eLetters

139 e-Letters

  • COVID-19 restrictions and fathers of infants in neonatal care

    We fully agree with the authors in terms of need for a paradigm shift. We have called it a 'pandemic' but response has been largely country centric and not at all global.

    We would also like to highlight a typical reactionary response globally leading to exclusion of fathers from maternity and neonatal units.

    The Covid-19 pandemic is dividing families all over the world, especially at a time when togetherness is particularly important, such as at the time of birth, death and illness. Many families are experiencing situations that are prone to leave life-long scars.
    While the protection of the health of staff and mothers is of paramount importance, social distancing, curbs to travel and additional restrictions to presence of parents instituted by maternity and neonatal units across the world have created obvious difficulties for families. Having a sick baby in a neonatal unit during this pandemic is a particularly intense hardship for families. We are well aware of negative impacts of separation on children and families and the pandemic related restrictions have made this worse for the whole family, perhaps more so for parents of preterm and sick newborns.
    We have previously highlighted, along with many others, the importance of optimising fathers’ experiences in the neonatal unit (Ref 1-8) and suggested a focus on a co-parenting paradigm with a clear set of recommendations for neonatal and maternity services (Ref 1).
    Even though we...

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  • Integrating tech solutions into traditional gender-based violence programs

    Dear Editor,

    We were pleased to read the review by Eisenhut K, Sauerborn E, García-Moreno C, et al. and appreciated their insights on the landscape of mobile apps addressing violence against women.

    We read with great interest the authors’ observation that “collaborations between mHealth and ‘traditional’ approaches should be actively sought, subordinating the technology to the overall aims of preventing violence against women and mitigating its impacts.” In that spirit, we would like to highlight Physicians for Human Rights’ (PHR) experience implementing a “tech” solution within a larger “low-tech” programmatic ecosystem to address violence against women (VAW).

    The Program on Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones at Physicians for Human Rights works with medical, legal, and law enforcement partners in Central and East Africa to address impunity for sexual violence in conflict. Since 2011, we and our partners have trained more than 2,000 professionals in the collection, documentation, and use of court-admissible forensic evidence of sexual violence. As part of this initiative, PHR developed MediCapt, an award-winning mobile application, which standardizes and digitizes the collection of forensic documentation of medical evidence of sexual violence and combines it with a mobile camera to capture and securely store forensic photographic evidence of injuries. MediCapt was “co-designed” with clinician-partners in Kenya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo a...

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  • Management of bodies of deceased persons with COVID-19

    The report on "Safe management of bodies of deceased persons with suspected or confirmed COVID-19: a rapid systematic review" is intetresting [1]. Yaacoub et al. concluded that "there is a need for contextual evidence in relation to these proposed management strategies (ie, acceptability, feasibility, impact on equity, resources considerations) [1]". Indeed, the safety issue on practicing with death body during COVID-19 pandemic is interesting but little mentioned. The evidences on possibility of disease transmission from corpse to a living person is not available. Although there is a report on infection in a medical worker who has an occupational job relating to corpse, there is still no scientific confirmation by molecular diagnostic test to confirm that there is a spreading of disease from dead body [2 - 3]. It is apparently that there are attempts for control of possible disease spreading by any settings but the important question is ont he efficacy of rpreventive methods. A simple question is whether we require a routine screening for COVID-19 pathogen in all dead bodies in the present COVID-19. crisis.

    Conflict of inteterest
    none

    References
    1. Yaacoub S, Schünemann HJ, Khabsa J, El-Harakeh A, Khamis AM, Chamseddine F, El Khoury R, Saad Z, Hneiny L, Cuello Garcia C, Muti-Schünemann GEU, Bognanni A, Chen C, Chen G, Zhang Y, Zhao H, Abi Hanna P, Loeb M, Piggott T, Reinap M, Rizk N, Stalteri R, Duda S, Solo K, Chu DK, Akl E...

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  • On Warlord Discourses – an Inclusive Storytelling is Needed for COVID-19 Response.

    I thank both Rajan et al. and Bali et al. for highlighting a lack of inclusivity in the governance of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) response.1,2 While the pandemic raises societal concerns, decision-making bodies remain unrepresentative of civil society and suffer from a dearth of diversity – with, for instance, an underrepresentation of women’s perspectives.1,2 I would add that inclusivity may have been thus far derogated by the popular discourse of some traditional, paternalistic leadership – namely, that which is conveyed through wordings worthy of warlords.

    “We are at war”, as declared the Director-General of the World Health Organization, before exhorting G20 leaders to “fight like hell” and calling for “aggressive action” to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.3 This rhetoric of war echoes that of some men country leaders and scientists, pressing authorities for immediate action. Yet, as metaphors frame the way people act,4 triggering civil and societal responsiveness should instead begin with wordings of compassion, cooperation and emancipation.

    First, the rhetoric of war may monopolize the public attention to a unique, imminent goal: mustering all forces to defeat and annihilate an enemy (here, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2) – any other objectives being put aside as under war economy. This imposed monopoly may contrast with population concerns: Do we – civil society – strive merely to exterminate SARS-CoV-2, or rathe...

