HEAL-SL

Healthy Sierra Leone (HEAL-SL), in collaboration with the Sierra Leone Ministry of Health and Sanitation (MOHS) and the University of Toronto, presents AfriMS 2023. Focusing on results from three rounds of mortality surveillance covering 2017-2023 and capturing over 18,000 nationally representative deaths, HEAL-SL has accelerated packaging and disseminating data on Sierra Leone’s leading causes of death to spur district and national actions to address these major preventable and treatable health burdens. AfriMS 2023 builds on the successful multi-country AfriMS 2022 and will showcase the Data for Action agenda and explore additional opportunities with a Sierra Leonean audience, as well as participants from neighboring West African countries engaged in the Healthy West Africa (HEAL-WA) initiative, and countries around the continent just embarking on mortality and birth surveillance. Colleagues from Mozambique will share methods, results, and progress on data for action from SIS-COVE (Sistema Comunitário de Vigilância em Saúde e de Eventos Vitais), their HEAL-SL counterpart under the Healthy Sierra Leone (HEAL-SL) umbrella.

Day One

On the morning of Day 1 the latest results from HEAL-SL and SIS-COVE will be presented, including a MOHS report summarizing 3 rounds of mortality data from HEAL-SL. Afternoon sessions will focus on high-burden conditions with high potential for preventing premature deaths. The proceedings will be based in part on a September HEAL-SL-led data for action working meeting of District Medical Officers (DMO) and experts from the MOHS and academic institutions around the country, to develop action plans responding HEAL-SL findings.
The focus will be on deaths from the following causes and discussion about actions to reduce their numbers:

• Stillbirths and neonatal causes
• Malaria
• Road traffic injuries
• Stroke

Later sessions will focus on the challenges and opportunities for establishing countrywide mortality surveillance in other African countries.

Day Two

The morning will focus on the developing HEAL-WA serosurveillance collaboration with Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, and Liberia, and other African serosurveillance initiatives.
The afternoon sessions will include a wide range of contributed papers on topics of importance to mortality in Africa.

AfriMS 2023 will wrap up and adjourn by 4 pm on December 5.

Financial support

HEAL-SL will provide some limited support for speakers without other means to attend. Hotel and local transport in Freetown and meeting registration can be provided. Participants will be asked to cover airfare and local travel at home. Other participants are invited to attend at their own expense and pay the modest registration fee of $50 which will cover meals and conference materials. Virtual attendance will be free.

If you have related work for submission, please submit your abstracts in the following format through the abstract subission platfrom.

Title

Describe the work in less than one line

Background

Introduce the problem addressed by your research or program, with context the reader needs to understand its importance and rationale. Include what is known and unknown on the topic.

Objective, background, or hypothesis

Clearly state the purpose of your work.

Methods

Include the important details of what you did, including study design, analytical approaches, and populations studied.

Results

Report the overall results that answer your study question(s), Give more weight to the most important and highest impact results. A table or figure may be included.

Conclusions

Report the high-level take-home message of your research or program. You may want to express an opinion about the implications of your findings.

Key words

Provide up to 5 key words.

Submitting abstracts

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• Use the authors page (under AfriMS menu) to followup the status of your submissions

Successful candidates

You will be notified according to the schedule below if your abstract is selected for presentation at AfriMS 2023. If selected, you will be informed of the length of time you will be allowed, along with guidelines for PowerPoint or other presentation software.