDGs – now we must rise to the challenge and prove that libraries are crucial partners for sustainable development.

Please also see the webversion.

Julia Brungs

Policy and Projects Officer

International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA)

P.O. Box 95312

2509 CH The Hague

Netherlands

Phone: 0031703140884

Email: Julia.brungs@ifla.org

—

Let’s build a future where people are no longer dying for lack of healthcare knowledge – Join HIFA: www.hifa2015.org

‘Emergency facilities in LMICs serve a large, young patient population with high levels of critical illnesses and mortality. This suggests that emergency care should be a global health priority.’ This is the conclusion of a systematic review in the August 2015 issue of the WHO Bulletin. The citation and abstract are shown below, and the full text is available here:

http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/93/8/14-148338/en/

I would be interested to hear from HIFA members about the quality of health care provided in emergency departments in LMICs, and how it might be improved.

CITATION: Emergency care in 59 low- and middle-income countries: a systematic review

Ziad Obermeyer, Samer Abujaber, Maggie Makar, Samantha Stoll, Stephanie R Kayden, Lee A Wallis, Teri A Reynolds & on behalf of the Acute Care Development Consortium

Bulletin of the World Health Organization Past issues Volume 93: 2015 Volume 93, Number 8, August 2015, 513-588

ABSTRACT

Objective: To conduct a systematic review of emergency care in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

Methods: We searched PubMed, CINAHL and World Health Organization (WHO) databases for reports describing facility-based emergency care and obtained unpublished data from a network of clinicians and researchers. We screened articles for inclusion based on their titles and abstracts in English or French. We extracted data on patient outcomes and demographics as well as facility and provider characteristics. Analyses were restricted to reports published from 1990 onwards.

Findings: We identified 195 reports concerning 192 facilities in 59 countries. Most were academically-affiliated hospitals in urban areas. The median mortality within emergency departments was 1.8% (interquartile range, IQR: 0.2–5.1%). Mortality was relatively high in paediatric facilities (median: 4.8%; IQR: 2.3–8.4%) and in sub-Saharan Africa (median: 3.4%; IQR: 0.5–6.3%). The median number of patients was 30 000 per year (IQR: 10 296–60 000), most of whom were young (median age: 35 years; IQR: 6.9–41.0) and male (median: 55.7%; IQR: 50.0–59.2%). Most facilities were staffed either by physicians-in-training or by physicians whose level of training was unspecified. Very few of these providers had specialist training in emergency care.

Conclusion: Available data on emergency care in LMICs indicate high patient loads and mortality, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where a substantial proportion of all deaths may occur in emergency departments. The combination of high volume and the urgency of treatment make emergency care an important area of focus for interventions aimed at reducing mortality in these settings.

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Let’s build a future where people are no longer dying for lack of healthcare knowledge – Join HIFA: www.hifa2015.org  

‘In countries with low contraceptive prevalence, programs should seek to identify ways to correct prevailing myths and rumors, increase contraceptive awareness, and promote positive social interactions around contraceptive use.’ This is one of the main conclusions of a new paper in Demographic Research. Below is the citation, abstract, and URL to full text (free).

I would be interested to learn more about myths and rumours, and whether/how these can be addressed in different contexts. Beliefs identified in this paper include:

– use of contraceptive injection can make a woman sterile

– people who use contraception end up with health problems 0.688 0.701

– contraceptives can harm your womb

– contraceptives reduce women’s sexual urge

– contraceptives can cause cancer

– contraceptives can give you deformed babies

– contraceptives are dangerous to your health

– women who use FP may become promiscuous.

CITATION: Ideation and intention to use contraceptives in Kenya and Nigeria

Stella Babalola, Neetu John, Bolanle Ajao, Ilene S. Speizer.

Demographic Research: Volume 33, Article 8

Corresponding author: sbabalol@jhusph.edu

http://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol33/8/33-8.pdf

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Contraceptive use remains low to moderate in most African countries. Ideation, or the ideas and views that people hold, has been advanced as a possible explanation for differences in contraceptive use within and across countries.

OBJECTIVES: In this paper, we sought to identify the relevant dimensions of ideation and assess how these dimensions relate to contraceptive use intentions in two illustrative countries, Kenya and Nigeria.

