Analysis of meningitis outbreak data, Jaman North District, Brong Ahafo Region, Ghana

Dartey, Bismark K; Afreh, Osei Kuffour; Teviu, Emmanuel; Khumalo, George; Letsa, Timothy; Issah, Kofi; Opoku, Samuel T.; Iddrissah, Florence; Nortey, Priscillia

doi:10.4314/gmj.v54i2s.9

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 7 publications

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“…The mean age of patients diagnosed with meningitis in this study was 7 years that was in line with results documented from reports in the regions from north of Iraq during the same outbreak [4] and goes with published data from meningitis outbreaks in other parts of the world, which detected a mean age of 7 years [12][13][14]. While in outbreaks from other regions like Ghana, children of age range 10-14 was mostly affected in meningitis outbreak [15] .The mean age of febrile patients with proved meningitis was higher than those with negative CSF analysis. This indicates that from febrile patients in whom CSF analysis was requested based on clinical presentation, meningitis tend to affect older age patients this could be attributed to the fact that signs of meningitis in young patients is not specific which results in over requesting lumbar puncture in young age children [16][17][18].…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Can Clinical Presentations or Hematological Indices Predict Meningitis in Febrile Children?

Akram,

AL-Baldawi

2024

Alq J Med App Sci

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The aim of this study is to assess the role of clinical presentations and hematological indices in the diagnosis of meningitis in febrile children during a meningitis outbreak. A cross-sectional study, recruiting (236) febrile children underwent lumbar puncture for suspected meningitis. Participants were divided into two groups based on the results of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) analysis: the case group included all those who carried a diagnosis of meningitis while the rest of the patients whose CSF analysis result was negative for meningitis was taken as a control group. The clinical characteristics, hematological indices were compared between both groups. Children with proved meningitis were significantly of older age and resides more in rural areas than control P value= (0.001), (0.014) respectively. The Neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio and platelet counts were the only significant hematological indices that elevated in children with meningitis P value= (0.001), (0.018) respectively. Headache and neck stiffness were documented more in children with meningitis P value = (<0.001) whilst seizure was significantly less common in children with meningitis P value = (<0.001). During a meningitis outbreak, pediatrician in low resource country can use a constellation of clinical and hematological characteristics to identify febrile children who in need of lumbar puncture to exclude meningitis.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Can Clinical Presentations or Hematological Indices Predict Meningitis in Febrile Children?

Akram,

AL-Baldawi

2024

Alq J Med App Sci

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Etiologic Profile of the Pneumococcus in Ghana: A Systematic Review

Arhin,

Donkor,

Slotved

et al. 2024

BioMed Research International

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Objective: To describe the profile of Streptococcus pneumoniae, identify research gaps, and provide in‐depth insights into various aspects related to the pathogen.Methods: Google Scholar, PubMed, and ScienceDirect were searched for all studies on the pneumococcus in Ghana that reported on specimen collected, population and sample size, carriage prevalence, incidence of pneumococcal diseases, age of the study population, types of test performed, serotypes identified, antimicrobial susceptibilities, or molecular analysis on the pneumococci for data extraction.Results: Overall, a total of 7954 results were obtained from the three‐database search, and of this, 24 articles were selected after screening. A total of 924 isolates were accounted for by serotyping/serogrouping. The prevalence of pneumococcal carriage in Ghana ranges from 11.0% to 51.4% in the population depending on the age (≤ 24–80 years), sickle cell disease (SCD), human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) status, or health of the study population, and penicillin (Pen)‐nonsusceptible isolates ranged from 17% to 63%. The prevalence of pneumococci found as the etiologic agent of diseases among Ghanaians ranges from 3.4% for otitis media to 77.7% for meningitis. Overall, the 13‐valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) (PCV‐13) carriage serotypes accounted for 28.4% of the reported pneumococcal isolates. PCV‐13 invasive serotypes accounted for 22.4% of the reported isolates. The non‐PCV‐13 carriage serotypes accounted for most (43.9%) of the reported isolates. In the pre‐PCV‐13 era, the nontypeable (NT) (5.5%) and other nonvaccine types (NVTs) (6.4%) were reported as being predominant. The non‐PCV‐13 serotypes accounted for 4.4% of the reported isolates in invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD) cases. Multidrug resistance (MDR) ranged from 7.8% to 100%.Conclusion: Predicting the invasiveness of pneumococci using molecular typing is the way to go in the future as this will provide answers to the extent to which capsular switching is contributing to the pneumococcal disease burden in Ghana almost a decade after introducing PCV‐13. Continuous monitoring of antibiotic resistance patterns at both phenotypic and genotypic levels, along with serotyping and molecular typing, should be a standard practice in the surveillance of pneumococcal disease burden in Ghana.

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A comparative cross-sectional evaluation of the Field Epidemiology Training Program-Frontline in Ethiopia

et al. 2022

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Background The Field Epidemiology Training Program (FETP)-Frontline is a three-month in-service training aimed at improving surveillance officers’ capacity to collect, analyze, and interpret surveillance data, and respond to health emergencies. We evaluated the effectiveness of the FETP-Frontline which was introduced in Ethiopia in 2016. Methods We conducted a comparative, randomized cross-sectional study to assess surveillance-related knowledge, skills, and performance among trained and untrained officers using a structured questionnaire and observation checklist. We compared the knowledge, skills, and performance scores of trained and untrained officers using the Fisher’s Exact test, chi-square test, and t-test at p-value < 0.05 for statistical significance. Results We conducted the study among 74 trained and 76 untrained surveillance officers. About three-quarters of all participants were male, and the average age was 34 (± 8.6) years. Completeness and timeliness of surveillance reports were significantly higher among trained than untrained surveillance officers. The trained officers were more likely to have produced epidemiologic bulletins (55% vs 33%), conducted active surveillance six months before the survey (88% vs 72%), provided surveillance training (88% vs 65%), conducted strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis (55% vs 17%), and utilized Microsoft Excel to manage surveillance data (87% vs 47%). We also observed improved surveillance officers’ perceived skills and knowledge, and the availability and quality of surveillance formats and reports among the trained group. Conclusions FETP-Frontline trained surveillance officers demonstrated better knowledge, skills, and performance in most surveillance activities compared to the untrained officers. FETP-Frontline can address competency gaps among district surveillance officers in Ethiopia and other countries. Scaling up the program to cover unreached districts can enable achieving the human resource development core capacity requirement of the International Health Regulations 2005.

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Analysis of meningitis outbreak data, Jaman North District, Brong Ahafo Region, Ghana

Cited by 4 publications

References 7 publications

Can Clinical Presentations or Hematological Indices Predict Meningitis in Febrile Children?

Can Clinical Presentations or Hematological Indices Predict Meningitis in Febrile Children?

Etiologic Profile of the Pneumococcus in Ghana: A Systematic Review

A comparative cross-sectional evaluation of the Field Epidemiology Training Program-Frontline in Ethiopia

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