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

Knowledge, practice and acceptability of HPV vaccine by mothers of adolescent girls in Ilorin, Nigeria

Background: Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) is a sexually transmitted cause of carcinoma of the cervix. An important determinant of the success of a primary preventive strategy like HPV vaccination is the knowledge and willingness of parents to vaccinate adolescents before sexual debut. Materials and methods of study: A cross sectional descriptive survey of mothers of girls in 8 secondary schools in Ilorin was carried out from February to April 2015. Schools were selected using multi staged sampling. Descriptive and inferential statistics were performed with Chi Square and ANOVA. Results: There were 470 questionnaires returned for analysis out of 600, giving a response rate of 78.3%. One hundred and sixty-one (34.3%) knew HPV to be sexually transmitted infection and 40.4% knew it was the cause of cervical cancer. While 35.1% were aware of HPV vaccine, only 1.9% had ever vaccinated their children.Less than half (44.9%) were willing to vaccinate their children. Women with good knowledge of HPV and cervical cancer were more willing to vaccinate their children than women with poor knowledge (P &lt;0.001). Conclusion: There is poor knowledge of HPV and practice of vaccination among mothers in llorin. Willingness of mothers to vaccinate their daughters is suboptimal. Mother’s knowledge is an important determinant of HPV vaccination of adolescents

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

Parental perception of human papillomavirus vaccination of prepubertal girls in Ilorin, Nigeria

Context: Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination of young girls is yet to be a routine practice in Nigeria and parents' acceptance may influence immunization of their children. Aims: The aim of this study is to determine beliefs and concerns of parents about HPV vaccination of girls. Subjects and Methods : A cross-sectional survey of parents of girls between 10 and 15 years in 12 selected secondary schools of Ilorin using a self-administered questionnaire designed by researchers was conducted. Statistical Analysis Used: Data analysis involved univariate and bivariate analyses with SPSS version 20. The level of significance for all tests was set at 5%. Results: The respondents were 470 mothers between 31 and 50 years, 58.1% had at least secondary school education, 70.2% were employed, and 22.8% belonged to the upper social class. Of the study participants, 35.1% were aware of HPV vaccine and 33.8% knew that the vaccine was available in Nigeria. While 55.8% of mothers believed that all girls should be vaccinated, 19.5% responded that only sexually active girls should have it. Among all respondents, full protection, need for repeated doses, and age of the girls were significantly related to willingness to vaccinate statistically (P < 0.05). These concerns were not significant among mothers that were aware of HPV vaccines. Conclusions: There is low awareness of HPV vaccine among mothers in Ilorin despite the high prevalence of cervical cancer in our environment. Parental perception of HPV vaccines in terms of concerns and beliefs was significantly related to willingness of mothers to vaccinate their daughters