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  • Institutional misinformation in the time of Covid-19: the case of Italy

    Li et al.[1] analyzed misinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic generated by social media, as well as that from traditional means of communication.[2] We focus here on a further, more insidious form of misinformation: that generated by institutions, by paradigmatically analyzing the case of Italy.
    It was well known on January 31, 2020 that Covid-19 had the potential to become pandemic and detailed measures for adoption by health authorities to combat the disease had already been indicated.[3] On the same day, the Italian government declared a state of emergency.[4] However, while neglecting scientific data [3] and in contrast to the seriousness of the decision,[4] institutional figures (government officials and health authorities), reassured the population through statements in the media that the situation was under control even when the virus had demonstrated its contagiousness and lethality. For weeks prior to the outbreak in Lombardy, the population was told that COVID-19 was little more than a flu. Authorities reassured the population that the measures being adopted to prevent/limit the epidemic were the most stringent in Europe. On February 26th, with 330 infected individuals and 11 dead, the Italian Prime Minister declared that the number of infections should not cause alarm. In the coming days, citizens became aware of the magnitude of the outbreak and found themselves psychologically/materially unprepared, in a stupor in the face of the collapse of the Lomb...

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  • YouTube as a source of information

    This research would be more useful if we were given the raw data containing each misleading publication with precise references to why each misleads. Instead, we obtain a summary of the most inflammatory and outlying presentations, as if those represent the majority. Some of the videos are merely observations by professionals practicing in the field. One of the inflammatory examples about the Italian and Iranian strains stands out. Only last week Governor Cuomo said New York was afflicted by a European strain. Where were the critics calling him out?

  • Healthcare evidence from conflict settings

    To the Editor;
    Three articles(1,2,3) appeared on the latest special issue of the journal reviewed the medical care in humanitarian emergencies and pointed out significant gap existed in knowledge especially women and children. Two of them(1,3) showed the number of articles published annually. One of them (1) limited the article search year within 5 years so that they can separate emergency from the issues related to chronic poverty and development.
    We examined the correlation between the number of healthcare articles and Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) in Afghanistan through the PubMed database between 1980 and 2015, from the first Soviet war until the peak of ODA to the country in 2015. Afghanistan is unique since it has been one of the sustained emergencies (4).
    The PubMed database was searched using the key words “Afghan” or “Afghanistan,” and the search was limited to English literature published between 1980 and 2015. Since Afghan or Afghanistan is a distinctive term for a literature search, it was assumed that it could identify specific articles to the area. 4669 articles were identified on the initial search (3/11/15); both authors individually verified the articles, 4380 of them were selected for analysis after 289 articles were eliminated as ineligible. The ineligibility was mostly due to veterinary medicine articles, genome research, or Afghan as an author’s name, and other articles inadvertently selected in the search process.
    The t...

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  • Socioeconomic Inequalities in Neglected Tropical Diseases

    Dear Editor,

    It is with great interest that I read the original research by Lobkowicz et al, ascertaining that coinfections do not strongly influence clinical manifestations of uncomplicated ZIKV infections [1]. With this interesting finding in mind, it is important to remember that Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) exist and persist for social and economic reasons that enable the vectors and pathogens to take advantage of changes in the behavioural and physical environment [2]. More than 70% of countries and territories affected by NTDs are low-income and low and middle income countries [2]. Thus, there are extreme inequalities with regards to disease distribution. People are affected by NTDs because of an array of social determinants. It is plausible that these social determinants may allow for coinfections of Zika (ZIKV), dengue virus (DENV) and chikungunya (CHIKV).

    Social Determinants of Health (SDH) are the conditions in which individuals are born, grow, work, live and age, and the wider set of forces and systems shaping the conditions of daily life [3]. SDH encompass socioeconomic factors, environmental factors and biological factors. These factors play a fundamental role in the proliferation of vector-borne diseases such as ZIKV, DENV and CHIKV. The relationship between the vector and SDH is complex, yet it is extremely important to recognise in order to evaluate the impact of socioeconomic factors on infectious diseases.

    There are major ineq...

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  • Simple to use App guides antimicrobial prescribing decisions in LMICS and UK

    Responding to https://gh.bmj.com/content/5/4/e002094
    ‘The Commonwealth Pharmacists Association (CPA) https://commonwealthpharmacy.org/welcomes the publication of this systematic review which confirms the views held by the CPA that usable, point of prescribing decision information in low and middle income countries, is often not readily available where it is most needed. This of particular concern when we consider the prescribing and appropriate use of antimicrobials.
    The UK DHSC Fleming Fund (https://www.flemingfund.org/) Commonwealth Partnership for Antimicrobial Stewardship (CwPAMS) Project has for the last 6 months been piloting an App for use in Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. This is part of the wider CwPAMS programme which is a collaboration between CPA and The Tropical Health and Education Trust (THET) https://www.thet.org/our-work/grants/cwpams/
    The App guides prescribers as per national guidelines, and contains links to WHO resources and other training materials. It is explained clearly in this short u-tube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ7fa_aLgCI It is free, to download to a smart phone or device anywhere in the world where there is access to the internet and then...

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  • Ethics in Implementation Research

    Implementation research is crucial to determining effectiveness and appropriateness of interventions that are urgently needed in many contexts, constituting "global health". There is, however, an ongoing surprising relative lack of discussion on the need for appropriate understand of the ethical implications of Implementation research. Ethics committees and researchers are often not well versed in the ethics implications, and how these differ form traditional clinical research. the potential for unintended harm is great in the vulnerable circumstances wheer implementation research is often conducted. It is vital that if implementation research is conducted, ethical implications are considered throughout the process (i.e. continuing throughout the implementation itself and post-research). These issues have been laid out in an online teaching tool (by TDR/Global health Ethics Unit at WHO) and in the following publications:
    https://www.who.int/tdr/publications/year/2019/ethics-in-ir-course/en/
    https://implementationscience.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13012-...
    https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(19)30310-9/fulltext

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