The response strategies contained the epidemic. Challenges to control efforts included poor local laboratory capacity, inadequate/poor quality of protective materials, fear among health workers, and inadequate emergency preparedness.

No abstract

Objective:  Waiting time is a resource investment by the patient for the desired goal of being attended to by the physician. It is the time taken  or spent in waiting to be attended to by a physician in a health facility. It is important because waiting time is an essential determinant of patient satisfaction in health care practice, and its study would expose the bottleneck areas in patient’s time-flow so that the facility can improve services with that regard. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study of time spent by paediatric patients in the outpatient department of Alex Ekwueme Federal University Teaching Hospital Abakaliki by secretly following the patients from arrival at CHOP till after consultation. Means were calculated of time spent in various areas.  Results: Of the 384 patients observed, the mean (SD) total time spent in the hospital was 142.58 (23.17) minutes while waiting time and consultation time were 113.15(18.01) and 24.43 (10.38) minutes respectively. The mean time spent at the nurse’s bay was 23.79 (6.47) minutes, while that spent at the queue was 22.94 (8.98) minutes. The time spent at the records unit was the highest, with a mean time of 47.2 (17.42) minutes.  Conclusion: The long waiting time obtained from the current study is mostly attributable to delays from the records/registration unit, therefore conceited efforts aimed at improvement of service delivery in this unit will reduce patient waiting time and invariably patient satisfaction.

Cerebral palsy (CP) is a non-progressive disorder of motor function caused by irreversible damage to the immature brain. The disorder may be associated with seizure, mental retardation, visual and hearing defects. This study was designed to determine the types of CP, the risk factors and the co-morbidities associated with the disorder. Records of patients who were seen in the neurology clinic were kept for two years (June 2009-July 2011). Medical history and examination were essentially used to determine risk factors, antenatal care and co-morbidities. Data was analyzed using SPSS soft-ware. CP made up 45 % of 60 neurological cases and 0.006 % of 4,873 patients seen in the clinic with a male to female ratio of 1.1:1. Birth asphyxia was the commonest risk factor for the development of the disorder while seizure disorder among others was the commonest co-morbid state.

Background. Alcoholic beverage addiction among adolescents appears to be a global problem. However, its prevalence among secondary school adolescents in southeast Nigeria is poorly documented. Objectives. To determine the prevalence of alcoholic beverage addiction among secondary school adolescents in a southeastern Nigerian city. Material and methods. 500 adolescents aged 12-19 years were recruited from 5 out of 9 secondary schools in a southeastern Nigerian city by random sampling. The validated World Health Organization (WHO) drug-use questionnaire was adapted for the study and administered to these students. Data was analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics on SPSS Version 16.0. The level of statistical significance was set at p < 0.05. Results. The prevalence of alcoholic beverage addiction was 48.2% (236/490) with a male: female ratio of 2.4:1. The addiction rate was highest amongst students aged 18-19 years (55.4%, 93/168, p = 0.001) and students from the middle socioeconomic class (28/45, 62.2%, p = 0.001). Approximately 49% of the addicted students were initiated into consumption of alcoholic beverages by their peers, while 56.8% used it in order to achieve euphoria. Conclusions. The prevalence of alcoholic beverage addiction among secondary school adolescents in this study is seen as high. Factors such as male gender, peer-group pressures, middle socioeconomic class and being older were significant contributors to this high rate of alcohol addiction. Parental divorce and parental deaths were equally contributory to this high rate.