Ludoviko Zirimenya

London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine | LSHTM · Faculty of Infectious and Tropical Diseases

Background Vaccination is an important public health intervention, but not everyone benefits equally. Biological, social and structural factors render some communities vulnerable and unable to secure optimal health benefits from vaccination programmes. This drives health inequity and undermines wider vaccine impact by allowing the persistence of no...

Background: Vaccination is an important public health intervention, but not everyone benefits equally. Biological, social and structural factors render some communities vulnerable and unable to secure optimal health benefits from vaccination programmes. This drives health inequity and undermines wider vaccine impact by allowing the persistence of n...

Vaccination has potential to eliminate infectious diseases. However, parasitic infections such as helminths may hinder vaccines from providing optimal protection. We reviewed existing literature on the effects of helminth infections and their treatment on vaccine responses in humans and animals. We searched literature until 31 January 2022 in Medli...

The 3rd Uganda Conference on Cancer and Palliative Care was held in September 2021 with the theme: cancer and palliative care in COVID-19 and other challenging situations. It was hosted by the Uganda Cancer Institute and the Palliative Care Association of Uganda (UCI-PCAU). The conference was held virtually, with a mix of pre-recorded sessions, ple...

Introduction There is evidence that BCG immunisation may protect against unrelated infectious illnesses. This has led to the postulation that administering BCG before unrelated vaccines may enhance responses to these vaccines. This might also model effects of BCG on unrelated infections. Methods and analysis To test this hypothesis, we have design...

Introduction: Vaccine-specific immune responses vary between populations and are often impaired in low income, rural settings. Drivers of these differences are not fully elucidated, hampering identification of strategies for optimising vaccine effectiveness. We hypothesise that urban-rural (and regional and international) differences in vaccine re...

Introduction Several licensed and investigational vaccines have lower efficacy, and induce impaired immune responses, in low-income versus high-income countries and in rural, versus urban, settings. Understanding these population differences is essential to optimising vaccine effectiveness in the tropics. We suggest that repeated exposure to and im...

Introduction Drivers of lower vaccine efficacy and impaired vaccine-specific immune responses in low-income versus high-income countries, and in rural compared with urban settings, are not fully elucidated. Repeated exposure to and immunomodulation by parasite infections may be important. We focus on Plasmodium falciparum malaria, aiming to determi...

Context Mobile health (mhealth) provides an opportunity to utilise internet coverage in low and middle income countries (LMICs) to improve palliative care access and quality. Objectives This study aimed to design a mobile phone application (app) to enable or improve communication between family caregivers, community caregivers, and palliative care...

Background Urogenital schistosomiasis and HIV/AIDS infections are widespread in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) leading to substantial morbidity and mortality. The co-occurrence of both diseases has led to the possible hypothesis that urogenital schistosomiasis leads to increased risk of acquiring HIV infection. However, the available evidence concerning...

A systematic review protocol to assess the association between human urogenital schistosomiasis and HIV infection

All cancer care must target the needs of the whole population, not just the few who reach curative services. This paper will refer to palliative care in Uganda and in the countries now aware of the need for palliative care. Human Rights Watch has declared that doctors who are aware that we can control cancer pain and are not doing it or taking step...

3 Background At Hospice Africa Uganda (HAU), patients' spiritual well-being is assessed in depth upon admission, but there are no rigorous assessment tools for regular spiritual distress screening in this setting. Our prior research demonstrated the “Spirit 8” assessment too cumbersome for routine use by HAU staff. The new “Spirit 3” includes thre...

The prevalence of cancer and that of HIV/AIDS is increasing in Uganda and throughout sub Saharan Africa. Unfortunately, little is known about the prevalence and burden of symptoms in patients with AIDS-Cancer and Cancer alone at first referral to a palliative care service. This study sets out to compare the prevalence and symptom burden between pat...