METHODS: Using factor analysis, we first identified the relevant dimensions of ideation from a set of cognitive, emotional, and social interaction items. Subsequently, we examined the relationships of these dimensions with intention to use contraceptives.

RESULTS: The data revealed four dimensions of contraceptive ideation in both countries: perceived self-efficacy, myths and rumors related to contraceptives, social interactions and influence, and contraceptive awareness. All four dimensions of ideation are strongly associated with contraceptive use intention in Nigeria. Only perceived self-efficacy [confidence in one’s ability to act] was significantly associated with contraceptive use intention in Kenya.

CONCLUSION: The ideation model is relevant for contraceptive use research and programing. Programs seeking to increase contraceptive use and help women to attain their desired family size should prioritize promotion of contraceptive self-efficacy. In addition, in countries with low contraceptive prevalence, programs should seek to identify ways to correct prevailing myths and rumors, increase contraceptive awareness, and promote positive social interactions around contraceptive use.

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Let’s build a future where people are no longer dying for lack of healthcare knowledge – Join HIFA: www.hifa2015.org  

Below are the citation and abstract of a recently published open access article. One particularly significant finding was that ‘The most common reason given for never using …[journal databases or electronic books]… was that they were ‘Not available/difficult to get’ or ‘Difficult to understand’.

MUINGA, Naomi et al. Access to and value of information to support good practice for staff in Kenyan hospitals. Global Health Action, [S.l.], v. 8, may. 2015. ISSN 1654-9880. Available at: http://www.globalhealthaction.net/index.php/gha/article/view/26559  Date accessed: 26 Jul. 2015. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/gha.v8.26559.

ABSTRACT

Background: Studies have sought to define information needs of health workers within very specific settings or projects. Lacking in the literature is how hospitals in low-income settings are able to meet the information needs of their staff and the use of information communication technologies (ICT) in day-to-day information searching.

Objective: The study aimed to explore where professionals in Kenyan hospitals turn to for work-related information in their day-to-day work. Additionally, it examined what existing solutions are provided by hospitals with regard to provision of best practice care. Lastly, the study explored the use of ICT in information searching.

Design: Data for this study were collected in July 2012. Self-administered questionnaires (SAQs) were distributed across 22 study hospitals with an aim to get a response from 34 health workers per hospital.

Results: SAQs were collected from 657 health workers. The most popular sources of information to guide work were fellow health workers and printed guidelines while the least popular were scientific journals. Of value to health workers were: national treatment policies, new research findings, regular reports from surveillance data, information on costs of services and information on their performance of routine clinical tasks; however, hospitals only partially met these needs. Barriers to accessing information sources included: ‘not available/difficult to get’ and ‘difficult to understand’. ICT use for information seeking was reported and with demographic specific differences noted from the multivariate logistic regression model; nurses compared to medical doctors and older workers were less likely to use ICT for health information searching. Barriers to accessing Internet were identified as: high costs and the lack of the service at home or at work.

Conclusions: Hospitals need to provide appropriate information by improving information dissemination efforts and providing an enabling environment that allows health workers find the information they need for best practice.

HIFA profile: Malcolm Brewster is a Community Nurse with the National Health Service, UK. Professional interests: Chronic disease, community nursing, medical anthropology, health care in Africa. Email address: malcolmbrewster AT yahoo.com

‘WHO Director for Africa Matshidiso Moeti, who was on a three-day visit to Zambia, said that funding to health systems in Africa is still below the required threshold, adding that both national governments and cooperating partners should ensure that this is increased… ‘She also said that The United Nations health agency has come up with guidelines that countries could use to embrace herbal medicines so that medicines are integrated in national healthcare delivery systems….’ read the full article here: http://www.africa-health.com/articles/july_2015/News.pdf

CABI’s Global Health is a public health database NOT a journal. You can find out more about it here: www.cabi.org/globalhealth. In the Global Health database, we abstract & index journal articles, conference proceedings and posters, books and book chapters, theses and reports.   96% of the records have an English abstract…language of the original item is not a barrier to us. WE link to the fulltext wherever possible and also separately host fulltext in our own CABI repository for all of these types of content, where we are given permission to do so.  Global Health is used by leading public health schools worldwide to train and support research into national, regional and global public health. One of the key types of content requested by our users is grey literature… i.e. reports which typically remain inaccessible and invisible within the organisations that commissioned them. Just the kind of material in repositories.

