Determinants of delay in care‐seeking for febrile children in eastern Uganda

Abstract

Summaryobjective To explore factors associated with delay in seeking treatment outside the home for febrile children under five.methods Using a pre-tested structured questionnaire, all 9176 children below 5 years in IgangaMayuge Demographic Surveillance Site were enumerated. Caretakers of children who had been ill within the previous 2 weeks were asked about presenting symptoms, type of home treatment used, timing of seeking treatment and distance to provider. Children who sought care latest after one night were compared with those who sought care later.results Those likely to delay came from the lowest socio-economic quintile (OR 1.45; 95% CI 1.06-1.97) or had presented with pallor (OR 1.58; 95% CI 1.10-2.25). Children less likely to delay had gone to drug shops (OR 0.70; 95% CI 0.59-0.84) or community medicine distributors (CMDs) (OR 0.33; 95% CI 0.15-0.74), had presented with fast breathing (OR 0.75; 95% CI 0.60-0.87), used tepid sponging at home (OR 0.43; 95% CI 0.27-0.68), or perceived the distance to the provider to be short (OR 0.72; 95% CI 0.60-0.87).conclusion Even in the presence of 'free services', poverty is associated with delay to seek care. Drug shops and CMDs may complement government efforts to deliver timely treatment. Health workers need to sensitize caretakers to take children for care promptly. Methods to elucidate time in populationsurveys in African settings need to be evaluated.keywords fever, health care seeking behaviour, child, Uganda

Impact of community oriented interventions on pediatric care-seeking practices - a multi-country study in Cambodia, Guatemala, Kenya And Zambia

“…We found no association between male or female headed households in care-seeking for the bivariate analysis. Socioeconomic status has been shown to be positively correlated with care-seeking in other African countries [25,27,[29][30][31]. Wealth quintile was a significant predictor of careseeking in this study for Cambodia and Guatemala, and though the odds were higher for the wealthier quintiles in other countries, it was not statistically significant.…”

An analysis of national data on care-seeking behaviour by parents of children with suspected pneumonia in Nigeria

“…Similar findings regarding cost and willingness/ability to pay for appropriate care have been reported by other authors. [24] Study limitation A limitation of the study was the use of suspected pneumonia as the factor defining the need for care seeking. Caution must be taken in the use of suspected pneumonia as a defining factor for determining true burden of pneumonia as the term includes several false positives and as such overestimates pneumonia two to seven fold.…”

Hematology and blood serum chemistry reference intervals for children in Iganga district of Uganda

“…Between November and December of 2008, we conducted a population based cross-sectional survey to establish the normal ranges of hematology and serum biochemistry values for children resident in six villages (Nakavule, Busei B, Busei South, Bulubandi, Nandekula, Kasokoso) of Iganga-Mayuge Health and Demographic Surveillance Site of Makerere University (HDSS), Uganda which has been described recently [18][19][20]. This project was part of a baseline study designed to describe malaria indicators in HDSS as well as to prepare a children's cohort for malaria vaccine clinical trials.…”

“…Uganda hosts one of three clinical trial sites (the others are in Burkina Faso, Ghana and Gabon) that are carrying out phase 2b investigation of blood-stage P. falciparum malaria vaccine GMZ2 [17]. The participants for the present study are recruited from households in six villages constituting a malaria-study cohort within a newly established health demographic study site (HDSS) [18,19] in Iganga district where extensive clinical trials are anticipated. It is hoped that because of shared anthropologic and socio-economic backgrounds across Africa, the determined reference ranges will be widely applicable to children in sub-Saharan and other regions of Africa [16].…”