The Nanoro Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS), located in the rural centre of Burkina Faso, was established in 2009 by the Clinical Research Unit of Nanoro with the aim of providing a core framework for clinical trials and also to support the Burkina Faso health authorities in generating epidemiological data that can contribute to the setup and assessment of health interventions....

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Little information is available on the rapid diagnostic testing for syphilis in Burkina Faso. The objectives of the study were (i) to assess the sensitivity and specificity of four on site rapid tests in comparison with Treponema pallidum haemagglutination assay (TPHA) as a gold standard and (ii) to evaluate the operational characteristics of those tests among health wo...

Twenty years after the latest publications performed on the parasitological indices of malaria transmission in northwest of the second city of Burkina Faso, it was important to update the epidemiological profile of malaria in children under the age of 15 years. The objective of this study was to determine and compare the parasitological parameters of malaria transmission by season, area, and ag...

Natural methods of contraception were widely used in developed countries until the late 1960s to space and limit childbirth. In France, when the first contraceptive surveys were conducted, researchers noticed that the use of natural methods was underreported, and questions to correct for this bias were subsequently added. The Demographic and Health Surveys do not currently include questions spe...

OBJECTIVE To investigate 4 combinations of mutations responsible for glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficiency in a rural community of Burkina Faso, a malaria endemic country. METHODS Two hundred individuals in a rural community were genotyped for the mutations A376G, G202A, A542T, G680T and T968C using TaqMan single nucleotide polymorphism assays and polymerase chain reaction follo...

The relationship between religious obligations and female genital cutting is explored using data from Burkina Faso, a religiously and ethnically diverse country where approximately three-quarters of adult women are circumcised. Data from the 2003 Burkina Faso Demographic and Health Survey are used to estimate multilevel models of religious variation in the intergenerational transmission of fema...

This study explores the relationship between migration and employment in Ouagadougou. Using both a cross-sectional and a longitudinal approach, we compare the economic integration of migrants to that of non-migrants. Contrary to most studies based on urban samples, the data used here come from a national survey. It is thus possible to reintegrate into the analysis the migration episodes to Ouag...

Malaria congenital infection constitutes a major risk in malaria endemic areas. In this study, we report the prevalence of transplacental malaria in Burkina Faso. In labour and delivery units, thick and thin blood films were made from maternal, placental, and umbilical cord blood to determine malaria infection. A total of 1,309 mother/baby pairs were recruited. Eighteen cord blood samples (1.4%...

Pfs25 is a leading candidate for a malaria transmission-blocking vaccine whose potential has been demonstrated in a phase 1 trial with recombinant Pfs25 formulated with Montanide ISA51. Because of limited sequence polymorphism, the anti-Pfs25 antibodies induced by this vaccine are likely to have transmission-blocking or -reducing activity against most, if not all, field isolates. To test this h...

Dengue is an emerging infectious disease of global significance. Although this virus has been reported for a long time, its significance within the burden of diseases in West Africa is not obvious, especially in Burkina Faso. Our objective was to evaluate flavivirus presence in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) and the link between anti-flavivirus antibody seroprevalence and urbanization modes. A popu...