Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats Analysis of the Use of Digital Health Technologies in Primary Health Care in the Sub-Saharan African Region: Qualitative Study.

BACKGROUND: Digital health technologies (DHTs) have become increasingly commonplace as a means of delivering primary care. While DHTs have been postulated to reduce inequalities, increase access, and strengthen health systems, how the implementation of DHTs has been realized in the sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) health care environment remains inadequately explored. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to capture the multidisciplinary experiences of primary care professionals using DHTs to explore the strengths and weaknesses, as well as opportunities and threats, regarding the implementation and use of DHTs in SSA primary care settings. METHODS: A combination of qualitative approaches was adopted (ie, focus groups and semistructured interviews). Participants were recruited through the African Forum for Primary Care and researchers' contact networks using convenience sampling and included if having experience with digital technologies in primary health care in SSA. Focus and interviews were conducted, respectively, in November 2021 and January-March 2022. Topic guides were used to cover relevant topics in the interviews, using the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats framework. Transcripts were compiled verbatim and systematically reviewed by 2 independent reviewers using framework analysis to identify emerging themes. The COREQ (Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research) checklist was used to ensure the study met the recommended standards of qualitative data reporting. RESULTS: A total of 33 participants participated in the study (n=13 and n=23 in the interviews and in focus groups, respectively; n=3 participants participated in both). The strengths of using DHTs ranged from improving access to care, supporting the continuity of care, and increasing care satisfaction and trust to greater collaboration, enabling safer decision-making, and hastening progress toward universal health coverage. Weaknesses included poor digital literacy, health inequalities, lack of human resources, inadequate training, lack of basic infrastructure and equipment, and poor coordination when implementing DHTs. DHTs were perceived as an opportunity to improve patient digital literacy, increase equity, promote more patient-centric design in upcoming DHTs, streamline expenditure, and provide a means to learn international best practices. Threats identified include the lack of buy-in from both patients and providers, insufficient human resources and local capacity, inadequate governmental support, overly restrictive regulations, and a lack of focus on cybersecurity and data protection. CONCLUSIONS: The research highlights the complex challenges of implementing DHTs in the SSA context as a fast-moving health delivery modality, as well as the need for multistakeholder involvement. Future research should explore the nuances of these findings across different technologies and settings in the SSA region and implications on health and health care equity, capitalizing on mixed-methods research, including the use of real-world quantitative data to understand patient health needs. The promise of digital health will only be realized when informed by studies that incorporate patient perspective at every stage of the research cycle.

Insights of health district managers on the implementation of primary health care outreach teams in Johannesburg, South Africa: a descriptive study with focus group discussions.

BACKGROUND: Primary health care (PHC) outreach teams are part of a policy of PHC re-engineering in South Africa. It attempts to move the deployment of community health workers (CHWs) from vertical programmes into an integrated generalised team-based approach to care for defined populations in municipal wards. There has little evaluation of PHC outreach teams. Managers' insights are anecdotal. METHODS: This is descriptive qualitative study with focus group discussions with health district managers of Johannesburg, the largest city in South Africa. This was conducted in a sequence of three meetings with questions around implementation, human resources, and integrated PHC teamwork. There was a thematic content analysis of validated transcripts using the framework method. RESULTS: There were two major themes: leadership-management challenges and human resource challenges. Whilst there was some positive sentiment, leadership-management challenges loomed large: poor leadership and planning with an under-resourced centralised approach, poor communications both within the service and with community, concerns with its impact on current services and resistance to change, and poor integration, both with other streams of PHC re-engineering and current district programmes. Discussion by managers on human resources was mostly on the plight of CHWs and calls for formalisation of CHWs functioning and training and nurse challenges with inappropriate planning and deployment of the team structure, with brief mention of the extended team. CONCLUSIONS: Whilst there is positive sentiment towards intent of the PHC outreach team, programme managers in Johannesburg were critical of management of the programme in their health district. Whilst the objective of PHC reform is people-centred health care, its implementation struggles with a centralising tendency amongst managers in the health service in South Africa. Managers in Johannesburg advocated for decentralisation. The implementation of PHC outreach teams is also limited by difficulties with formalisation and training of CHWs and appropriate task shifting to nurses. Change management is required to create true integrate PHC teamwork. Policy review requires addressing these issues.

