Effective supervision model for improved primary healthcare services: case of Egypt.

BACKGROUND: In Egypt, primary healthcare workers (PHCWs) often work in challenging situations and in relative isolation from the health system and specialists' experiences. Supervision is currently applied by PHCWs to present practice, control and upgrade knowledge and skills. OBJECTIVES: To assess the current supervision system in the Ministry of Health and Population (MOHP) at the central, governorate, district, and primary healthcare (PHC) facility levels. METHODS: The research setting is the MOHP-PHC head quarter (HQ) and five governorates. DESIGN: Cross-sectional analytical observational health system research qualitative and quantitative study of Egyptian health service and operations. SAMPLING: The multistage sampling technique was used to select districts (n = 25) units (n = 250), physicians (n = 250), and nurses (n = 250) from five randomly selected governorates that represent four Egypt regions. DATA COLLECTION: Focus group discussions (FGDs) and self-administered questionnaires. RESULTS: Response rate to questionnaires were in total 73% (67% for physicians and 80% for nurses). FGDs demonstrated that PHC has an effective supervision system at central, governorate, and district levels. The effective supervision allowed overcoming barriers related to the shortage in PHCWs needed to cover 5364 PHC units in addition to mobile clinics. Supervisors use a standardized consistent checklist covering all items of service delivery. More than 95% of physicians and nurses appreciated receiving on-the-job training from the district supervisory teams. CONCLUSION: Egypt MOHP-PHC has an effective supervision model in place at the central, governorate and district levels that supports continuous communication between PHC facilities' staff and the health system enabling continuous personal and professional upgrade and development and improved problem-solving skills at the facility level.

Pneumococcal infection among hospitalized Egyptian children.

AIM: We aimed to describe the detection rate spectrum of clinical manifestations, and outcome of pneumococcal disease in children younger than 5 years admitted to the largest referral pediatric hospital in Egypt. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This was a hospital-based study to detect laboratory-confirmed Streptococcus pneumoniae cases among children younger than 5 years. Data on demographic characteristics, clinical diagnosis, comorbidities, diagnostic tests, antibiotic resistance, and clinical outcome were collected during the study years from 2008 to 2011. RESULTS: During the 4-year study period, 22 018 cases younger than 5 years had cultures performed at Cairo University Pediatric Hospital microbiology laboratory. We estimated the annual detection rate of total Streptococcus pneumonia infection to be 54.5/100 000. The incidence of invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD) was half the incidence of non-IPD (18.2 and 36.4/100 000, respectively). Infants of 1 year or younger were statistically more vulnerable to Streptococcus pneumonia infection compared with children between 1 and 5 years of age (annual rate: 110.5/100 000 and 21.6/100 000, respectively). The overall pneumococcal annual case fatality was 33.3% and was higher in IPD (75%) than in non-IPD (12.5%) cases. There was an obviously increasing trend of the pneumococcal detection rate throughout the 4 years of the study (P<0.0001). CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS: Our results confirm the substantial and increasing pneumococcal infection, the emerging of multidrug resistant isolates, and the vulnerability of the younger age group and high-risk population, which calls for a national surveillance to inform policy and decision-making before national wide vaccine introduction.