I would like to work with institutional repositories and ministries of health in LMIC to expose their content through Global Health so that public health researchers, practitioners and policymakers around the globe can benefit from the insights and expertise they hold.  The differences between each institution, which Jean highlights, would not worry us, as we are used to this and indeed we have already worked with some African institutional repositories outside of the health arena.

If anyone has links to an institutional repository or ministry of health, do please contact me.

Regards

Wendie Norris

CITATION: Knowledge, access and usage pattern of HINARI by researchers and clinicians in tertiary health institutions in south-west Nigeria.

Ajuwon GA;  Olorunsaye JO.

African Journal of Medicine & Medical Sciences.  42(1):97-106, 2013 Mar.

INTRODUCTION: The digital divide is a global challenge. The Health Internetwork Access to Research Initiative (HINARI) is one of the most successful efforts aimed at bridging the digital divide in access to health information in developing countries. There is a dearth of empirical studies on usage pattern of this resource in Nigeria. The aim of this study was to assess knowledge and usage pattern of HINARI by clinicians and researchers in tertiary health institutions in Southwestern Nigeria.

METHODOLOGY: A descriptive cross-sectional survey was conducted among 1150 clinicians and researchers in the 12 tertiary health institutions that had access to HINARI. A standardized, self-completed, 31-item questionnaire was used for data collection. It elicited information on demographic profile, pattern of usage and constraints to use of HINARI.

RESULTS: The majority (72.0%) were aware of HINARI however, only 35.1% have had a formal training on how to use it. Sixty-eight percent (68.0%) had ever used HINARI resources and 62.4% of these did so during the month preceding the study. The most frequently used HINARI resources were MEDLINE/PubMed (53.2%), full text journal articles (55.0%), and reference materials (28.5%). Previous users (50.0%) encountered problems in accessing HINARI; with lack of password being the main challenge for access.

CONCLUSION: Knowledge and use of HINARI resources are high. However, clinicians and researchers are not deriving full benefits from HINARI because few had received training on how to use it. A learner-centered training and wide distribution of the HINARI User Name and Password within the institutions is recommended to address this problem.

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Let’s build a future where people are no longer dying for lack of healthcare knowledge – Join HIFA: www.hifa2015.org  

WHO’s new guideline, “Health worker roles in providing safe abortion care and post-abortion contraception”, aims to help break down 1 critical barrier which limits access to safe abortion care – the lack of trained providers. Around 22 million unsafe abortions are estimated to take place worldwide each year, almost all in low- and middle-income countries. Even though safe, simple, effective primary health-care level interventions exist, many women still do not have access to them, placing their lives unnecessarily at risk. Get the full text and the executive summary from here

http://nurses-round.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/health-worker-roles-in-providing-safe.html

Regards,

Ralueke Ekezie

CEO, Blue Torch Home Care

Below is the link to a booklet which summarises much of the latest research on child health in developing countries: evidence derived from all the randomized trials published over the last year.

RCTs in child health in developing countries 2014-2015 http://www.ichrc.org/sites/default/files/RCTs%20in%20child%20health%20in%20developing%20countries%202014-2015-2.pdf

The aim is to make this information widely available to paediatricians, child health nurses, midwives, researchers, students and administrators in places where up-to-date health information is hard to find.  We hope it will be helpful in reviewing treatment guidelines and clinical and public health approaches, and in teaching about paediatrics and evidence-based medicine.

This year there were 245 publications from randomised or controlled trials, more than in any previous year.

A brief summary of some of the important results in 2014-15:

