Implementation of a formalized evaluation and planning tool to improve pediatric oncology outcomes in Kenya.

BACKGROUND: Survival from pediatric cancers in low middle-income countries is often very low compared to that of high-income countries due to multifactorial etiologies, including late presentation, delayed diagnosis, difficulty with accessing healthcare, drug unavailability, and treatment abandonment. The St. Jude Pediatric Oncology Facility Integrated Local Evaluation Tool (PrOFILE) was developed to map and evaluate childhood cancer healthcare delivery in individual institutions and entire countries, identifying the strengths and weaknesses, as well as opportunities for advancement of care. PROCEDURE: Using the PrOFILE self-assessment tool, selected Kenyan pediatric oncology facilities entered data into 12 modules: national context, facility and local context, finances and resources, personnel, service capacity, service integration, diagnostics, chemotherapy, supportive care, surgery, radiation therapy, and patients and outcomes. These modules are grouped into five specific components, including Context, Workforce, Diagnostics, Therapy, and Patients and Outcomes. The St. Jude PrOFILE team analyzed the data and organized the first hybrid workshop, containing both in-person and virtual components. RESULTS: Multidisciplinary stakeholders prioritized recommendations for improving care and developed smart objectives to accomplish identified goals over the following 2 years. Strengths and weaknesses of conducting a hybrid global workshop were identified. CONCLUSIONS: We demonstrated successful use of the PrOFILE tool to conduct a hybrid workshop and identify strategies to improve pediatric oncology care in Kenya. The voluntarily structured work groups will methodically aim to achieve outcome-oriented goals moving forward.

Cancer referrals at African Inland Church Kijabe Hospital, Kiambu County (2014-2020) and the impact of COVID-19.

In Kenya, cancer is the third leading cause of death. The African Inland Church Kijabe Hospital (AICKH) is a level 4 missionary hospital. The hospital serves the Kenyan population in many areas, including cancer care, and some of these services were affected during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. We aimed to leverage a recently established hospital-based cancer registry of patients treated at AICKH between 2014 and 2020 to describe the cancer cases and patient referral patterns seen at AICKH during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. A cross-sectional retrospective survey was conducted through medical records abstraction in the surgery, breast clinic, palliative care and pathology departments. A total of 3279 cases were included in the study, with females accounting for 58.1% of the cases. The top-three cancers overall were breast (23.0%), oesophagus (20.5%) and prostate (8.6%). There was a minimal increase in the number of cancer cases in 2020 (1.7%) compared with 2019, with an increase of 19.3% in 2019 compared with 2018. In conclusion, AICKH is one of the few hospitals in Kenya where a large number of cancer patients seek healthcare, and referral of cancer cases changed in 2020, which may be due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Future efforts can leverage this registry to determine the impacts of cancer diagnosis and treatment on survival outcomes.

Paediatric and obstetric outcomes at a faith-based hospital during the 100-day public sector physician strike in Kenya.

Published reviews of national physician strikes have shown a reduction in patient mortality. From 5 December 2016 until 14 March 2017, Kenyan physicians in the public sector went on strike leaving only private (not-for-profit and for-profit) hospitals able to offer physician care. We report on our experience at AIC-Kijabe Hospital, a not-for-profit, faith-based Kenyan hospital, before, during and after the 100-day strike was completed by examining patient admissions and deaths in the time periods before, during and after the strike. The volume of patients increased and exceeded the hospital's ability to respond to needs. There were substantial increases in sick newborn admissions during this time frame and an additional ward was opened to respond to this need. Increased need occurred across all services but staffing and space limited ability to respond to increased demand. There were increases in deaths during the strike period across the paediatric medical, newborn, paediatric surgical and obstetric units with an OR (95% CI) of death of 3.9 (95% CI 2.3 to 6.4), 4.1 (95% CI 2.4 to 7.1), 7.9 (95% CI 3.2 to 20) and 3.2 (95% CI 0.39 to 27), respectively. Increased mortality across paediatric and obstetrical services at AIC-Kijabe Hospital correlated with the crippling of healthcare delivery in the public sector during the national physicians' strike in Kenya.

Prevalence and correlates of treatment failure among Kenyan children hospitalised with severe community-acquired pneumonia: a prospective study of the clinical effectiveness of WHO pneumonia case management guidelines.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the extent and pattern of treatment failure (TF) among children hospitalised with community-acquired pneumonia at a large tertiary hospital in Kenya. METHODS: We followed up children aged 2-59 months with WHO-defined severe pneumonia (SP) and very severe pneumonia (VSP) for up to 5 days for TF using two definitions: (i) documentation of pre-defined clinical signs resulting in change of treatment (ii) primary clinician's decision to change treatment with or without documentation of the same pre-defined clinical signs. RESULTS: We enrolled 385 children. The risk of TF varied between 1.8% (95% CI 0.4-5.1) and 12.4% (95% CI 7.9-18.4) for SP and 21.4% (95% CI 15.9-27) and 39.3% (95% CI 32.5-46.4) for VSP depending on the definition applied. Higher rates were associated with early changes in therapy by clinician in the absence of an obvious clinical rationale. Non-adherence to treatment guidelines was observed for 70/169 (41.4%) and 67/201 (33.3%) of children with SP and VSP, respectively. Among children with SP, adherence to treatment guidelines was associated with the presence of wheeze on initial assessment (P = 0.02), while clinician non-adherence to guideline-recommended treatments for VSP tended to occur in children with altered consciousness (P < 0.001). Using propensity score matching to account for imbalance in the distribution of baseline clinical characteristics among children with VSP revealed no difference in TF between those treated with the guideline-recommended regimen vs. more costly broad-spectrum alternatives [risk difference 0.37 (95% CI -0.84 to 0.51)]. CONCLUSION: Before revising current pneumonia case management guidelines, standardised definitions of TF and appropriate studies of treatment effectiveness of alternative regimens are required.