South African medical journal = Suid-Afrikaanse tydskrif vir geneeskunde
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Pelonomi Tertiary Hospital is the only hospital in the Free State Province with a burns unit. We do not have official data to assess our performance in the management of burns. ⋯ The epidemiology of burn patients and working conditions at Pelonomi Tertiary Hospital are similar to other burn units in the country; however, our mortality rate is higher than at most centres. The LA50 is low, but in keeping with the rest of Africa, and our predictors of mortality are in keeping with those found in other studies in other parts of the world.
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Point-of-care (POC) rapid recency testing can be used as a cost-effective tool to identify recently infected individuals (i.e. infected within the last 12 months) in near-real time, support epidemic control and identify hotspots for transmission as part of recent infection surveillance. ⋯ The Asanté HIV-1 rapid recency assay test results demonstrated high accuracy (>90%) compared with the HIV ELISA and rapid assays for determining established infection and the Maxim HIV-1 LAg avidity assay for classifying recent HIV-1 infections. The assay's sensitivity for established infections was below the World Health Organization criteria (<99%) for POC devices. The Asanté HIV-1 rapid recency assay can be used to distinguish between recent and long-term infections, but may not be considered a POC test for determining HIV infection.