• John Y Rhee, Eduardo Garralda, Carlos Torrado, Santiago Blanco, Ibone Ayala, Eve Namisango, Emmanuel Luyirika, Liliana de Lima, Richard A Powell, Jesús López-Fidalgo, and Carlos Centeno.
• 1 Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai , New York, New York.
• J Palliat Med. 2017 Dec 1; 20 (12): 1372-1377.

BackgroundPalliative care (PC) research in Africa has been proposed as a fifth dimension of the World Health Organization PC Public Health Strategy. We conducted a scoping review of published articles (2005-2016) on palliative care development (PCD) in African countries. Forty-seven articles were found across 26 countries.ObjectiveTo study whether the number of published articles on PCD in countries in Africa can be used as an indicator of PCD.DesignThis is a secondary analysis of a completed scoping review.MeasurementsSpearman correlations were applied to the number of published articles ("published articles") and the number of published articles with a coauthor from a high-income country (HIC) ("HIC published articles") with level of PCD using Lynch et al's updated world map (PC World Map) as a proxy. A subanalysis was undertaken for Anglophone versus non-Anglophone countries.ResultsThere were positive Spearman correlations (r) between the PC World Map's levels and published articles (r = 0.73; p < 0.001), and with HIC published articles (r = 0.68; p < 0.001). For Anglophone countries, the r was statistically significant (p < 0.001) at 0.69 and 0.70, versus 0.58 and 0.45 for non-Anglophone countries for published articles and HIC published articles, respectively. Kruskal-Wallis test showed a statistically significant difference between Anglophone and non-Anglophone countries for both published articles and HIC published articles (p < 0.01).ConclusionPublished articles and HIC published articles on PCD in Africa had strong positive r's with the PC World Map. These measures may be considered as two indicators of PCD for countries in Africa, particularly for Anglophone countries.

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