Sociodemographic Determinants of Mortality in Hospitalized Under-Five Children at a Secondary Health Care Centre in the Niger Delta

Pattern and outcome of postneonatal pediatric emergencies in Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital, Nnewi, South East Nigeria

“…[9,17] It is well-known that critically ill children are usually referred to these teaching hospitals from both private and public health facilities and even prayer houses and tradomedical centers late in the disease process, after delays and unsuccessful treatments, when the patients have become terribly and inexorably critical, as mortalities would be "bad for their business." [12,18,19] Poor healthcare-seeking behavior, often stirred by poverty and ignorance, is thus a likely contributing factor to late presentation as documented in other Nigerian studies. [18,19] The fact that loss of consciousness was the major symptom preceding presentation in the patients that died also points either to delayed seeking of medical attention by the caregivers or lack of prompt referral.…”

“…[12,18,19] Poor healthcare-seeking behavior, often stirred by poverty and ignorance, is thus a likely contributing factor to late presentation as documented in other Nigerian studies. [18,19] The fact that loss of consciousness was the major symptom preceding presentation in the patients that died also points either to delayed seeking of medical attention by the caregivers or lack of prompt referral. Such finding is not limited to this study as in Ilorin, loss of consciousness was also found to be a strong risk factor for death within 24 h of admission with the death of 43.1% of all the patients that were brought in unconscious.…”

Maternal Health Care Services Access Index and Infant Survival in Nigeria

“…The socio-demographic factors influencing infant death are well established in the literature (20,21,22,23,24,25). The infant mortality rate is also a result of ample variety of health and environmental factors such as the child and maternal nutritional status, maternal health knowledge, level of immunization against childhood diseases, income and dietary intake during pregnancy, accessibility to portable water and basic sanitation, etc (26,27 , and birth attendance (None=0, traditional birth attendance=1, unskilled health workers=2, Skilled professionals=3), thus, producing maximum overall score of 11 and 0 as the minimum.…”

Analysing Barriers to Accessing Maternal Healthcare Systems in Developing Countries: A Case of Sokoto-Northern Nigeria

“…Owumi and Raji (2013) emphasize distance of the hospital from residential homes makes accessibility very difficult. Okposio et al (2012) lamented that transportation cost, distance to health facilities and perceived loss of working time are factors that may influence access to health services in the developing countries. Hence, this study seeks to explore on these basic barriers influencing the women's healthcare facilities utilisations in Sokoto-Nigeria, and provides primary information on these factors based on descriptive and Pearson correlation analysis.…”

“…A number of studies in Nigeria have shown how the interaction between physical, social, economic and health system factors accounted for low utilization of maternal health services (see, for example, Okposio et al 2012;Ononokpono 2013;Owumi and Raji 2013;and Shamaki and Buang 2014). While access to health care services provides the opportunity to use health services (Keya et al, 2013); distances and unavailability of means of transport, out-of-pocket payments for maternal care or course of drugs, and long queues are some of the barriers attributed to poor maternal health access.…”