Human resources for primary health care in sub-Saharan Africa: progress or stagnation?

BACKGROUND: The World Health Organization defines a "critical shortage" of health workers as being fewer than 2.28 health workers per 1000 population and failing to attain 80% coverage for deliveries by skilled birth attendants. We aimed to quantify the number of health workers in five African countries and the proportion of these currently working in primary health care facilities, to compare this to estimates of numbers needed and to assess how the situation has changed in recent years. METHODS: This study is a review of published and unpublished "grey" literature on human resources for health in five disparate countries: Mali, Sudan, Uganda, Botswana and South Africa. RESULTS: Health worker density has increased steadily since 2000 in South Africa and Botswana which already meet WHO targets but has not significantly increased since 2004 in Sudan, Mali and Uganda which have a critical shortage of health workers. In all five countries, a minority of doctors, nurses and midwives are working in primary health care, and shortages of qualified staff are greatest in rural areas. In Uganda, shortages are greater in primary health care settings than at higher levels. In Mali, few community health centres have a midwife or a doctor. Even South Africa has a shortage of doctors in primary health care in poorer districts. Although most countries recognize village health workers, traditional healers and traditional birth attendants, there are insufficient data on their numbers. CONCLUSION: There is an "inverse primary health care law" in the countries studied: staffing is inversely related to poverty and level of need, and health worker density is not increasing in the lowest income countries. Unless there is money to recruit and retain staff in these areas, training programmes will not improve health worker density because the trained staff will simply leave to work elsewhere. Information systems need to be improved in a way that informs policy on the health workforce. It may be possible to use existing resources more cost-effectively by involving skilled staff to supervise and support lower level health care workers who currently provide the front line of primary health care in most of Africa.

African leaders' views on critical human resource issues for the implementation of family medicine in Africa.

BACKGROUND: The World Health Organisation has advocated for comprehensive primary care teams, which include family physicians. However, despite (or because of) severe doctor shortages in Africa, there is insufficient clarity on the role of the family physician in the primary health care team. Instead there is a trend towards task shifting without thought for teamwork, which runs the risk of dangerous oversimplification. It is not clear how African leaders understand the challenges of implementing family medicine, especially in human resource terms. This study, therefore, sought to explore the views of academic and government leaders on critical human resource issues for implementation of family medicine in Africa. METHOD: In this qualitative study, key academic and government leaders were purposively selected from sixteen African countries. In-depth interviews were conducted using an interview guide. All interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed and thematically analysed. RESULTS: There were 27 interviews conducted with 16 government and 11 academic leaders in nine Sub-Saharan African countries: Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa and Uganda. Respondents spoke about: educating doctors in family medicine suited to Africa, including procedural skills and holistic care, to address the difficulty of recruiting and retaining doctors in rural and underserved areas; planning for primary health care teams, including family physicians; new supervisory models in primary health care; and general human resource management issues. CONCLUSIONS: Important milestones in African health care fail to specifically address the human resource issues of integrated primary health care teamwork that includes family physicians. Leaders interviewed in this study, however, proposed organising the district health system with a strong embrace of family medicine in Africa, especially with regard to providing clinical leadership in team-based primary health care. Whilst these leaders focussed positively on entry and workforce issues, in terms of the 2006 World Health Report on human resources for health, they did not substantially address retention of family physicians. Family physicians need to respond to the challenge by respondents to articulate human resource policies appropriate to Africa, including the organisational development of the primary health care team with more sophisticated skills and teamwork.

The views of key leaders in South Africa on implementation of family medicine: critical role in the district health system.