• In a high-mortality setting in Kenya where co-morbidities are common, among children with non-severe pneumonia, oral amoxicillin was non-inferior to intravenous benzylpenicillin, and failure rates at day 14 were 13.5 and 16.8% respectively.   In Brazil oral amocycillin given 2 times per day was as effective as 3 times per day in treating non-severe pneumonia with treatment failure rates of 23% and 22% respectively.
• Children in African hospitals with severe anaemia were more likely to die in the first 24 hours (case fatality rate 13%) than those with mild or moderate anaemia (7-8%).  Children with severe anaemia who were not transfused at 2.5 hours had a much higher risk of dying than those who received blood early.
• For Indian children with central nervous system infections managed in an intensive care unit, the targeting of a cerebral perfusion pressure >60mmHg using fluid boluses, and dopamine / noradrenaline, resulted in lower mortality and less neuro-disability than a strategy aiming to keep intracranial pressure <20 mmHg with osmotherapy while ensuring a normal blood pressure.
• In over 1000 Colombian children in the second year of life, a weekly home visiting program where play was taught over 18 months improved cognitive scores and receptive language.  Micronutrient supplementation had no effect on developmental outcomes in this trial.
• In rural children in India, Pakistan and Zambia, an early developmental intervention taught to parents over 3 years improved cognitive abilities regardless of the type of development risk the child faced
• Using a test of “intestinal permeability”, the lactulose: mannitol urinary excretion test, among children at risk of environmental enteropathy, zinc or albendazole reduced the apparent progression of intestinal permeability
• Among 50 Indian children with type-1 diabetes and ketoacidosis, use of insulin infusion at 0.05 U/kg/hour was associated with equal resolution of acidosis and ketosis, with lower risk of hypoglycaemia than the standard infusion of 0.1 U/kg/hour.
• Among African children with prolonged convulsions use of intra-rectal diazepam was more effective in controlling seizures than sublingual lorazepam.
• Among Indian children with infantile spasms, use of high-dose prednisolone (4mg/kg/day) was more effective than 2mg/kg/day in leading to cessation of spasms by 2 weeks
• In 80 rural villages, India’s “total sanitation campaign”, designed to end the practice of open defecation by provision of individual household latrines, reduced open defecation by 10% and improved sanitation facilities by 19%.  These are modest early gains, as yet insufficient to achieve measurable child health outcomes, but would be expected to grow over time.
• And this year…an RCT of soap!  In Bangladesh, use of soapy water (30g powdered detergent in 1.5 L water) or bar soap, scrubbing hands for 15 seconds were both more effective in reducing coliforms than scrubbing with plain water!
• In adolescents and adults in sub-Saharan Africa with HIV and first-line treatment failure, use of a nucleoside reverse-transcriptase inhibitor was more effective as a ritonivir-boosted protease inhibitor (lopinavir-ritonavir), and as effective as combined NRTI and lopinavir-ritonavir, in achieving good HIV control (no stage 4 events, CD4>250, viral load<10,000 copies /ml at 96 weeks of observation).
• In HIV exposed, uninfected infants in Kenya and South Africa, not breast-feeding was associated with a significantly increased risk of serious infectious events in the first 3 months of life.
• In Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Malawi and South Africa, trials of the implementation of “Option B+”, which provides all HIV-infected pregnant and breast-feeding women with lifelong combination ART, have been planned and are underway.
• In Cameroon, mobile-phone text messaging and phone call reminders increased attendance for HIV exposed or infected children.
• A controlled trial of wearing shoes failed to reduce hookworm, because those in the control arm also acquired shoes!  Wearing shoes in either arm was associated with a lower risk of hookworm infectio
• Among children in Tanzania infected with Trichuris trichura, the use of albendazole and oxantel pamoate, or albendazole and ivermectin, were more effective than the albendazole and mebendazole, or mebendazole alone
• In India, a large trial of Integrated Management of Neonatal and Childhood Illness reduced inequity in post-neonatal mortality; that is the effect on child survival beyond the neonatal period was greatest in those from poorer families.  Living within areas where IMNCI was introduced was associated with increased care seeking for neonatal illness, diarrhoea and pneumonia, and a greater chance of being breast fed for 6 months.
• Among hospitalised Indian children receiving IV fluids, with severe pneumonia or central nervous system infections, use of an isotonic fluid reduced the risk of hyponatraemia compared with use of a hypotonic fluid.
• In Ghana, providing rapid diagnostic tests for malaria along with realistic training markedly increased the prescription of rational therapy, and in Camaroon use of RDTs reduced the costs of health care in a study which helped define the best type of health worker training
• A meta-analysis of trials of intermittent preventative therapy for malaria on the effect on anaemia showed a modest protective effect only
• Among children in Malawi treated for malaria with chloroquine-azithromycin, the incidence of subsequent respiratory and gastrointestinal infections was lower than those treated with chloroquine alone.
• Among Ugandan children the use of dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine compared with artemether-lumefantrine reduced the risk of recurrent malaria and hospitalisations over the 84 days of follow-up.
• Among children with sickle-cell disease, malaria parasite clearance was slower than for children without SCD when treated with artemisinin-based therapies.
• In a large meta-analysis of severe malaria, arthemeter was probably less effective in reducing mortality than artesunate, although there are limited direct comparison trials.
• Among children with vivax malaria in Peru, 7 days of primaquine was as effective in preventing relapses as 14 days of primaquine
• In a large cluster RCT of community-based treatment of moderate malnutrition in Burkina Faso, the giving of locally produced ready-to-use supplemental feeds resulted in better weight gain than merely counselling parents about appropriate foods.
