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Knowledge and practices regarding malaria and the National Treatment Guidelines among public health workers in Equatorial Guinea

BACKGROUND: In 2018, an estimated 228 million cases of malaria occurred worldwide. Countries are far from having achieved reasonable levels of national protocol compliance among health workers. Lack of awareness of treatment protocols and treatment resistance by prescribers threatens to undermine pr...

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Autores principales: Blanco, Marta, Suárez-Sanchez, Pablo, García, Belén, Nzang, Jesús, Ncogo, Policarpo, Riloha, Matilde, Berzosa, Pedro, Benito, Agustín, Romay-Barja, María
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7789308/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33413402
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12936-020-03528-7
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author Blanco, Marta
Suárez-Sanchez, Pablo
García, Belén
Nzang, Jesús
Ncogo, Policarpo
Riloha, Matilde
Berzosa, Pedro
Benito, Agustín
Romay-Barja, María
author_facet Blanco, Marta
Suárez-Sanchez, Pablo
García, Belén
Nzang, Jesús
Ncogo, Policarpo
Riloha, Matilde
Berzosa, Pedro
Benito, Agustín
Romay-Barja, María
author_sort Blanco, Marta
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: In 2018, an estimated 228 million cases of malaria occurred worldwide. Countries are far from having achieved reasonable levels of national protocol compliance among health workers. Lack of awareness of treatment protocols and treatment resistance by prescribers threatens to undermine progress when it comes to reducing the prevalence of this disease. This study sought to evaluate the degree of knowledge and practices regarding malaria diagnosis and treatment amongst prescribers working at the public health facilities of Bata, Equatorial Guinea. METHODS: A cross-sectional survey was conducted in October-December 2017 amongst all public health professionals who attended patients under the age of 15 years, with suspected malaria in the Bata District of Equatorial Guinea. Practitioners were asked about their practices and knowledge of malaria and the National Malaria Treatment Guidelines. A bivariate analysis and a logistic regression model were used to determine factors associated with their knowledge. RESULTS: Among the 44 practitioners interviewed, 59.1% worked at a Health Centre and 40.9% at the District Hospital of Bata. Important differences in knowledge and practices between hospital and health centre workers were found. Clinical diagnosis was more frequently by practitioners at the health centres (p = 0.059), while microscopy confirmation was more frequent at regional hospital (100%). Intramuscular artemether was the anti-malarial most administrated at the health centres (50.0%), while artemether-lumefantrine was the treatment most used at the regional hospital (66.7%). Most practitioners working at public health facilities (63.6%) have a low level of knowledge regarding the National Malaria Treatment Guidelines. While knowledge regarding malaria, the National Malaria Treatment Guidelines and treatment resistances is low, it was higher amongst hospital workers than amongst practitioners at health centres. CONCLUSIONS: It is essential to reinforce practitioners’ knowledge, treatment and diagnosis practices and use of the National Malaria Treatment Guidelines in order to improve malaria case management and disease control in the region. A specific malaria training programme ensuring ongoing updates training is necessary in order to ensure that greater experience does not entail obsolete knowledge and, consequently, inadequate diagnosis and treatment practices.
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spelling pubmed-77893082021-01-07 Knowledge and practices regarding malaria and the National Treatment Guidelines among public health workers in Equatorial Guinea Blanco, Marta Suárez-Sanchez, Pablo García, Belén Nzang, Jesús Ncogo, Policarpo Riloha, Matilde Berzosa, Pedro Benito, Agustín Romay-Barja, María Malar J Research BACKGROUND: In 2018, an estimated 228 million cases of malaria occurred worldwide. Countries are far from having achieved reasonable levels of national protocol compliance among health workers. Lack of awareness of treatment protocols and treatment resistance by prescribers threatens to undermine progress when it comes to reducing the prevalence of this disease. This study sought to evaluate the degree of knowledge and practices regarding malaria diagnosis and treatment amongst prescribers working at the public health facilities of Bata, Equatorial Guinea. METHODS: A cross-sectional survey was conducted in October-December 2017 amongst all public health professionals who attended patients under the age of 15 years, with suspected malaria in the Bata District of Equatorial Guinea. Practitioners were asked about their practices and knowledge of malaria and the National Malaria Treatment Guidelines. A bivariate analysis and a logistic regression model were used to determine factors associated with their knowledge. RESULTS: Among the 44 practitioners interviewed, 59.1% worked at a Health Centre and 40.9% at the District Hospital of Bata. Important differences in knowledge and practices between hospital and health centre workers were found. Clinical diagnosis was more frequently by practitioners at the health centres (p = 0.059), while microscopy confirmation was more frequent at regional hospital (100%). Intramuscular artemether was the anti-malarial most administrated at the health centres (50.0%), while artemether-lumefantrine was the treatment most used at the regional hospital (66.7%). Most practitioners working at public health facilities (63.6%) have a low level of knowledge regarding the National Malaria Treatment Guidelines. While knowledge regarding malaria, the National Malaria Treatment Guidelines and treatment resistances is low, it was higher amongst hospital workers than amongst practitioners at health centres. CONCLUSIONS: It is essential to reinforce practitioners’ knowledge, treatment and diagnosis practices and use of the National Malaria Treatment Guidelines in order to improve malaria case management and disease control in the region. A specific malaria training programme ensuring ongoing updates training is necessary in order to ensure that greater experience does not entail obsolete knowledge and, consequently, inadequate diagnosis and treatment practices. BioMed Central 2021-01-07 /pmc/articles/PMC7789308/ /pubmed/33413402 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12936-020-03528-7 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Blanco, Marta
Suárez-Sanchez, Pablo
García, Belén
Nzang, Jesús
Ncogo, Policarpo
Riloha, Matilde
Berzosa, Pedro
Benito, Agustín
Romay-Barja, María
Knowledge and practices regarding malaria and the National Treatment Guidelines among public health workers in Equatorial Guinea
title Knowledge and practices regarding malaria and the National Treatment Guidelines among public health workers in Equatorial Guinea
title_full Knowledge and practices regarding malaria and the National Treatment Guidelines among public health workers in Equatorial Guinea
title_fullStr Knowledge and practices regarding malaria and the National Treatment Guidelines among public health workers in Equatorial Guinea
title_full_unstemmed Knowledge and practices regarding malaria and the National Treatment Guidelines among public health workers in Equatorial Guinea
title_short Knowledge and practices regarding malaria and the National Treatment Guidelines among public health workers in Equatorial Guinea
title_sort knowledge and practices regarding malaria and the national treatment guidelines among public health workers in equatorial guinea
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7789308/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33413402
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12936-020-03528-7
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