Care-Seeking and Management of Common Childhood Illnesses in Tanzania – Results from the 2010 Demographic and Health Survey

Abstract

BackgroundMalaria, pneumonia and diarrhoea continue to kill millions of children in Africa despite the available and effective treatments. Correct diagnosis and prompt treatment with effective drugs at the first option consulted for child care is crucial for preventing severe disease and death from these illnesses. Using the 2010 Demographic and Health Survey data, the present study aims to assess care-seeking and management of suspected malaria, pneumonia and diarrhoea at various health care facilities in Tanzania.MethodsWe analyzed data for 8176 children born within a 5 years period preceding the survey.The information was collected by interviewing 5519 women aged 15–49 years in 10,300 households selected from 475 sample points throughout Tanzania.ResultsThe most common first option for child care was PHC facilities (54.8%), followed by private pharmacies (23.4%). These were more commonly utilized in rural compared to urban areas: 61.2% versus 34.5% for PHC facilities, and 26.5% versus 17.7% for pharmacies. Women in urban areas and those with higher level of education more commonly utilized higher level hospitals and private facilities as their first option for child care. Only one in four children with fever had received a blood test during the illness with lowest proportion being reported among children solely attended at PHC facilities. Use of abandoned antimalarial drugs for the treatment of suspected malaria was also observed in public health facilities and antibiotics use for diarrhoea treatment was high (49.0%).ConclusionsPHC facilities and pharmacies most commonly provided sub-optimal care. These facilities were more commonly utilized as the first option for child care in rural areas and among the poor and non-educated families. These are groups with the highest child mortality, which calls for interventions’ targeting improvement of care at these facilities to further reduce child mortality from treatable illnesses in Tanzania.

Care Seeking Behaviour for Children with Suspected Pneumonia in Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa with High Pneumonia Mortality

“…Other studies report that the associations between wealth and care seeking are not only linked to whether care is sought or not, but also from which facility. Studies from Nigeria and Tanzania reported that poorer women are more likely to utilize facilities which provide poor quality services [ 26 , 27 ]. In Tanzania, women living in rural areas tend to visit primary health care (PHC) facilities more often, whereas richer and higher educated women visit hospitals or better equipped health facilities.…”

Associations between parental socioeconomic position and health-seeking behaviour for diarrhoea and acute respiratory infection among under-5 children in Myanmar: a cross-sectional study

“…The main health-seeking behaviour outcomes for this study were the following four binary outcomes, defined for each illness (diarrhoea and ARI) separately: whether treatment was sought; and if so, whether it was sought from formal health provider and whether it was sought from formal public provider or private provider—hereafter, ‘seeking treatment’, ‘formal health provider’, ‘public provider’ and ‘private provider’, unless indicated otherwise (figure 1). 11 19 Seeking treatment was defined as the proportion of under-5 children who had symptoms of diarrhoea, ARI or both in the past 2-week period preceding the MDHS survey interview, for whom treatment was sought from formal or informal provider 13. Formal public and private health provider were defined as all public or private health clinics starting from community health workers to tertiary teaching hospitals 6.…”

Perceptions of caretakers with different socioeconomic status about the harmful outcomes of fever in under-five children in Dodoma region, central Tanzania: A cross-sectional study

“…11 The responses might be subject to recall bias, 46 which is likely to vary depending on many factors including level of education and socio-economic status. 47 The third limitation is that there are a small numbers of children in the ''no chance" group relative to the ''some chances" group for some variables particularly with respect to education, occupation, economic status of caretakers as well as education and occupation of head of household. Therefore, the effects of these variables have to be interpreted with caution.…”