Recent cross-sectional prevalence studies in sub-Saharan Africa for communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional diseases and conditions: a scoping review

BackgroundCross-sectional prevalence studies provide benefits to policymakers, epidemiologists, trialists, and the future health of target and general populations. Too few of these studies are performed in hotspots of traditional global health disease burden. This results in a lack of recent, local, accurate prevalence estimates to inform policy, epidemiology, and the design of interventional randomized controlled trials that may be conducted in these regions. ObjectiveThis scoping review aims to establish a novel dataset usable as an observational baseline. The topic being analyzed is the set of characteristics describing recently published prospective cross-sectional prevalence studies in sub-Saharan Africa for humans affected with communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional diseases and conditions. MethodsThis scoping review conducted a systematic literature search of PubMed. The search identified publications in the last four years describing completed cross-sectional prevalence studies in sub-Saharan Africa. Title and abstract screening was completed. Data extraction was performed on a random sample of the final dataset. ResultsThis scoping review identified 868 titles and abstracts through our systematic search. Through our screening process, 394 of these were candidates eligible for inclusion in our dataset. Ultimately, 363 were in the final dataset. Of the 38 studies in the random sample, this scoping review found a large portion of the studies completed with no funding. Malaria was the predominant disease studied, followed by parasitic intestinal infection and malnutrition. Studies with funding were slower, from data collection to submission to a journal, than studies with no funding. Studies that use a national ethical review process tend to take longer than those using hospital or university institutional review boards. ConclusionsCross-sectional prevalence studies are happening in sub-Saharan Africa for many communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional diseases and conditions. This healthy research ecosystem is filled with variety. A variety of data collection methods, sources of funding, types of study sites, and target populations exist. Many studies are self-funded by the principal investigator. These studies are rarely conducted for the explicit purpose of informing the designs of future randomized trials. Some trends might be observable in the data that point to causal factors for study speed or sample size.