Developing evidence-based guidelines for Kenyan children with indrawing pneumonia

Presented 3rd June 2016

A round-trip journey developing evidence-based guidelines for Kenyan children with indrawing pneumonia 

Dr. Ambrose Agweyu, Paediatrician and Epidemiologist, Health Services Unit, KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme, Nairobi, Kenya

More about the topic: The presentation will begin with a comparison of the World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations for empirical treatment of childhood pneumonia pre-2013 and post-2013, along with the rationale supporting the change from injectable to oral antibiotics for indrawing pneumonia. Ambrose will then describe the initial rejection of the proposed new recommendation by national expert panel in Kenya illustrating the position of policy makers in many other regions of sub-Saharan Africa. A clinical trial conducted to address the gaps in evidence that emerged from concerns raised by the Kenyan policy makers is then presented. The talk ends by revisiting the recommendation initially proposed to Kenyan guideline panelist alongside the new local evidence.

More about the speaker: Ambrose is a Kenyan paediatrician with Masters training in epidemiology, based at the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Nairobi. Working closely with the Kenyan Ministry of Health in 2009, his early research involved conducting systematic reviews for a national exercise to adapt the World Health Organization paediatric clinical practice guidelines using the GRADE methodology. Following this, Ambrose was invited to support similar exercises in Uganda and Rwanda. More recently, he was the principal investigator on a large pragmatic clinical trial comparing antibiotic treatments for childhood pneumonia. The findings of this study contributed towards a recent major revision in the Kenyan guidelines, and are likely to eventually influence practice in the region. As he approaches the end of his PhD training, he is currently considering future areas of work that build on his interest in conducting pragmatic trials for interventions to improve the care and outcomes of hospitalized children in sub-Saharan Africa.