Cancer remains a major public health concern worldwide. Patient navigation, developed in the 1990s to address disparities in cancer outcomes, aims to guide patients through the complex healthcare system and improve access to timely, quality care. Despite its proven benefits, little is known about the implementation or impact of patient navigation programmes in African settings.

This scoping review aims to map the current evidence on components, procedures, outcomes and impact, as well as barriers and challenges to implementation of patient navigation programmes in cancer care across Africa.

This scoping review will follow Arksey and O’Malley’s scoping review framework, as further developed by Levac et al. A systematic search will be conducted across PubMed, African Journals Online and Google Scholar to identify relevant studies published from database inception to the date of the final search, using a combination of relevant keywords and MeSH terms. Eligible studies must be reported in English, have been carried out in Africa, involved patients diagnosed with cancer or navigating the cancer care continuum, and report on the description, implementation or evaluation of patient navigation programmes. Screening will be managed with Rayyan and carried out through a two-stage process: screening by titles and abstracts, then by full-text screening based on the prespecified inclusion and exclusion criteria. Data will be extracted into a structured Excel spreadsheet and synthesised using qualitative content analysis to identify programme characteristics, outcomes, barriers and implementation challenges.

This scoping review does not require ethical approval. Our findings will be published in a peer-reviewed, open-access journal on completion.

The mental health of people living with HIV (PLWH) is a growing concern globally, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where there is limited access to mental healthcare, with evidence showing high levels of depression, anxiety and neurocognitive disorders among this population. While Mental Health Disorders (MHDs) can impede HIV care and promote adverse health outcomes, there is limited literature on MHDs among PLWH. This scoping review will explore the existing literature on the burden and factors associated with MHDs among adults living with HIV in SSA.

Arksey and O’Malley’s methodological framework will guide the search of this scoping review. Relevant original research articles published in English from 1 January 2000 to 31 May 2025 on MHDs among PLWH in SSA will be identified through searches in the African Index Medicus, African Journal Online, PubMed and Embase databases. Four independent reviewers, working in pairs (one reviewer and one verifier), will screen the titles, abstracts and later the full texts, adopting the population, concept and context framework. Other coauthors will serve as tiebreakers whenever there is disagreement on the eligibility. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews flowchart will be presented. We will perform a narrative synthesis to report our findings.

This scoping review protocol does not require ethical approval, as it relies solely on publicly available existing data and does not involve human participants. We will disseminate the findings from this review through peer-reviewed publications and presentations at local and international conferences.

The protocol was registered in the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/8ymqu).

Globally, drug shortages affect low-, middle- and high-income countries to different degrees. The challenges associated with drug shortages in health systems, particularly in public health facilities, and the consequent multiple adverse effects on patients and the health systems have led countries to continue to explore and implement different strategies to combat this challenge. Various factors implicated in drug shortages range from manufacturing concerns, demand issues, supply chain disruptions and regulatory issues. The effects of drug shortages in health systems range from poor patient compliance and therapeutic failure to antimicrobial resistance, low morale among healthcare workers and public distrust in government services. Furthermore, the effects of drug shortages in public health facilities include unavailability of drugs to patients, hospitalisation and readmissions, and associated costs that could be avoided, high out-of-pocket expenditures suffered by patients as patients resort to buying drugs from private pharmacies where the prices are usually exorbitant and prohibitive, putting patients at risk of treatment default due to lack of affordability. Successful mitigation strategies deployed to prevent and manage drug shortages in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) remain unshared despite the potential of these strategies to serve as valuable lessons if the evidence is scientifically synthesised and reported. The scoping review will synthesise evidence to provide policy guidance for better planning of health services and resources, resulting in improved quality of life for citizens, underscoring the importance of functional and responsive health systems.

Using the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) scoping review methodology, a five-stage review is outlined: (1) determining the research question, (2) search strategy, (3) inclusion criteria, (4) data extraction and (5) analysis and presentation of the results. The literature search will use PubMed, SCOPUS and the Elsevier Science Direct search interfaces, reflecting empirical and grey literature. We will focus on literature published between 2000 and 2025. The study start and end dates are 1 September–30 November 2025. A two-stage screening process will be used to determine the eligibility of articles. All articles will be individually assessed for eligibility by two reviewers, while a third reviewer will resolve any disagreements. The data from eligible articles will be extracted and charted using a standardised form. Extracted data will be analysed using narrative and descriptive analyses.

Ethical approval is not required for this scoping review as it will use only previously published data. It does not require human participation. The results of this search will be disseminated through academic presentations at conferences and peer-reviewed publications.