• In Kenya, Mozambique and Tanzania, mothers receiving intermittent preventative therapy for malaria with mefloquine had significantly lower rates of malarial parasitaemia, placental malaria and non-obstetric hospital admissions than mothers receiving placebo, but those who received mefloquine had higher rates of perinatal mother-to-child transmission of HIV.  This was an exploratory finding with potential confounding, but requires further investigation.
• In Malawi, a large trial of maternal nutrient supplementation with lipid-based nutrient supplementation failed to show improved birth size or child growth in the first 18 months of life.  However in another large trial in Ghana, birth weight was greater (+85g) and risk of low birth weight less with lipid-based nutrient supplementation.
• In Argentina, a trial of delayed cord clamping showed that it was just as effective if the baby is nursed on the mother’s abdomen immediately after birth as if the baby is held at the level of the placenta.  That is, there is no detrimental effect on blood transfer from placental to baby of immediate skin-to-skin contact with the mother (despite the baby being higher).  In India, umbilical cord milking (a quicker process that may be done in emergency situations) resulted in no different haemoglobin or serum ferritin than delayed cord clamping for 60-90 seconds.
• In a large trial in rural Tanzania, home-based counselling of newborn care practices by volunteers improved several practices, including clean cord care and exclusive breast-feeding
• In India, the routine use of antibiotics to babies born through meconium stained amniotic fluid did not reduce the risk of sepsis
• In 6 countries in South America, Asia and Africa, a trial of antenatal steroids fopr pregnant women at risk of preterm birth did not reduce mortality in those who delivered preterm, but increased neonatal and maternal sepsis and increased overall neonatal mortality.
• Among very low birth weight infants in Turkey, the use of probiotics (Bifidobacterium lactis) added to expressed breast-milk reduced the risk of necrotising enterocolitis, clinical nosocomial sepsis, length of NICU stay and mortality, compared with placebo or a pre-biotic (inulin).
• In Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya and Nigeria, the community based treatment of low risk but possible bacterial infection in newborns with simplified antibiotic regimens which included oral amoxicillin instead of injectable penicillin were no different in effect on newborn sepsis.  Similarly for infants up to 3 months of age with fast breathing only, oral amoxicillin was as effective as injectable penicillin and gentamicin.  Both trials were done in populations at very low risk of serious bacterial infection.
• In a large trial in 55 villages in Burkina Faso, the implementation of an agriculture, nutrition and health behaviour program run by Helen Keller International reduced wasting, diarrhoea and anaemia.
• In a large meta-analysis of 30 trials, praziquantel was the most effective drug for treating urinary schistosomiasis, however the proportion of patients cured varied from 22-83%, and trials of combination therapy with other agents is indicated.  There is still no appropriate formulation of praziquantel for young children.
• In a trial of shortened tuberculosis drug regimens, use of a 4-month regimen that included moxifloxacin was significantly less effective than the standard regimen 2RHZE/4RH.  At this stage shortening TB treatment to less than 6 months is not of proven efficacy.
• In Indian children with grade I-IV vesicoureteric reflux, use of antibiotic prophylaxis with trimethoprim-sufamethoxizole was associated with a greater risk of UTI, most of which were caused by TMP-SMX resistant bacteria.  Children receiving antibiotic prophyxis also had a greater risk of renal scarring.
• In a study involving over 10,000 children aged 2-14 years in 5 countries in Asia, three doses of a recombinant, live, attenuated tetravalent Dengue vaccine (CYD-DTV) was 56% efficacious in preventing symptomatic, virologically confirmed dengue over 25 months of follow-up.
• A follow-up study of HPV vaccine in Taiwan showed protective antibodies for 6 years, at levels which could be expected to last at least 20 years post vaccination.
• In South Africa, influenza vaccine given to pregnant HIV-positive and HIV-negative women provided partial protection (around 50% efficacy) for them, and protection for the infants the infants were HIV-unexposed.  There was no protection of giving maternal influenza vaccine to infants who were HIV-infected or exposed.
• In 11 African sites 3 doses of the RTS,S/AS01 malaria vaccine given to infants provided 40-50% protection against clinical malaria, 34% protection against severe malaria and 19% protection against all-cause hospitalisation.
• In India, giving IPV to children who have at least 6 months previously received 3 doses of OPV boosted intestinal immunity and reduced viral excretion after exposure to a test dose of bivalent OPV.  This boosted intestinal immunity may be used to prevent outbreaks of poliomyelitis.
• In Indian children given rotavirus vaccine at 6, 10 and 14 weeks, protective efficacy against rotavirus gastroenteritis and severe rotavirus disease of about 50% was observed in the second year of life.
• There were several large trials of neonatal vitamin A supplementation reported on in 2014-15, finding minimal or no effect on mortality (NeoVitA trials).  In one trial in India of over 40,000 newborns randomised to vitamin A 50,000 U or placebo, vitamin A showed a modest and non-significant lower mortality (-3 per 1000, 95% CI -6% to 0.1) in the first 6 months of life.  In similar trials in Ghana and Tanzania involving 22,000 and 32,000 newborn infants respectively, the mortality risk was also not significantly different in the vitamin supplemented group.  Bulging fontanelle was reported as an adverse effect in <1% of newborns given vitamin A. Trials from Guinea Bissau also confirmed no beneficial effect of neonatal vitamin A supplementation.
• In Indian children with acute respiratory infection, 2 weeks of prophylactic zinc supplementation reduced subsequent acute lower respiratory infections over the following 5 months of follow-up, but had no effect on all acute respiratory infections.