BACKGROUND: Integrated team-based primary care is an international imperative. This is required more so in Africa, where fragmented verticalised care dominates. South Africa is trying to address this with health reforms, including Primary Health Care Re-engineering. Family physicians are already contributing to primary care despite family medicine being only fully registered as a full specialty in South Africa in 2008. However the views of leaders on family medicine and the role of family physicians is not clear, especially with recent health reforms. The aim of this study was to understand the views of key government and academic leaders in South Africa on family medicine, roles of family physicians and human resource issues. METHODS: This was a qualitative study with academic and government leaders across South Africa. In-depth interviews were conducted with sixteen purposively selected leaders using an interview guide. Thematic content analysis was based on the framework method. RESULTS: Whilst family physicians were seen as critical to the district health system there was ambivalence on their leadership role and 'specialist' status. National health reforms were creating both threats and opportunities for family medicine. Three key roles for family physicians emerged: supporting referrals; clinical governance/quality improvement; and providing support to community-oriented care. Respondents' urged family physicians to consolidate the development and training of family physicians, and shape human resource policy to include family physicians. CONCLUSIONS: Family physicians were seen as critical to the district health system in South Africa despite difficulties around their precise role. Whilst their role was dominated by filling gaps at district hospitals to reduce referrals it extended to clinical governance and developing community-oriented primary care - a tall order, requiring strong teamwork. Innovative team-based service delivery is possible despite human resource challenges, but requires family physicians to proactively develop team-based models of care, reform education and advocate for clearer policy, based on the views of these respondents.

The views of family physicians on National Health Insurance in Gauteng Province, South Africa.

BACKGROUND:  Universal health coverage (UHC) improves national health outcomes while addressing social inequalities in access to quality healthcare services. The district health system (DHS) is critical to the success of UHC in South Africa through the National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme. Family physicians (FPs), as champions of primary care, are central to the DHS operation and implementation of NHI. METHODS:  This was a qualitative exploratory study that used semi-structured interviews to explore FPs views and engagement on NHI policy and implementation in their districts. Ten FPs were included through purposive sampling. RESULTS:  Most of the FPs interviewed were not engaged in either policy formulation or strategic planning. The NHI bill was seen as a theoretical ideology that lacked any clear plan. Family physicians expressed several concerns around corruption in governmental structures that could play out in NHI implementation. Family physicians felt unsupported within their district structures and disempowered to engage in rollout strategies. The FPs were able to provide useful solutions to health system challenges because of the design of their training programmes, as well as their experience at the primary care level. CONCLUSION:  Healthcare governance in South Africa remains located in national and provincial structures. Devolution of governance to the DHS is required if NHI implementation is to succeed. The FPs need to be engaged in NHI strategies, to translate plans into actionable objectives at the primary care level.Contribution: This study highlights the need to involve FPs as key actors in implementing NHI strategies at a decentralised DHS governance level.

African primary healthcare as complex adaptive system.

Bureaucratic African governments need to trust their health workers and populations on the way to the Africa Agenda 2063. Small defined populations cared for by a team with an appropriate mix of healthcare workers (from public and private sectors) and delivered in a comprehensive, continuous, coordinated manner can be the complex adaptive system to deliver better PHC and health for all in Africa.

Exploring the Challenges for Universal Health Coverage: A Call to Africa by AfroPHC.

The primary health care (PHC) system in Africa faces many challenges AND opportunities. To date, human resources for health in PHC are grossly insufficient in number, often inefficiently and inequitably distributed, lacking adequate training for delivering fully responsive and comprehensive frontline care and are treated inequitably within the health system. There has been a lack of solidarity among key role players in healthcare to create adequate PHC funding in Africa. Resources do not appropriately or adequately reach the frontline PHC service platform due to outdated service delivery and payment models. Patients experience PHC as numbers in a queue, with poor comprehensiveness, continuity, and coordination. Health workers are also treated like numbers in a bureaucracy that fragments and undermines training and service for integrated care around patient and population needs. However, opportunities abound with global PHC milestones, increasing political will for investment in PHC, and proven mechanisms for achieving a stronger workforce such as community health workers, clinical task-sharing, and the integration of family doctors into PHC. The African Forum for PHC (AfroPHC) has a vision for PHC and UHC that is team-based with skills mix appropriate to Africa, including family doctors, family nurse practitioners, clinical officers, community health workers and others that are empowered to take care of an empaneled population in high-quality people centred PHC. AfroPHC is making a call on stakeholders to develop and implement a regional forward-looking plan to 1) build robust PHC systems, 2) train, recruit and maintain a sufficient frontline PHC workforce, and 3) support PHC with appropriate financing. This can all come together easily in a nationally defined PHC contract using risk-adjusted blended capitation payment to decentralised PHC teams empanelled to enrolled populations, coordinated by district health services and easily administered at national or sub-national level for empowered public and private providers.

