Counseling and Client Provider-Interactions as Related To Family Planning Services in Nigeria

Family planning is an essential service in medicine. It is a means of promoting good health and population control. In view of the importance of family planning, this study examined counseling and client provider-interactions in family planning centers in Nigeria. The study was a cross-sectional design and sixty eight pharmaceutical and eighty five family planning centers were randomly selected from the Northern and Southern parts of Nigeria. Quality of Care for Integrated Services Tool and Simulated Client Method were used to obtain relevant data. It was found that, 58.8% of the sampled family planning centers received their guests (stimulated clients) in a friendly and polite manner. The essential prerequisite of first demanding a prescription from first time users was ignored by 41.18% of the centers. Scheduled follow-up appointments were found to be necessary in 76.47% of the health centers and almost all the health care providers at the Family Planning centers referred clients to other facilities for unavailable services. The findings stressed the need for health facility owners and pharmaceutical shop attendants to acquire training in counseling and commodities management. Keywords: Counseling, Client Provider - Interactions, Family Planning service

Health Consumer Expectations and Perception of Quality Care Services at Primary Health Care Level in Nigeria

OBJECTIVE: The study examined the expectations of health consumers and perception used in judging the Quality of health care services at the primary health care level. METHODOLOGY: A cross-sectional study was carried out among randomly selected health consumers that had received health care services in the hospitals designated as primary health care facilities in Kwara State Nigeria. RESULTS: Overall health consumers’ means score expectations was 6.57 while perception was 5.80. Though was high in favour of females with no statistics significant difference. However, correlation test revealed significant association in socio-demographic variables such as age, occupation and educational status. Conversely, relationship was inverse in term of increase in education attainment with lower perception value (pv = <0.001). CONCLUSION: Expectation- perception gap was a major determinant of quality of health care services at primary health care levels. Significant relationship occurred between heath consumer’s age, occupation, educational status and overall expectation -perception of quality health care received. It is recommended that hospital management need to monitor the link between the expectations including perception of services received by patients for quality improvement at primary health care level

SARS-CoV-2 variants-associated outbreaks of COVID-19 in a tertiary institution, North-Central Nigeria: Implications for epidemic control.

The COVID-19 global pandemic is being driven by evolving SARS-CoV-2 variants with consequential implications on virus transmissibility, host immunity, and disease severity. Continuous molecular and genomic surveillance of the SARS-CoV-2 variants is therefore necessary for public health interventions toward the management of the pandemic. This study is a retrospective analysis of COVID-19 cases reported in a Nigerian tertiary institution from July to December 2021. In total, 705 suspected COVID-19 cases that comprised 547 students and 158 non-students were investigated by real time PCR (RT-PCR); of which 372 (~52.8%) tested positive for COVID-19. Using a set of selection criteria, 74 (~19.9%) COVID-19 positive samples were selected for next generation sequencing. Data showed that there were two outbreaks of COVID-19 within the university community over the study period, during which more females (56.8%) tested positive than males (47.8%) (p<0.05). Clinical data together with phylogenetic analysis suggested community transmission of SARS-CoV-2 through mostly asymptomatic and/or pre-symptomatic individuals. Confirmed COVID-19 cases were mostly mild, however, SARS-CoV-2 delta (77%) and omicron (4.1%) variants were implicated as major drivers of respective waves of infections during the study period. This study highlights the importance of integrated surveillance of communicable disease during outbreaks

Pediatric Bacterial Meningitis Surveillance in Nigeria From 2010 to 2016, Prior to and During the Phased Introduction of the 10-Valent Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine.

