ArticleBMJ open2026
Facilitators and barriers to malaria surveillance in community pharmacies and over-the-counter medicine sellers in sub-Saharan Africa's health sector: a scoping review protocol.
Article in BMJ open, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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
0 citing papers in PubMed.
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Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionMalaria remains a serious public health issue, and sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is still disproportionately burdened with the disease. Efficient disease tracking in both public and private healthcare points is required to consolidate elimination efforts. Considerable amounts of malaria cases in the private sector, especially community pharmacies, are not captured into routine surveillance systems. This scoping review aims to systematically collate the existing evidence on the facilitators and barriers to malaria surveillance in community pharmacies (CPs) and over-the-counter medicine sellers (OTCMS) in SSA. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: We will retrieve all relevant studies (published and completed but unpublished) through searches in PubMed, CINAHL, Scopus, Web of Science and Hinari from inception to 15 June 2026. Searches will be conducted without language restrictions; however, full-text inclusion will be limited to English-language publications due to resource constraints. Titles and abstracts of non-English articles will be thoroughly screened using online-assisted translation tools such as Google Translate to assess their potential eligibility. Potentially relevant non-English studies will be documented and reported in the appendices to allow for an evaluation of possible language bias, in accordance with Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) reporting guidelines. All the articles retrieved from the searches will be collated and deduplicated using EndNote. The deduplicated studies will then be screened and selected. Two reviewers will independently screen studies using a study selection flow chart developed from the pre-specified eligibility criteria. The data synthesis for this scoping review will be conducted using a narrative synthesis approach. The extracted data will be organised into a structured format, categorising information based on study characteristics, malaria surveillance activities, facilitators and barriers. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: Formal ethical approval is not required as the review uses publicly available data. Findings will be published in an open-access peer-reviewed journal, presented at relevant conferences and disseminated through policy briefs and infographics to the WHO, national malaria programmes and pharmacy councils. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: Open Science Framework (registration link: https://osf.io/udwpn/overview?view_only=6e42bea8abb94f9cbc535b161ea329a6).
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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.