Resources

Many health facilities in low- and middle-income countries lack access to reliable mains electricity, making the refrigeration of vaccines at appropriate temperatures challenging. A common solution is to use solar direct drive refrigerators. The solar arrays that power solar direct drive refrigerators often produce more energy than the refrigerator requires, and this underutilized energy could be used to power a range of electric devices to improve the service offerings and conditions in the health facility. Potential uses include powering lights, fans, cellular phones, and medical devices such as fetal Doppler heart rate monitors and otoscopes. We tested two energy harvest control (EHC) systems that could send the underutilized power to other devices while prioritizing the power requirements of the vaccine refrigerator. Testing was conducted at health facilities in Senegal. Monitoring of the power diverted by the EHCs to both dump loads and user–selected devices demonstrated that useful amounts of electricity could be harvested. Monitoring of the refrigerator vaccine compartment temperature showed that temperatures remained within the appropriate range during energy harvesting. Informal and structured interviews with health facility staff indicated acceptance of the EHC, appreciation of the additional power provided, perceived improvements in care, and better community/client perceptions of the health facility. These results show that EHCs used with solar direct drive vaccine refrigerators can provide a useful source of additional electricity to health facilities without compromising the primary function of the vaccine refrigerator.

Digital innovations hold the key to overcoming the diverse public health challenges in India, and enhancing health care delivery at scale. To make a significant impact, greater focus should be placed on adopting and scaling up relevant digital solutions in India and beyond.With the vision of catapulting health innovations to solve public health challenges for India and beyond, PATH and C-CAMP are launching a five–year program to support and fast–track demonstration, adoption, and scale–up of market ready digital health solutions to address the pressing needs of health systems.This brochure provides a detailed description of the program, and outlines how the program seeks to create an ecosystem that supports evidence–based digital interventions for sustainable impact through the continuum of health care value chain.

This guide, in French, outlines the health system and context-specific enabling factors and activities to consider when introducing digital health tools. This guide is intended to augment the digital systems and user requirements, which provides a common language for various audiences—program managers, software developers, and implementers of digital systems—to ensure a holistic understanding of the appropriate health information content within the COVID-19 antigen RDT health program area, to catalyze the effective use of these digital systems.

The Malawi Ministry of Health (MOH) faces two key challenges in making evidence-based budgeting, procurement, and management decisions for medical equipment: 1) the lack of up-to-date information on the type and status of equipment in health facilities and 2) limited knowledge of root causes underlying many common access barriers.To address this gap, PATH partnered with the MOH’s Health Technical Support Services (HTSS) Directorate to conduct a detailed equipment inventory survey that documents current availability and functionality of key medical equipment across all government-run central, district and community hospitals as well as most health centers.As part of the Market Dynamics for MNCH Medical Devices (MD4MD) project, this report highlights the findings from that survey—focusing on 24 priority devices from the national Standard Equipment List. Key findings include: (1) availability of the priority devices is low, and most facilities do not meet national minimum standards; (2) availability varies significantly across equipment and devices, facility levels, and geography; (3) the prevalence of nonfunctional equipment significantly widens the aforementioned gap in device availability; and (4) a relatively high degree of brand proliferation poses challenges for training and maintenance, particularly in central and district hospitals.

Since 2016, PATH has been implementing DREAMS to keep adolescent girls and young women ages 9 to 24 years old HIV-free by providing them with critical, cross-cutting services aimed to prevent HIV acquisition. From 2020–2023, the PATH-led Chak a Chaka project provided DREAMS graduates with further opportunities to save, build, and employ entrepreneurial skills and create supportive and sustainable networks that protect their health and wellbeing, and that of their children and families. This learning exercise report, based on end-of-project focus group discussions with Chak a Chaka participants, provides lessons learned and best practices from Chak a Chaka to inform future integrated economic-HIV prevention interventions for DREAMS-graduated and other young women in Kenya.