The global disease burden of Salmonella infections in 2017 included 135 900 deaths caused by Salmonella Typhi and Paratyphi and 77 500 deaths caused by invasive non-typhoidal Salmonella, with increasing antimicrobial resistance (AMR) exacerbating morbidity, mortality and costs. The aim of our systematic review and meta-analysis is to estimate the length of hospital stay and associated treatment costs for patients with susceptible and antibiotic-resistant Salmonella Typhi, Paratyphi and non-typhoidal Salmonella infections.

Systematic review and meta-analysis.

We searched EMBASE, Medline/PubMed, Scopus, Hinari and LILACS databases for studies published between 1 January 2005 and 15 May 2024, with no language restrictions.

We included 30 studies that reported the length of hospital stay or treatment costs for patients with susceptible or antibiotic-resistant Salmonella Typhi, Paratyphi and non-typhoidal Salmonella infections. We excluded studies with sample sizes of less than 30 patients, those focused on non-human subjects and those not reporting our outcomes of interest.

Two reviewers independently screened studies and extracted data on the length of hospital stay and associated costs, with monetary values converted to 2019 USD. We aggregated data according to GDP per capita quantiles using a random-effects meta-analysis. We conducted a quality assessment using an adapted Joanna Briggs Institute tool.

Patients with drug-resistant Salmonella infections had longer hospital stays, with an additional 0.5–2.2 days compared with drug-susceptible Salmonella infections. Based on our meta-analysis, the mean hospital stay for typhoidal Salmonella infections was 6.4 days (95% CI 4.9 to 7.8) for drug-susceptible cases and 8.4 days (95% CI 5.1 to 11.7) for resistant cases in the lowest income quartiles. While there were insufficient data to perform a pooled analysis, individual studies inferred that treatment costs for resistant typhoidal Salmonella infections were higher than for susceptible infections, and resistant non-typhoidal Salmonella infections had longer hospital stays and higher costs compared with susceptible infections. Data were scarce from high-Salmonella-burden countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia.

Patients with antibiotic-resistant Salmonella infections experience a greater healthcare burden in terms of hospitalisation length and direct costs compared with those with susceptible infections. We highlight the economic burden of AMR in Salmonella infections and emphasise the need for preventive measures.

Multi-disciplinary discussions (MDDs) improve diagnosis and management of interstitial lung disease (ILD). The value of a virtual multi-centre MDD (V-MCMDD) incorporating expertise from multiple institutions remains underexplored. This study aimed to evaluate the impact of a V-MCMDD on diagnosis and management in ILD.

We conducted a retrospective multi-centre cohort study involving tertiary and secondary hospital clinics, private practices and community outpatient centres, all participating via a virtual platform. Between August 2020 and June 2023, patient cases were reviewed through V-MCMDDs, which included clinical, radiological, pathological and laboratory data. Each case was discussed to reach a consensus diagnosis and management plan.

Following the V-MCMDD review, the diagnosis was revised in 51% of patients (p=0.031), and management plans were modified in 41% of cases. A significant shift in treatment was observed in patients with changed diagnoses vs unchanged diagnoses (p value=0.002).

Our findings suggest that the implementation of V-MCMDDs can be valuable in the diagnostic and therapeutic process for ILD. Incorporating input from multiple centres via a virtual format can lead to significant changes in both diagnosis and management, potentially improving patient outcomes.

Poor quality handover instructions prepared by hospital staff have been identified as a key threat to safe discharges. To optimise patient safety, it is important to identify and understand the influences on how discharge documentation is prepared by hospital staff. The aim of this study was to systematically identify and explore important barriers and enablers to the preparation of high-quality discharge documentation by healthcare professionals (HCPs) for primary care teams at patient discharge.

HCPs from different staff groups (doctors, nurses, pharmacists, occupational and physiotherapists) participated in online interviews.

Semistructured interviews informed by the theoretical domains framework (TDF), to identify key influences on the preparation of discharge documentation. Anonymised transcripts were analysed thematically using a combined inductive-deductive approach. Themes were framed as influences on the preparation of discharge documentation. The likely importance of influences was decided through iterative team discussions structured on predetermined criteria. Criteria included whether the influence was an existing enabler, whether beliefs about the influences were expressed voluntarily and how often they were mentioned.

12 HCPs were interviewed (5 junior doctors, 1 advanced nurse practitioner, 2 nurses, 1 occupational therapist, 1 physiotherapist and 2 pharmacists). Of 44 influences identified, 10 were deemed most important in the preparation of discharge documentation, spread across five TDF domains: knowledge (eg, lack of awareness of guidelines), skills (experience of hospital staff), social and professional role and identity (effective team communication), environmental context and resources (eg, software limitations) and social influences (eg, lack of feedback).

This study identified 10 important influences on how discharge documentation is prepared by hospital staff. These influences are potential targets for subsequent interventions to improve the quality of discharge documentation and patient safety during discharge.