The Pan African medical journal
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Despite some improvement in provision of safe drinking water, proper sanitation and hygiene promotion, cholera still remains a major public health problem in Malawi with outbreaks occurring almost every year since 1998. In response to 2014/2015 cholera outbreak, ministry of health and partners made a decision to assess the feasibility and acceptability of conducting a mass oral cholera vaccine (OCV) as an additional public health measure. This paper highlights the burden of the 2014/15 cholera outbreak, successes and challenges of OCV campaign conducted in March and April 2015. ⋯ This documentation has demonstrated that it was feasible, acceptable by the community to conduct a large-scale mass OCV campaign in Malawi within five weeks. Of 320,000 OCV doses received, Malawi managed to administer at least 294,221 (91.9%) of the doses. OCV could therefore be considered to be introduced as additional measure in cholera hot spot areas in Malawi.
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Case Reports
Household exposure and animal-bite surveillance following human rabies detection in Southern Ghana.
Rabies remains a neglected tropical zoonotic disease with 100% case fatality rate and estimated 6,000 global mortality annually, and yet vaccine preventable. In Ghana, rabies outbreaks receive poor response. We investigated rabies in a 5-year old boy to find the source of infection, identify exposed persons for post-exposure prophylaxis and describe animal-bite surveillance in Manya-Krobo District of Ghana. ⋯ Rabies remains a public health burden inGhana with domestic dog as reservoir of the virus and females more vulnerable to secondary exposures. Health education on rabies should be intensified, and robust animal-bite surveillance system put in place.
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World leaders adopted the UN Millennium Declaration in 2000, which committed the nations of the world to a new global partnership, aimed at reducing extreme poverty and other time-bound targets, with a stated deadline of 2015. Fifteen years later, although significant progress has been made worldwide, Nigeria is lagging behind for a variety of reasons, including bureaucracy, poor resource management in the healthcare system, sequential healthcare worker industrial action, Boko Haram insurgency in the north of Nigeria and kidnappings in the south of Nigeria. The country needs to tackle these problems to be able to significantly advance with the new sustainable development goals (SDGs) by the 2030 target date.
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Hepatitis A virus can manifest with severe and unusual neurological attack. We report the case of a 59-year old man with balance disorder associated with lower limb paresthesias and sphincter disorders. ⋯ Despite high-dose corticosteroid therapy, only partial recovery was seen. A systematic etiologic search for infection caused by hepatitis A virus (HAV) should be performed in every patient with acute myelitis even in the absence of clinical or biological signs suggestive of hepatitis, especially in endemic countries where vaccine prophylaxis is lacking.
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Febrile cervical pain is often secondary to meningitis or spondylodiscitis and, exceptionally, to microcrystalline arthropathy. We here report a case. A 81-year old man with no particular personal history was hospitalized with febrile cervical pain. ⋯ Serial atlanto-axial Computed Tomography (CT) scan showed peri-odontoid calcifications, confirming the diagnosis of crowned dens syndrome (CDS). Patient evolution was favorable under nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). CDS deserves to be better known; it can mimic many disorders and be responsible for long term fever.