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Antimalarial drug prescribing practice in private and public health facilities in South-east Nigeria: a descriptive study.
- Source :
- Malaria Journal; 2007, Vol. 6, p55-4, 4p
- Publication Year :
- 2007
-
Abstract
- Background: Nigeria's national standard has recently moved to artemisinin combination treatments for malaria. As clinicians in the private sector are responsible for attending a large proportion of the population ill with malaria, this study compared prescribing in the private and public sector in one State in Nigeria prior to promoting ACTs.w:\fmbatcẖout Objective: To assess prescribing for uncomplicated malaria in government and private health facilities in Cross River State. Method: Audit of 665 patient records at six private and seven government health facilities in 2003. Results: Clinicians in the private sector were less likely to record history or physical examination than those in public facilities, but otherwise practice and prescribing were similar. Overall, 45% of patients had a diagnostic blood slides; 77% were prescribed monotherapy, either chloroquine (30.2%), sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine (22.7%) or artemisinin derivatives alone (15.8%). Some 20.8% were prescribed combination therapy; the commonest was chloroquine with sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine. A few patients (3.5%) were prescribed sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine-mefloquine in the private sector, and only 3.0% patients were prescribed artemisinin combination treatments. Conclusion: Malaria treatments were varied, but there were not large differences between the public and private sector. Very few are following current WHO guidelines. Monotherapy with artemisinin derivatives is relatively common. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Subjects :
- MALARIA treatment
DRUG efficacy
HEALTH facilities
PUBLIC health
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 14752875
- Volume :
- 6
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- Malaria Journal
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 30094392
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1186/1475-2875-6-55