BACKGROUND: Historically, Nigeria has experienced large bacterial meningitis outbreaks with high mortality in children. Streptococcus pneumoniae (pneumococcus), Neisseria meningitidis (meningococcus), and Haemophilus influenzae are major causes of this invasive disease. In collaboration with the World Health Organization, we conducted longitudinal surveillance in sentinel hospitals within Nigeria to establish the burden of pediatric bacterial meningitis (PBM). METHODS: From 2010 to 2016, cerebrospinal fluid was collected from children <5 years of age, admitted to 5 sentinel hospitals in 5 Nigerian states. Microbiological and latex agglutination techniques were performed to detect the presence of pneumococcus, meningococcus, and H. influenzae. Species-specific polymerase chain reaction and serotyping/grouping were conducted to determine specific causative agents of PBM. RESULTS: A total of 5134 children with suspected meningitis were enrolled at the participating hospitals; of these 153 (2.9%) were confirmed PBM cases. The mortality rate for those infected was 15.0% (23/153). The dominant pathogen was pneumococcus (46.4%: 71/153) followed by meningococcus (34.6%: 53/153) and H. influenzae (19.0%: 29/153). Nearly half the pneumococcal meningitis cases successfully serotyped (46.4%: 13/28) were caused by serotypes that are included in the 10-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine. The most prevalent meningococcal and H. influenzae strains were serogroup W and serotype b, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Vaccine-type bacterial meningitis continues to be common among children <5 years in Nigeria. Challenges with vaccine introduction and coverage may explain some of these finding. Continued surveillance is needed to determine the distribution of serotypes/groups of meningeal pathogens across Nigeria and help inform and sustain vaccination policies in the country

Survey of Current Practice of Labour Analgesia Among Obstetricians in Nigeria: Implications For Pain-free Labour Initiative.

Labour pain has been described as the worst possible pain known to mankind. It is more excruciating than cancer pain, phantom pain or toothache. Failure to relieve pain of any cause has been regarded as a violation of fundamental human rights. This study aimed to evaluate the current obstetrics analgesia practice among physicians in Nigeria, identify constraints to the practice and recommend solutions to improve the provision of such service to parturients. This descriptive cross-sectional questionnaire-based study on the availability and practice of intra-partum analgesia services was conducted among practitioners at the Departments of Obstetrics and Gynecology of 3 tertiary health institutions located in 3 of the 6 geopolitical zones of Nigeria.Of the 120 questionnaires distributed to the participants, 81 (67.5%) of the respondents returned completed questionnaires. The age range of the respondents was 25-44 years with a mean age of 30.8 and a male to female ratio (M: F) of 1.7: 1. Majority of the respondents, 76 (93.8%) believed that intra-partum analgesia was important, epidural analgesia was the most known method of intra-partum analgesia by 86.4% of the participants and epidural analgesia was the most preferred, 61.7% of respondents. Majority of respondents, 66 (81.5%), did not have an institutional policy or protocol on intra-partum analgesia. Doctors working in the same centre responded differently to the questions in the distributed questionnaires; and this is suggestive of lack of departmental harmonisation of clinical practice in the form of Standard Operating Protocol on intra-partum analgesia.Although there is a high level of knowledge of intrapartum analgesia among physicians, inconsistencies in its practice exist within and between tertiary hospitals in Nigeria. Notable absence of institutional policies on intra-partum analgesia at the practice facilities of the respondents was also observed

SARS-CoV-2 variants-associated outbreaks of COVID-19 in a tertiary institution, North-Central Nigeria: Implications for epidemic control. S1 Data

Data for the PLOS ONE paper, "SARS-CoV-2 variants-associated outbreaks of COVID-19 in a tertiary institution, North-Central Nigeria: Implications for epidemic control"

SARS-CoV-2 variants-associated outbreaks of COVID-19 in a tertiary institution, North-Central Nigeria: Implications for epidemic control.

The COVID-19 global pandemic is being driven by evolving SARS-CoV-2 variants with consequential implications on virus transmissibility, host immunity, and disease severity. Continuous molecular and genomic surveillance of the SARS-CoV-2 variants is therefore necessary for public health interventions toward the management of the pandemic. This study is a retrospective analysis of COVID-19 cases reported in a Nigerian tertiary institution from July to December 2021. In total, 705 suspected COVID-19 cases that comprised 547 students and 158 non-students were investigated by real time PCR (RT-PCR); of which 372 (~52.8%) tested positive for COVID-19. Using a set of selection criteria, 74 (~19.9%) COVID-19 positive samples were selected for next generation sequencing. Data showed that there were two outbreaks of COVID-19 within the university community over the study period, during which more females (56.8%) tested positive than males (47.8%) (p<0.05). Clinical data together with phylogenetic analysis suggested community transmission of SARS-CoV-2 through mostly asymptomatic and/or pre-symptomatic individuals. Confirmed COVID-19 cases were mostly mild, however, SARS-CoV-2 delta (77%) and omicron (4.1%) variants were implicated as major drivers of respective waves of infections during the study period. This study highlights the importance of integrated surveillance of communicable disease during outbreaks