Task-Shifting: Can Community Health Workers Be Part of the Solution to an Inactive Nation?

Background: In low-to-middle income countries (LMICs), there is a growing burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) placing strain on the facilities and human resources of healthcare systems. Prevention strategies that include lifestyle behavior counseling have become increasingly important. We propose a potential solution to the growing burden of NCDs through an expansion of the role for community health workers (CHWs) in prescribing and promoting physical activity in public health settings. This discussion paper provides a theoretical model for task-shifting of assessment, screening, counseling, and prescription of physical activity to CHWs. Five proposed tasks are presented within a larger model of service delivery and provide a platform for a structured, standardized, physical activity prevention strategy aimed at NCDs using CHWs as an integral part of reducing the burden of NCDs in LMICs. However, for effective implementation as part of national NCD plans, it is essential that CHWs received standardized, ongoing training and supervision on physical activity and other lifestyle behaviors to optimally impact community health in low resource settings.

Building primary health care teams for universal health coverage in Africa.

No abstract available.

Community-oriented primary care for National Health Insurance in South Africa.

This is a report on Chiawelo Community Practice (CCP) in Ward 11, Soweto, South Africa, a community-oriented primary care (COPC) model for National Health Insurance (NHI) in South Africa, developed by a family physician. A shift to capitation contracting for primary health care (PHC) under NHI will carry risk for providers - both public and private, especially higher number of patient visits. Health promotion and disease prevention, especially using a COPC model, will be important. Leading the implementation of COPC is an important role for family physicians in Africa, but global implementation of COPC is challenged. Cuba and Brazil have implemented COPC with panels of 600 and 3500, respectively. The family physician in this report has developed community practice as a model with four drivers using a complex adaptive system lens: population engagement with community health workers (CHWs), a clinic re-oriented to its community, stakeholder engagement and targeted health promotion. A team of three medical interns: 1 clinical associate, 3 nurses and 20 CHWs, supervised by the family physician, effectively manage a panel of approximately 30 000 people. This has resulted in low utilisation rates (less than one visit per person per year), high population access and satisfaction and high clinical quality. This has been despite the challenge of a reductionist PHC system, poor management support and poor public service culture. The results could be more impressive if panels are limited to 10 000, if there was a better team structure with a single doctor leading a team of 3-4 nurse/clinical associates and 10-12 CHWs and PHC provider units that are truly empowered to manage resources locally.

Financing and payment reforms for primary health care and universal health care in Africa.

No abstract available.

Outcomes of a model integrating tuberculosis testing into COVID-19 services in South Africa.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic led to a reordering of healthcare priorities. Health resources were turned to the screening and diagnosis of COVID-19, leading to a reduction in tuberculosis (TB) testing and treatment initiation. An innovative model that integrated TB and COVID-19 services was adopted at primary care facilities in Johannesburg Health District, Gauteng. This short report illustrates results from this model's implementation in two facilities. Patients were screened for COVID-19 at a single point of entry and separated according to screening result. Self-reported human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) status, symptom, and symptom duration were then used to determine TB risk amongst those screening positive for COVID-19. Data from clinical records were extracted. Approximately 9% of patients with a positive symptom screen (n = 76) were sent for a TB test and 84% were sent for a COVID-19 test. Amongst those sent for a TB test, 8% (n = 6) had TB detected, and amongst those sent for a COVID-19 test, 18% (n = 128) were positive. Amongst those with COVID-19-related symptoms, 15% (n = 130) presented with a cough or fever and were known HIV positive and 121 (93%) of these were sent for a COVID-19 test and 31 (24%) were sent for a TB test. Given the HIV prevalence and symptoms in our study, our results show lower-than-expected TB tests conducted.Contribution: Our study documents the outcomes of an innovative way to combine operational workflows for TB and COVID-19. This provides a starting point for countries seeking to integrate TB and COVID-19 screening and testing.

