SETTING Tuberculosis (TB) control programmes in Bangladesh, India and Malawi. OBJECTIVE To compare the interval from symptom onset to diagnosis of TB for men and women, and to assess socio-cultural and gender-related features of illness explaining diagnostic delay. DESIGN Semi-structured Explanatory Model Interview Catalogue (EMIC) interviews were administered to 100 or more patients at eac...

OBJECTIVE To study the profile of leprosy cases at Nkhotakota District Hospital in Central Region of Malawi. DESIGN Retrospective cross-sectional study of all registered cases of leprosy from records over a nine year period (January 1992 to April 2001) SETTING Nkhotakota District Hospital-Central Region of Malawi. RESULTS In total 526 cases of leprosy were identified from the records. The...

PURPOSE To determine the prevalence of trachoma in all suspected endemic districts in Malawi. METHODS A population-based survey conducted in 16 evaluation units from 12 suspected endemic districts in Malawi (population 6,390,517), using the standardized Global Trachoma Mapping Project (GTMP) protocol. A 2-stage cluster-random sampling design selected 30 households from each of 30 clusters per...

BACKGROUND Data on prevalence and causes of avoidable blindness in Malawi are not readily available. The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence and causes of blindness in persons aged 50 and above in southern Malawi to plan eye care services for the community. METHODOLOGY A population-based survey was conducted in 7 districts in southern Malawi. Villages were selected by probab...

BACKGROUND Malawi has a high burden of paediatric cardiac disease but a limited number of health providers familiar with these chronic diseases. Given the rising number of Malawian postgraduate paediatric trainees at the University of Malawi College of Medicine, we sought to remedy this lack of basic cardiology training with a long-distance, module-based curriculum that could be utilised indepe...

BACKGROUND Job satisfaction is an important determinant of health worker motivation, retention, and performance, all of which are critical to improving the functioning of health systems in low- and middle-income countries. A number of small-scale surveys have measured the job satisfaction and intention to leave of individual health worker cadres in different settings, but there are few multi-co...

BACKGROUND Education is important in improving economies and creating literate, self-reliant and healthy societies. However, hunger is a barrier to basic education in Malawi. Hunger is also associated with a number of health risk behaviours, such as bullying, suicide ideation and unhygienic behaviours that may jeopardize the future of children. There are, however, limited data on the prevalence...

Lake Malawi cichlids have been studied extensively in an effort to elucidate the mechanisms underlying their adaptive radiation. Both habitat partitioning and trophic specialization have been suggested to be critical ecological axes underlying the exceptional diversification of these fishes, but the mechanisms facilitating this divergence are often unclear. For instance, in the rock-dwelling mb...

INTRODUCTION Cost-effectiveness analysis are crucial in the management of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, particularly in resource-limited settings. Such analyses have not been performed in the use of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) for prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT). OBJECTIVE Cost-effectiveness analysis of HAART approach in Malawi for PMTCT. METHODS In 2 health cen...

SETTING Tuberculosis (TB) control programmes in Bangladesh, India, Malawi and Colombia. OBJECTIVE Assess indicators of TB-related stigma and socio-cultural and gender-related features of illness associated with stigma. DESIGN Semi-structured Explanatory Model Interview Catalogue (EMIC) interviews were administered to 100 or more patients at each site, assessing categories of distress, perce...