SAPA NEWS

 

 

SAPA News

 

JOIN THE PAEDIATRIC COMMUNITY - YOU ARE SAPA!

Becoming a SAPA member has never been simpler or more important. The paediatric community is growing and gaining momentum in our goal of Striving for Thriving Kids! This means working together, focusing our efforts to achieve as much as we can with the resources that we have, and sharing stories of successes and challenges to encourage each other and avoid mistakes that have been made before. For these, and many more reasons, we invite all members of the paediatric community to formalise their commitment to improving the health of children in South Africa, in the clinical setting and beyond. You are SAPA! Become an active member of the community. Share your thoughts and ideas, and the projects that you're involved in. Let's start a conversation. To get involved, coxntact info@paediatrics.org.za. To sign up as a member, click here.

 

MUNRO REPORT

The Munro Reportis an email newsletter written by a paediatric fellow in infectious diseases in the UK. Dr Alasdair Munro has a keen interest in child health, infectious diseases and epidemiology, and is involved in generating and reviewing evidence related to children in the COVID-19 pandemic.

The newsletter covers a variety of topics with catchy titles, including The Mysterious Vanishing of MIS-C, the Wicked Problem of Paediatric Sepsisand Don't Fear the Fever. Each article offers a critical appraisal of available evidence, and offers the author's thoughts on how this is relevant to clinical practice. The information can easily be translated into counselling messages for parents and patients. It also serves as an example of how to use the literature that is generated to enhance the care we offer patients. Dr Munro also covers topical issues in medicine, like the use and relevance of artificial intelligence and social media in science.

 

CONNECTED PAPERS

Connected Papersis a website that allows users to visualise and explore connections between academic papers. It uses citation data to create a visual graph that displays related research papers and allows users to navigate between them. Users can search for papers by title, author, or keyword, and the website also provides a feature to import a list of papers to generate a visualisation (Fig 1.). Additionally, Connected Papers offers various tools for researchers to analyse and compare multiple papers, including the ability to generate citation networks and view topic trends.

Using this tool for the recently published paper, Bivalent Prefusion F Vaccine in Pregnancy to Prevent RSV Illness in Infants, hovering over a point in the graphic shows the reference's title, as well as the abstract on the right. By clicking on the 'Prior works' button, the citations of seminal works that informed the current paper are displayed, while 'Derivate works' show works that were inspired by some of the citations shown in the graphic. Connected papers is a fantastic tool for academics, researchers and those looking to understand a topic quickly and with depth than would otherwise have taken hours or days.

 

NCD CHILD

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are increasingly becoming a major health challenge for children in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). These chronic conditions, including asthma, diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease and mental health disorders can have a significant impact on a child's health and well-being, as well as their families and communities.

Risk factors for NCDs in children in LMICs include poverty, malnutrition, unhealthy diets, lack of physical activity and exposure to environmental pollutants. The burden of these diseases is further exacerbated by weak health systems, inadequate access to healthcare and limited resources for prevention and treatment.

To address this growing public health concern, there is a need for increased investment in primary prevention, early diagnosis and appropriate treatment of NCDs in children in LMICs. This includes promoting healthy lifestyles, improving access to affordable and quality healthcare and strengthening health systems to provide effective and sustainable care.

NCD Child is a global multi-stakeholder coalition focused on the prevention, treatment and management of NCDs in children, adolescents, and young people.

The organisation advocates for the inclusion of children, adolescents, and young people in the global NCD agenda; inclusion of child and adolescent NCD prevention in the Sustainable Development Goals; promotes both treatment and prevention for addressing the NCD burden; and supports the inclusion of youth and family voices in global and country planning for NCDs.

Their website provides valuable information on childhood NCDs and an informative summary on a Child's Right to Healthfrom United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. According to the convention, "All children shall enjoy the highest attainable standard of health and access to facilities for the treatment of illness and rehabilitation of health" This organisation's work ties these concepts together and advocates for the implementation effective strategies to address the increasing burden of NCDs in childhood.

To learn more, visit the NCD Child website. For those looking to be more involved, consider signing up for the NCD Child Global Advocacy Course, which is offered online at no charge to health professionals interested in the health and wellbeing of children and adolescents.