Factors influencing mothers’ health care seeking behaviour for their children: evidence from 31 countries in sub-Saharan Africa
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Almost half of the estimated 5.3 million deaths of under-five children in 2018 occurred in sub-Saharan Africa with morbidity contributing substantially to these deaths. Seeking medical care for children has been described as an important measure of reducing mortality occasioned by morbidity. This study examined factors influencing mothers' health seeking behaviour for their children in sub-Saharan Africa. METHODS: This study made use of data from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) of 31 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The study involved 75,982 children who received or did not receive measles vaccine and 93,142 children who sought or did not seek medical care when affected by fever or cough and diarrhoea. Binary logistic regression was applied in the analysis. RESULTS: Most of the children (74%) received measles vaccine while less than one-fifth sought medical care for fever or cough (16%) and diarrhoea (10%). Majority of the children of women who received measles vaccine and sought medical care when they had fever or cough are from richest households. Children of women with primary and secondary or higher education, children of working women and children of women that attended antenatal care during pregnancy are more likely to seek medical care for fever or cough. While children of women who live in urban areas and children of second or higher order of birth are less likely to receive measles vaccine, children aged 24-35 months and those who were of average size at birth are less likely to seek medical care for diarrhoea. CONCLUSIONS: This study has revealed that mothers' health care seeking behaviour for their children is influenced by social, maternal and child factors. Any intervention aimed at improving child health in sub-Sharan Africa should take these factors into consideration.
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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 | 0.003 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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".