Publications by authors named "Ahwaz Akhtar"

Although adolescents have been less susceptible to COVID-19-related morbidity and mortality than older people, the social containment policies put in place to curb the disease constrained their ability to thrive. This study explored changes in adolescent outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly among vulnerable adolescents, focusing on education, economic participation, early marriage, self-reported health, and food security. We investigated the role of governmental and nongovernmental cash and food aid in mitigating negative effects.

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Introduction: A quasi-experimental study was conducted to estimate the impact of sequential emergency department (ED) capacity building interventions on key performance indicators such as patients' length of stay (LOS) and wait time (WT) during the COVID-19 pandemic. This was achieved through augmenting personnel education and head count, space restructuring and workflow reorganisation.

Setting And Participants: This study included 268 352 patients presenting from January 2019 to December 2020 at Indus Hospital and Health network Karachi, a philanthropic tertiary healthcare facility in a city of 20 million residents.

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Decentralized, person-centred models of care delivery for drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) continue to be under-resourced in high-burden TB countries. The implementation of such models-made increasingly urgent by the COVID-19 pandemic-are key to addressing gaps in DR-TB care. We abstracted data of rifampicin-resistant (RR)/multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) patients initiated on treatment at 11 facilities between 2010 and 2017 in Sindh and Balochistan provinces of Pakistan.

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Objectives: To develop and propose a cost-effective trauma care network for Karachi, Pakistan, by calculating maximum timely trauma care (TTC) coverage achieved with the addition of potential designated private and public level 1 and level 2 trauma centres (TCs).

Setting: A lower middle-income country metropolis, Karachi is Pakistan's largest city with a population of 16 million and a total of 56 hospitals as per government registry data.

Participants: 41 potential TCs selected using a two-level, contextually-relevant TC designation criteria adapted from various international guidelines.

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