Long stay patients in a psychiatric hospital in Lagos, Nigeria

Objective: In the face of recently introduced government health reform and the dwindling number of available beds for acutely ill patients, a cross sectional study was carried out on long-stay patients at the 100 years old psychiatric hospital Yaba, Lagos, Nigeria with a view to discharging most of them. Method: Necessary consent was obtained from the Hospital Research and Ethical Committee. All the long-stay patients were evaluated with a specially designed proforma to elicit socio-demographic, clinical and long-stay variables. Further more, each of them had clinical assessment to make diagnosis in accordance with ICD - 10 and finally, the subjects were also assessed with the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS). Results: Fifty-one (51) subjects; that is, occupying 10.7% of the hospital functional beds fulfilled the criteria of long-stay. They included 36 (70.6%) males and 15(24.4%) females. The mean age was 47.3±16.5 years with age range of 18-92 years. The average length of stay was 11.4±15.0 years and range of 0.5 to 57 years; with significant gender difference (males higher than females) (t =3.51,

A Bi-centre Study of the Pattern and Evolution of readily detectable Neurological Sequelae of Acute Bacterial Meningitis

The pattern and evolution of obvious post-meningitic sequelae were determined in 187 post-neonatal children followed up at two tertiary centres. The pattern of sequelae was classified using previously described schemes, as well as by the number of deficits per child. One hundred and eighty-seven children were assessed on discharge, 157 after six weeks of discharge and 134 after three months. The incidence of sequelae was 40/187 (21.4 percent) on discharge versus 23/157 (14.7 percent) after six weeks (p = 0.106) and 18/134 (13.4 percent) after three months (p = 0.069) of follow up. Two (1.4 percent) of the 147 children who were apparently normal on discharge had sequelae on follow up, while two (7.4 percent) of the 27 children discharged with major sequelae, died. Among 17 children who were followed up for at least six months, three (18 percent) at >6 wks to 6 months (p = 0.034) had persistent deficits. Among the 42 children with sequelae, 29 (69 percent) had major deficits alone (n = 15) or with minor deficits (n = 14). Fifteen (36 percent) had one, 14 (33 percent) two and 13 (31 percent) >3 deficits. There was full or partial resolution of deficits in 15/19 (79 percent) children with sequelae who were treated with and in 6/15 (40 percent) (

Effect of qualitative feed restriction on pullet development and subsequent egg production

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