Perspectives on key principles of generalist medical practice in public service in sub-Saharan Africa: a qualitative study.

BACKGROUND: The principles and practice of Family Medicine that arose in developed Western countries have been imported and adopted in African countries without adequate consideration of their relevance and appropriateness to the African context. In this study we attempted to elicit a priori principles of generalist medical practice from the experience of long-serving medical officers in a variety of African counties, through which we explored emergent principles of Family Medicine in our own context. METHODS: A descriptive study design was utilized, using qualitative methods. 16 respondents who were clinically active medical practitioners, working as generalists in the public services or non-profit sector for at least 5 years, and who had had no previous formal training or involvement in academic Family Medicine, were purposively selected in 8 different countries in southern, western and east Africa, and interviewed. RESULTS: The respondents highlighted a number of key issues with respect to the external environment within which they work, their collective roles, activities and behaviours, as well as the personal values and beliefs that motivate their behaviour. The context is characterized by resource constraints, high workload, traditional health beliefs, and the difficulty of referring patients to the next level of care. Generalist clinicians in sub-Saharan Africa need to be competent across a wide range of clinical disciplines and procedural skills at the level of the district hospital and clinic, in both chronic and emergency care. They need to understand the patient's perspective and context, empowering the patient and building an effective doctor-patient relationship. They are also managers, focused on coordinating and improving the quality of clinical care through teamwork, training and mentoring other health workers in the generalist setting, while being life-long learners themselves. However, their role in the community, was found to be more aspirational than real. CONCLUSIONS: The study derived a set of principles for the practice of generalist doctors in sub-Saharan Africa based on the reported activities and approaches of the respondents. Patient-centred care using a biopsychosocial approach remains as a common core principle despite wide variations in context. Procedural and hospital care demands a higher level of skills particularly in rural areas, and a community orientation is desirable, but not widely practiced. The results have implications for the postgraduate training of family physicians in sub-Saharan Africa, and highlight questions regarding the realization of community-orientated primary care.

Family Doctor Leadership in African Primary Health Care.

n/a.

Outcomes of AfroPHC, a WONCA Africa project.

No abstract available.

Development of African Forum for primary health care.

No abstract available.

DASSI: differential architecture search for splice identification from DNA sequences.

BACKGROUND: The data explosion caused by unprecedented advancements in the field of genomics is constantly challenging the conventional methods used in the interpretation of the human genome. The demand for robust algorithms over the recent years has brought huge success in the field of Deep Learning (DL) in solving many difficult tasks in image, speech and natural language processing by automating the manual process of architecture design. This has been fueled through the development of new DL architectures. Yet genomics possesses unique challenges that requires customization and development of new DL models. METHODS: We proposed a new model, DASSI, by adapting a differential architecture search method and applying it to the Splice Site (SS) recognition task on DNA sequences to discover new high-performance convolutional architectures in an automated manner. We evaluated the discovered model against state-of-the-art tools to classify true and false SS in Homo sapiens (Human), Arabidopsis thaliana (Plant), Caenorhabditis elegans (Worm) and Drosophila melanogaster (Fly). RESULTS: Our experimental evaluation demonstrated that the discovered architecture outperformed baseline models and fixed architectures and showed competitive results against state-of-the-art models used in classification of splice sites. The proposed model - DASSI has a compact architecture and showed very good results on a transfer learning task. The benchmarking experiments of execution time and precision on architecture search and evaluation process showed better performance on recently available GPUs making it feasible to adopt architecture search based methods on large datasets. CONCLUSIONS: We proposed the use of differential architecture search method (DASSI) to perform SS classification on raw DNA sequences, and discovered new neural network models with low number of tunable parameters and competitive performance compared with manually engineered architectures. We have extensively benchmarked DASSI model with other state-of-the-art models and assessed its computational efficiency. The results have shown a high potential of using automated architecture search mechanism for solving various problems in the field of genomics.

World Organisation of Family Doctors Africa is moving!

No abstract available.