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Many patients, especially those with a high pill burden and multiple chronic illnesses, are less adherent to medication. In medication treatments utilizing polypills, this problem might be diminished since multiple drugs are fused into one formulation and, therefore, the therapy regimen is simplified. This systematic review summarized evidence to assess the effect of polypills on medication adherence. The following databases were searched for articles published between 1 January 2000, and 14 May 2019: PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, and Scopus. Medication adherence was the only outcome assessed, regardless of the method of measuring it. Sixty-seven original peer-reviewed articles were selected. Adherence to polypill regimens was significantly higher in 56 articles (84%) compared to multiple pill regimens. This finding was also supported by the results of 13 out of 17 selected previously published systematic reviews and meta-analyses dealing with this topic. Adherence can be improved through the formulation of polypills, which is probably why the interest in researching them is growing. There are many polypills on the market, but the adherence studies so far focused mainly on a small range of medical conditions.

We present in this paper a method for acquiring a bilingual terminology concerning the Alzheimer's disease using a parallel corpus. NLP techniques are used for parsing English and French texts in order to extract candidate terms. These terms are then matched automatically using an approach that combines two alignment techniques: one based on the calculation of an association score between two terms, and another technique based on the calculation of morphological similarity. This method provided good results on an Alzheimer's disease related corpus with a precision of 73%.

The fourth in a series of five, this article presents and analyses data on cost recovery and community cost-sharing, two key aspects of the Bamako Initiative which have been implemented in Benin and Guinea since 1986. The data come from approximately 400 health centres and result from the six-monthly monitoring sessions conducted from 1989 to 1993. Community involvement in the financing of local operating costs in the two national scale programmes is also described. In Benin and Guinea, a user fee system generates the community financed revenue with the aim of covering local operating costs including drugs. Health worker salaries remain the responsibility of the government and donor funding covers vaccine and investment costs. Village health committees manage and control resources and revenue. The community is also involved in decision making, strategy definition and quality control. In Benin in 1993, community financing revenue amounted to about US$0.6 per capita per year and generally covered all local recurrent non salary costs except vaccines and left a surplus. Although total costs and revenues were slightly lower in Guinea for the same period, over-all user fee revenue (around US$0.3 per capita per year) covered local recurrent costs (not including salaries or vaccines). A comparison of costs and revenue between regions and individual health centres revealed important differences in cost recovery ratios. In Benin, some centres recovered more than twice the local costs targeted for community financing. Twenty-five per cent of centres in Guinea did not manage to cover their designated local recurrent costs. The longitudinal analysis showed that the level of cost recovery remained stable over time even as preventive care (and especially EPI) coverage rose significantly. To better understand the most important characteristics affecting cost recovery levels, best performing health centres in terms of cost-recovery levels in 1993 were compared to worst performing centres. This analysis showed that the size of the target population of the health centre is a key determinant of cost-recovery in both countries. In addition, in Guinea the utilization of curative care linked to geographical access and in Benin the average revenue per case linked to the number of deliveries proved to be additional factors of importance. In best performing centres, financial viability improved over time in both countries between 1990 and 1993. Finally, the implications of these conclusions for the planning of health centre revitalization in West Africa are discussed.

The objective of the health system revitalization undergone in Benin and Guinea since 1986 is to improve the effectiveness of primary health care at the periphery. Second in a series of five, this article presents the results of an analysis of data from the health centres involved in the Bamako Initiative in Benin and Guinea since 1988. Data for the expanded programme of immunization, antenatal care and curative care, form the core of the analysis which confirms the improved effectiveness of primary health care at the peripheral level over a period of six years. The last available national data show a DPT3 immunization coverage of 80% in 1996 in Benin and 73% in 1995 in Guinea. In the Bamako Initiative health centres included in our analysis, the average immunization coverage, as measured by the adequate coverage indicator, increased from 19% to 58% in Benin and from less than 5% to 63% in Guinea between 1989 to 1993. Average antenatal care coverage has increased from 5% in Benin and 3% in Guinea to 43% in Benin and 51% Guinea. Utilization of coverage with curative care has increased from less than 0.05 visit per capita per year to 0.34 in Guinea and from 0.09 visit per capita per year to 0.24 in Benin. Further analysis attempts to uncover the reasons which underlie the different levels of effectiveness obtained in individual health centres. Monitoring and microplanning through a problem-solving approach permit a dynamic process of adaptation of strategies leading to a step by step increase of coverage over time. However, the geographical location of centres represents a constraint in that certain districts in both countries face accessibility problems. Outreach activities are shown to play an especially positive role in Guinea, in improving both immunization and antenatal care coverage.

Since 1986, two West African countries have been delivering immunizations within the framework of reorganized peripheral health systems. This revitalization is based on strategies which are implemented by an increasing number of African countries under the name "Bamako Initiative". It aims at providing universal access to a minimum package of maternal and child health priority interventions starting with immunizations, pre and perinatal care, oral rehydration for diarrhoea, treatment of malaria and acute lower respiratory infections. Within this package, immunization has been given high priority. Several strategies aimed at improving immunization coverage have been implemented: services have been reorganized so that any child or woman making contact with the health system receives immunization if needed. Health information systems have been revised so as to allow for active individual follow up and better management of health centre resources. Health staff have been given training in management and a biannual monitoring/microplanning process at health centre level has been introduced. The goal of monitoring is to enable health personnel to identify the obstacles to attaining optimum coverages with the priority interventions and to select locally appropriate corrective strategies. Health centres have also been provided with a motorcycle allowing for regular outreach activities. To cover the running costs of the services (mainly restocking of drugs, running and maintenance of the cold chain and the motorbike, and staff incentives), financial contribution from local communities have been sought through a fee-for-treatment system. Prices have been set at an affordable level by limiting the number of drugs to a minimal list purchased under generic names by international tendering procedures.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)