To understand geographic variation in travel-related illness acquired in distinct African regions, we used the GeoSentinel Surveillance Network database to analyze records for 16,893 ill travelers returning from Africa over a 14-year period. Travelers to northern Africa most commonly reported gastrointestinal illnesses and dog bites. Febrile illnesses were more common in travelers returning fro...

BACKGROUND Sub-Saharan Africa faces an epidemic of diabetes. Diabetes causes significant morbidity including visual loss from diabetic retinopathy, which is largely preventable. In this resource-poor setting, health systems are poorly organized to deliver chronic care with multiple system involvement. The specific skills and resources needed to manage diabetic retinopathy are scarce. The costs ...

recent proposals for re-defining the roles africa’s health workforce are a continuation of the discussions that have been held since colonial times. the proposals have centred on basing the continent’s healthcare delivery on non-physician clinicians (npcs) who can be quickly trained and widely distributed to treat majority of the common diseases. whilst seemingly logical, the success of these p...

Available evidence indicates that Africa accounts for the highest burden of maternal mortality in the world. Primary postpartum hemorrhage (PPH) accounts for an estimated 25% of maternal mortality, and is a major cause of postpartum disability in sub-Saharan Africa. PPH and maternal anemia are also indirect contributors to maternal deaths due to other causes. Thus, it is conceivable that any in...

North African populations are distinct from sub-Saharan Africans based on cultural, linguistic, and phenotypic attributes; however, the time and the extent of genetic divergence between populations north and south of the Sahara remain poorly understood. Here, we interrogate the multilayered history of North Africa by characterizing the effect of hypothesized migrations from the Near East, Europ...

BACKGROUND Research activities in sub-Saharan Africa may be limited to delegated tasks due to the strong control from Western collaborators, which could lead to scientific production of little value in terms of its impact on social and economic innovation in less developed areas. However, the current contexts of international biomedical research including the development of public-private partn...

BACKGROUND In this paper, we aim to quantify the contribution of international health volunteers to the health workforce in sub-Saharan Africa and to explore the perceptions of health service managers regarding these volunteers. METHODS Rapid survey among organizations sending international health volunteers and group discussions with experienced medical officers from sub-Saharan African coun...

More than half of all people living with HIV are women and 80% of all HIV positive women in the world live in Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper demonstrates that the legal origins of these formerly colonized countries significantly determines current day female HIV rates. In particular, female HIV rates are significantly higher in common law Sub-Saharan African countries compared to civil law ones...

BACKGROUND Assessments of maternal near miss (MNM) are increasingly used in addition to those of maternal mortality measures. The World Health Organization (WHO) has introduced an MNM tool in 2009, but this tool was previously found to be of limited applicability in several low-resource settings. The aim of this study was to identify adaptations to enhance applicability of the WHO MNM tool in s...

BACKGROUND Mobile health (mHealth), a term used for healthcare delivery via mobile devices, has gained attention as an innovative technology for better access to healthcare and support for performance of health workers in the global health context. Despite large expansion of mHealth across sub-Saharan Africa, regional collaboration for scale-up has not made progress since last decade. METHODS...