Perspectives on cerebral palsy in Africa: Exploring the literature through the lens of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: The prevalence of cerebral palsy (CP) in countries in Africa is suggested to be higher than in Western countries. Research in Western resource-rich contexts has demonstrated the importance of environmental factors in the activities and participation of individuals with CP, as illustrated by the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). Although the domains of the ICF are often acknowledged in research on CP in western contexts, the extent to which these domains have been explored in resource-limited areas is unknown. The current review aims to describe the nature of the current published literature on CP in African countries and how it aligns with the domains of the ICF. METHODS: Key informants familiar with the literature on CP in Africa were consulted, and a literature search was conducted to identify articles on CP originating from countries in Africa. Identified articles were assessed to determine the ICF domains that align with the studies. Themes relating to each domain were identified. RESULTS: Twenty-seven studies were included. The majority of studies were quantitative (70.3%) and focused on children or caregivers. Most studies included a body functions and structures component (70.4%), focusing on impairment rather than functioning. Activities and participation domains were addressed, but often focused solely on mobility. Environmental factors typically related to resources and policies and personal factors were often unexplored. CONCLUSIONS: Research on CP in Africa tends to be grounded in a biomedical approach to disability and does not explicitly use the ICF as a guiding framework. Studies exploring body function and structures tend to be descriptive in nature, whereas activities and participation, and environmental and personal factors, represent modifiable factors that may be addressed with interventions. Knowledge translation activities that promote the ideas of the ICF in an African context should therefore be considered.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.018 | 0.038 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.030 | 0.032 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.012 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.011 | 0.016 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".