Malawi

One year ago, Malawi launched its first National Medical Oxygen Ecosystem Roadmap. It is already helping to close the oxygen access gap.

Medical devices are a critical but often overlooked component for effective facility-based care, especially for women and children. Many medical devices have unique characteristics that make them difficult to manage effectively, particularly in low-resource settings. For instance, some devices can serve multiple clinical uses across different health programs—complicating ownership and funding responsibilities. They can sometimes require extensive training, ongoing preventive maintenance, and a reliable supply of specialized parts and accessories.This fact sheet offers an overview of the Scaling Access to Lifesaving Equipment (SCALE) project—which builds on previous research and initiatives under Market Dynamics for Medical Devices. Through this project, PATH will identify and test promising new business and operating models, while strengthening the underlying systems for managing all durable medical devices and equipment. With a vision that patients should have reliable access to device-related health services, this project seeks to ensure medical devices are available and functional in sufficient quantities across health facilities.

This document is a resource list and compendium of national-level guidelines and protocols for selected countries based on the neoLENS policy review, as of February 2022.

As countries digitalize their health systems, health practitioners and ministries of health are learning what makes the development and introduction of digital health tools and approaches successful. However global policies and digital health investments often do not reflect the priorities and lessons that have emerged from these countries’ experiences.To bridge this gap, the Data Use Acceleration and Learning (DUAL) initiative collected learnings from its five focal countries and packaged them into a model for digital transformation for data use that evolves the World Health Organization (WHO) and International Telecommunication Union (ITU) eHealth Strategy Building Blocks.The DUAL model identifies ten core elements of a comprehensive approach to transforming a country’s health data systems and digital tools to advance data use. Rather than presenting a linear, step-by-step guide for digital transformation, it provides the “ingredients” for success that depend on and enable one another toward catalytic change.The DUAL report allows countries to identify the most appropriate starting point based on the priorities and digital maturity of their health systems. Each element is framed as a standalone chapter with key enabling factors, based on the evidence of what worked and what didn’t in the five focal countries DUAL studied. Specific actions are recommended for each enabling factor and country examples are used to illustrate the DUAL model at work.

The trial aimed to determine how well a new, injectable, non-replicating rotavirus vaccine candidate works compared to a licensed oral rotavirus vaccine in preventing infant diarrhea.

In places with limited testing capacity, environmental surveillance of sewage and surface water may offer early warnings of outbreaks.

In many low- and middle-income countries, hundreds of thousands of people—including many newborns, children, and pregnant women—die needlessly each year from hypoxemia, or a low concentration of oxygen in the blood. Hypoxemia can be caused by a range of illnesses and complications, including pneumonia, neonatal infections, premature birth, obstetric emergencies, and respiratory infections like COVID-19.The COVID-19 pandemic has pointedly highlighted the lack of access to oxygen in lower-resource settings. The biggest barriers to oxygen therapy access include inadequate supply and human resource capacity, funding constraints, and the inability to deploy resources in countries rapidly in a way that ensures maximum impact while not overwhelming existing health care systems. The oxygen landscape is at a pivotal point where short-term pandemic-response efforts require continued support while transitioning to long-term, sustained strategies for ensuring access.This fact sheet offers an overview of the SOURCE project to support countries to equitably improve access to high-quality oxygen services at all levels of the health care system in order to reduce maternal, child, and overall mortality from hypoxemia-related causes. To do so, PATH will incorporate near-term pandemic-response work into a robust set of implementation, advocacy, and research activities that will ensure long-term access to medical oxygen and resilient systems for future pandemic-response efforts.

Current live, oral rotavirus vaccines (LORVs) are reducing severe diarrhea in all settings, but they are not as effective in places with the highest burden. Alternative approaches in advanced clinical development include injectable next-generation rotavirus vaccines (iNGRVs), which have the potential to better protect children against disease, be combined with existing routine immunizations, and be even more affordable than the current LORVs. PATH conducted a series of studies to understand the real public health value of iNGRVs to help inform decisions by international agencies, funders, vaccine manufacturers, and countries. This included a feasibility and acceptability study with national stakeholders and healthcare providers in Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Peru, Senegal, and Sri Lanka to assess their preferences for different hypothetical rotavirus vaccine options. These briefs provide an overview of the results in each of the study countries.

Current live, oral rotavirus vaccines (LORVs) are reducing severe diarrhea in all settings, but they are not as effective in places with the highest burden. Alternative approaches in advanced clinical development include injectable next-generation rotavirus vaccines (iNGRVs), which have the potential to better protect children against disease, be combined with existing routine immunizations, and be even more affordable than the current LORVs. PATH conducted a series of studies to understand the real public health value of iNGRVs to help inform decisions by international agencies, funders, vaccine manufacturers, and countries. This included: targeted analyses on the ideal age group for iNGRVs and potential future combination vaccine options, impact and cost effectiveness analyses, a feasibility and acceptability study with national stakeholders and healthcare providers in six countries, and a demand forecast. This brief provides a comprehensive summary of the results.

PATH is working with partners in Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, and Uganda to increase vaccine uptake and save lives.