ArticleBMJ global health2025
Impact of the WHO emergency care toolkit on mortality in Zambia: an implementation-effectiveness hybrid study.
Article in BMJ global health, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Scaling emergency care capacity during concurrent public health and humanitarian crises: outcomes of WHO-ICRC basic emergency care course implementation in the Republic of Moldova.International journal of emergency medicine · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
14 authors.
Funding
Abstract
introductionLow- and middle-income countries (LMICs) suffer the highest rates of death and disability due to emergency conditions. Strong emergency care systems reduce the morbidity, acquired disability and mortality associated with a variety of emergency conditions and have the potential to impact over half of the annual deaths in LMICs. The WHO emergency care toolkit (ECT) is an open access bundle of simple interventions to support care of the acutely ill and injured in LMICs. The aim of this study was to assess the impact of the WHO ECT on facility-based mortality at eight provincial-level hospitals in Zambia.
methodsThis study used an implementation-effectiveness hybrid design. Prospective data on mortality from a set of sentinel emergency conditions (paediatric diarrhoea, pneumonia, asthma, diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA), postpartum haemorrhage and injury) were collected for 8 months pre-implementation and post-implementation at eight provincial-level hospitals in Zambia. Case fatality ratios (CFRs) were calculated across intervention periods, and Z scores identified significant changes. Logistic regression analyses were conducted to identify associations between independent variables and mortality.
resultsA total of 7333 patients presented to the eight study sites with sentinel conditions: 4105 patients before and 3228 following implementation of the WHO ECT. Across all sentinel conditions, a significant decrease of 33.6% was seen in the crude CFR, and the odds of mortality were 35.7% lower after adjusting for confounders. Paediatric diarrhoea (-60.1%, p=0.048), DKA (-59.2%, p=0.001) and pneumonia (-48.1%, p<0.001) saw significant decreases in CFRs following WHO ECT implementation, and downward trends were seen for asthma and postpartum haemorrhage.
conclusionImplementation of the WHO ECT in eight Zambian hospitals showed a 35.7% reduction in adjusted odds of mortality from six sentinel conditions. The WHO ECT is an effective means of strengthening emergency care and improving patient outcomes in LMICs.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.