Reducing Under-five Childhood Mortality using IMCI/e-IMCI: Implementation Approaches in Nigeria

Abstract

To address the global issue of healthcare disparity and access to care, particularly in children under-five years of age, Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI) was put in place by WHO and UNICEF. To address poor adherence to IMCI that affects Under-five Mortality Rates (U5MRs), e-IMCI was introduced 1. With its three components: improvement of case management skills of health-care staff, overall health systems, and family and community health practices, IMCI/e-IMCI targets under-five children’s health with a holistic approach 2. While IMCI/e-IMCI helps to provide quality care, save cost and potentially time, inadequate healthcare providers’ training remains a primary challenge to the quality of implementation at the global level especially in lower-middle income countries like Nigeria. This paper presents the barriers to IMCI/e-IMCI from the policy makers, health workers and patient standpoint in Nigeria. Also, the paper elaborates on various implementation approaches to address these barriers in the context of the Nigerian health care system.Master of Public Healt