Department of Business Administration, National University of Lesotho, BTM - Building. Office Number BTM 201 P.0. Roma. 180, Maseru, Lesotho. makoloithetsane@gmail.com.
Centre for Global Health Inequalities Research (CHAIN), Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), PO box 8900, Torgarden, Trondheim 7491, Norway.
Department of Public Health and Nursing, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, NTNU PO box 8900, Torgarden, Trondheim 7491, Norway.
Family Medicine Specialty Training Program, Lesotho-Boston Health Alliance, Leribe, Lesotho; and, Department of Family Medicine, School of Medicine, Boston University, Boston, United States of America; and, Center for Health System Design and Implementation, Institute for Health System Innovation and Policy, Boston University, Boston. cmcg@bu.edu.
The rubella virus is a major contributor to birth defects globally and is preventable by vaccination. In 2020, the world was supposed to be free of both rubella and Congenital Rubella Syndrome (CRS) h...
A retrospective measles and rubella case-based surveillance data record review was conducted from 2018 to 2022 to document rubella epidemiology after the introduction of rubella vaccination in Lesotho...
Of the 1041 samples that were tested for rubella between 2018 and 2022, 10 (1%) were confirmed measles positive and were excluded from further analysis. The median age of the respondents was 6.0 (IQR ...
The study showed low rubella prevalence. Rubella infection was predominant in those aged 5 - < 13 years. Failure to meet surveillance targets at certain time points during the study period may have le...
Lesotho experienced high rates of maternal (566/100,000 live births) and under-five mortality (72.9/1000 live births). A 2013 national assessment found centralized healthcare management in Ministry of...
We conducted 21 semi-structured key informant interviews (KII) with healthcare workers and Ministry of Health officials purposively sampled from various levels of Lesotho's health system, including th...
Participants described benefits of decentralization, including improved efficiency in service delivery, enhanced accountability and responsiveness, increased community participation, improved data ava...
Our study findings indicate that the implementation of decentralized primary health care management in Lesotho was associated a positive impact on health system building blocks related to primary heal...
Participatory surveillance involves at-risk populations reporting their symptoms using technology. In Lesotho, a landlocked country of 2 million people in Southern Africa, laboratory and case-based CO...
This report describes the person, place, and time characteristics of influenza-like illness (ILI) in Lesotho from July 15, 2020, to July 15, 2021, and reports the risk ratio of ILI by key demographic ...
LeCellPHIA employed interviewers to call participants weekly to inquire about ILI. The average weekly incidence rate for the year-long period was created using a Quasi-Poisson model, which accounted f...
The overall response rate for the year of data collection was 75%, which resulted in 122,985 weekly reports from 1776 participants. ILI trends from LeCellPHIA mirrored COVID-19 testing data trends, wi...
LeCellPHIA, an innovative and cost-effective system, could be replicated in countries where cell phone ownership is high but internet use is not yet high enough for a web- or app-based surveilance sys...
Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women worldwide, and women with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) are particularly at risk of developing it. Regular screening effectively prevents...
Between October 2020 and March 2022, the Viral load Triggered ART care in Lesotho (VITAL) trial enrolled women aged 18 years and older with HIV who were taking antiretroviral therapy (ART). Cervical c...
Quantitative data were available for 3790 women. Among them, cervical cancer screening was delayed in 1814 (47.9%), including 1533 (40.5%) who were never screened. Compared to women aged 25 to 39 year...
Cervical cancer screening delay was common. Limited personal awareness and motivation as well as the negative influence of other women were the primary internal barriers to cervical cancer screening. ...
clinicaltrials.gov, NCT04527874, August 27, 2020....
For adults and adolescents, the World Health Organization defines advanced HIV disease (AHD) as a CD4 (cluster of differentiation 4) count of <200 cells/mm3 or a clinical stage 3 or 4 event. We descri...
Prevalence of elevated blood pressure (BP) and diabetes mellitus (DM) is increasing in sub-Saharan Africa. Data on target organ damage such as retinopathy, left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH), renal im...
To determine at community-level the prevalence of retinopathy, LVH, renal impairment, and PN among adults with elevated BP and/or DM, and assess the association of elevated BP and/or DM with target or...
During a household-based survey, a sub-sample of adults with elevated BP (≥ 140/90 mmHg) and/or DM (glycosylated hemoglobin ≥ 6.5%), as well as comparators (BP < 140/90 mmHg, HbA1c < 6.5%) were screen...
Out of 6108 participants screened during the survey, 420 with elevated BP only, 80 with DM only, 61 with elevated BP and DM, and 360 comparators were assessed for target organ damage. Among those with...
We found a high prevalence of undiagnosed target organ damage among adults with elevated BP and/or DM during community-based screening. These findings emphasize the importance of regular prevention an...
Lesotho's government has shown consistent efforts to implement social protection programmes. However, while recent evidence established a positive causal relationship between some of these programmes ...
The study uses cross-sectional, nationally representative data from the 2018 Lesotho Violence Against Children and Youth Survey. Our research examined the association between social protection receipt...
Our study provides evidence that social protection programs are associated with improved educational, sexual and reproductive health and child marriage prevention outcomes among adolescents living in ...
Social protection programs have been increasing in sub-Saharan African countries, playing a pivotal role in poverty reduction, with Lesotho being no exception. Despite the optimistic outlook brought a...
The World Health Organization's (WHO) Mental Health Gap Action Programme (mhGAP) is a validated intervention that can be provided by non-specialised healthcare workers to individuals with unhealthy al...
This is a two-arm randomised open-label multicentre superiority trial. Participants allocated to mhGAP-Standard receive 4 in-person sessions using motivational interviewing, identifying triggers, and ...
This trial will provide insight into feasibility and effectiveness of a shortened and primarily SMS supported version of mhGAP, which is especially relevant for settings where regular clinic attendanc...
clinicaltrials.gov NCT05925270 . Approved on June 29th, 2023....
Type 2 diabetes (T2D) poses a growing public health burden, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Task-shifting to lay village health workers (VHWs) and the use of digital clinical d...
We are conducting a cluster-randomized trial nested within the Community-Based Chronic Disease Care Lesotho (ComBaCaL) cohort study (NCT05596773) using the trial within cohort (TwiC) design to assess ...
The trial was launched on May 13, 2023, and has enrolled 226 participants at the date of submission (October 6, 2023). To our knowledge, the trial is the first to assess task-shifting of T2D care to V...
ClinicalTrials.gov NCT05743387. Registered on February 24 2023....
While laboratory testing for infectious diseases such as COVID-19 is the surveillance gold standard, it is not always feasible, particularly in settings where resources are scarce. In the small countr...
A nationally-representative sample was called on their mobile phones weekly to create an estimate of incidence of ILI between July 2020 and July 2021. Case counts from the website Our World in Data (O...
Over course of the study period, an ILI symptom was reported 1,085 times via participatory surveillance for an average annual cumulative incidence of 45.7 per 100 people (95% Confidence Interval [CI]:...
The ILI trends captured by the participatory surveillance system in Lesotho mirrored trends of the COVID-19 case count data from Our World in Data. Public health practitioners in geographies that lack...
