Many many people and institutions involved:
@benmorton.bsky.social @darknatter.bsky.social +others not on bluesky

@lstmnews.bsky.social; Malawi Liverpool Wellcome; Muhimbili National Hospital; KCMC @dukepress.bsky.social @manchester.ac.uk

🙏Funded by @nihr.bsky.social @wellcometrust.bsky.social

What’s next:
We've incorporated these findings into a cluster RCT across Malawi and Tanzania to evaluate a complex intervention to:
- Improve recognition and control of chronic disease
- Reduce readmission
- Improve survival

More info: multilinknihr.com

We pre-published the protocol for our study:
openresearch.nihr.ac.uk/articles/4-2

This work builds on our earlier systematic review @whobulletin.bsky.social:
- We found lots of data on individual diseases in SSA hospitals (and estimated their prevalence and disease control)
- But evidence on multimorbidity in this context was sparse

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

Most common long-term conditions were:
• Hypertension (44%)
• HIV (31%)
• Diabetes (27%)

📉 Disease control was poor, particularly for NCDs
• Across both countries, participants had low baseline HRQoL, high disability & frailty.

Our adapted UpSet plot presents a rich description of multimorbidity patterns:
- Combinations and prevalence of HIV, diabetes, hypertension, CKD, etc.
- We also found a correlation between the number of conditions and 90-day mortality.

Key findings:
- 47% of adults admitted acutely to medical wards had multimorbidity (≥2 long-term conditions).
- This was linked to higher mortality, poorer health-related quality of life, and greater financial burden.

#Multimorbidity #NCDs

This work represents the culmination of 3+ years of collaborative work by the NIHR Multilink Consortium: multilinknihr.com.

We assessed health and economic outcomes of multimorbidity across 4 hospitals in Malawi and Tanzania