Foreword

This issue comes with the title: “Primary versus delayed closure of contaminated appendectomy incisions”. The authors looked at primary versus delayed primary appendectomy wound closure and found that the rate of infection was 20.0% in the former and 4.2% in the later. Also it was found that the cost of treatment and average hospital stay were both more in the primary than the delayed primary closure types but there was no statistically significant difference. They therefore advised that surgeons should adopt any of the two methods but be guided by the best clinical judgement on each patient.
Management of medical wastes is a major challenge in both private and public health institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa and a team of researchers looked into institutional factors associated medical waste management practices some private institutions. Factors found to contribute to poor hospital waste management were: absence of hospital policy in waste management, lack of availability of manual or guideline document on management of hospital waste, lack waste management plan by the Hospital and absent standard operation procedure on the management of waste by the Hospital. These factors were observed in 50% of health institutions with poor waste management practices, and the researchers recommended improvement on both personal and the above mentioned institutional parameters.
In the midst of the contemporary public campaigns that pregnant women should necessarily register for proper ante-natal care, a group of researchers took a study to assess the Obstetric Outcome between Booked and Unbooked Mothers. They observed that unbooked women were younger compared to the booked, less educated, and were nine times more likely to be single. Also emergency caesarean section was performed in 58.72% of the unbooked mothers while 60.14% of their booked counterparts had spontaneous vaginal deliveries. Furthermore, instrumental vaginal deliveries were also more common among the unbooked group. Birth asphyxia and perinatal morbidity/mortality were commoner in the unbooked group while maternal mortality was found to be 25 times more likely with the unbooked compared to booked mothers. They further re-emphasised the need for all pregnant women to enroll for ante-natal care services.
The editorial looked at Omicron B.1.1.529 SARS-CoV-2 variant currently causing massive COVID-19 epidemic waves across the country. It was observed that the high transmissibility and infectivity of this variant appear to have been counter-balanced by the general mild to moderate clinical outcome among those infected compared to epidemic waves caused by delta and other earlier variants.

Prof. GT Jombo
Editor in Chief