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Malawi is a country in Southern Africa (figures 1 and 2) and gained its independence from the British Colony in 1964. Currently 17.5 million people live in Malawi, and about 85% reside in rural areas and depend on farming for survival.1 Although one of the poorest countries in the world (with a gross domestic product of $338.48 per capita), it is blessed with a dramatic landscape, offering a variety of unique experiences and boasting some of Africa’s best safaris and bird watching. Tourist hot spots include Mount Mulanje and Lake Malawi (figure 3). Malawians are characteristically known for their warm smiles, and deservedly the country is nicknamed ‘the warm heart of Africa’. Figure 1 The map of Africa showing the location of Malawi and its neighbours. DRC, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Source: B Chiepa, 2018. Figure 2 Flag of Malawi (http://flagpedia.net/malawi; accessed on 20 February 2018). Figure 3 Some of Malawi's tourist destinations: Mulanje Mountain, Cape Maclear and Liwonde National Park. Source: B Chiepa, 2018. Malawi has an acute shortage of health workers, with approximately 0.12 available for every 1000 people. This contrasts with ratios in neighbouring countries such as Kenya (1.1 per 1000) and South Africa (2.1 per 1000).2 3 The life expectancy at birth in Malawi is 63 years, and the population is slowly ageing. Despite the WHO recommending one neurologist for every 50 000 people, Malawi has only one permanent paediatric neurologist (last author) and relies on visiting adult neurologists, usually on a voluntary basis and rarely continuous. Patients are referred to the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital paediatric neurology services …

Introduction Stroke is the second most common cause of death after ischaemic heart diseases and the third leading cause of disability worldwide. The contribution of cardiac complications to the mortality of patients with stroke is variable across studies, ranging from 12.5% to 22.7%. Many of these cardiac complications are preventable, and early recognition and adequate management guided by appropriate up-to-date knowledge of their relative incidence and fatality can help to improve patients’ outcomes. This systematic review aims to summarise the available data on the burden of cardiac complications after stroke. Methods and analysis This review will include all cross-sectional, case–control and cohort studies and clinical trials published between 1 January 1950 and 31 December 2017, involving adults and/or children, and reporting on the prevalence, the incidence and/or the mortality of cardiac complications after stroke. Two reviewers will independently screen titles and abstracts of records retrieved from PubMed, Excerpta Medica Database, ISI Web of Science and the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature for eligibility, and then assess the risk of bias and quality of reporting to select the studies which will be included. All authors will contribute to the retrieval of full texts of eligible records and data extraction. Heterogeneity across studies will be evaluated by the χ 2 test on Cochran’s Q statistic. Study-specific estimates of the prevalence, incidence and mortality of cardiac complications after stroke across studies will be pooled through random-effect or fixed-effect meta-analysis depending on the source of the heterogeneity, after stabilising the variance of individual studies using the Freeman-Tukey double arcsine transformation. Visual analysis of funnel plots and Egger’s test will be done to detect small-study effect. Ethics and dissemination This review and meta-analysis will be based on published data and will therefore not require a specific ethical clearance. The results will be published in peer-reviewed journals. PROSPERO registration number CRD42018082551.

IntroductionHeadache disorders (HD) are among the most frequent neurological disorders seen in neurology practice. Because secondary HD are rare, patients’ examination is most often unremarkable. However, the will to relieve patients’ anxiety and the fear of prosecutions lead to overuse of neuroimaging thus resulting in the discovery of incidental findings (IF) or normal variants that can lead to futile or harmful procedures. Knowing the probability of identifying a potentially clinically significant lesion in patients with isolated headache could facilitate decision-making and reduce health costs. This review aims to determine the prevalence of incidental findings and normal anatomic variants (NAV) on neuroimaging studies performed in patients presenting with headache and normal neurological examination.Method and analysisStudies reporting neuroimaging findings in patients with headache and normal neurological examination and published before the 30 September 2017 will be identified by searching PubMed, Medline and EMBASE (Excerpta Medica Database). Relevant unpublished papers and conference proceedings will also be checked. Full texts of eligible studies will then be accessed and data extracted using a standard data extraction sheet. Studies will be assessed for quality and risk of bias. Heterogeneity of studies will be evaluated by the χ2test on Cochrane’s Q statistic. The prevalence of NAV and IF across studies and in relevant subgroups will be estimated by pooling the study-specific estimates using a random-effects meta-analysis. Visual analysis of funnel plot and Egger’s test will be used to detect publication bias. The report of this systematic review will be compliant with the Meta-analysis of Observational Studies in Epidemiology guidelines.Ethics and disseminationThe current study is based on published data; ethical approval is, therefore, not required. The final report of this systematic review will be published in a peer-reviewed journal. Furthermore, findings will be presented at conferences and submitted to relevant health authorities.Trial registration numberCRD42017079714.