This is the 13th edition of this booklet.  Previous editions, which summarise 1750 trial publications from 2002-2014 are available at www.ichrc.org<http://www.ichrc.org>.  Look via the Evidence tab.

Please feel free to make as many copies as you like or pass this document on to anyone who may find it useful.

Regards,

Prof Trevor Duke, MD FRACP

Centre for International Child Health, University of Melbourne and MCRI

See this news item in the BMJ (11 July 2015):

‘Dutch universities plan to boycott Elsevier after it fails to agree open access deal: Universities in the Netherlands are to ask their researchers to resign from editor in chief posts with Elsevier journals because the publisher will not agree an open access deal. The universities won’t renew a deal in which they gain access to all of Elsevier’s subscription journals unless the publisher ensures, without significant price rises, that 60% of the country’s scientific output is open access by 2019 and 100% by 2024. If this action does not succeed the universities plan to ask Dutch researchers to stop reviewing for Elsevier journals and may, as a last resort, ask them to stop publishing papers in its titles.’

The drive towards open access seems to be inexorable.

Best wishes,

Neil

Let’s build a future where people are no longer dying for lack of healthcare knowledge – Join HIFA: www.hifa2015.org  

CHW Central is continuing to explore how to support large scale CHW programs.  Our latest feature looks at Who’s in Charge?  The Complexity of Governing Large-Scale CHW Programs.   “Who’s in charge?” is a difficult question for CHW programs to answer, especially those operating on a large scale. Who are the people and institutions that make decisions about running a program? How do they arrive at their decisions? And how are these decisions implemented and enforced? Things rapidly become complicated for CHW programs as they may or may not be part of a formal health system. CHWs may answer to multiple authorities, and what works very well in one area may not be appropriate in another.   

Chapter 4 of the CHW Reference Guide defines the importance of governance and lays out the issues:  How are policies made?  Who implements decisions regarding CHW programs? What laws and regulations are needed to support the program? How should the program be adapted across different settings in the country or region?

Find the full article on the CHW Central website;  as well as over 550 other resources related to community health workers.   

Donna Bjerregaard, Senior Technical Advisor, Initiatives Inc.

www.initiativesinc.com / www.chwcentral.or