ArticleJournal of health, population, and nutrition2014
Potential barriers to healthcare in Malawi for under-five children with cough and fever: a national household survey.
Article in Journal of health, population, and nutrition, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 29 citations in OpenAlex.
- The score of integrated disease surveillance and response adequacy (SIA): a pragmatic score for comparing weekly reported diseases based on a systematic review.BMC public health · 2019Pooled it
- Trial
- Ubuntu philosophy as a strategy to promote access to under-five child healthcare services.Curationis · 2025Review
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- Can health service equity alleviate the health expenditure poverty of Chinese patients? Evidence from the CFPS and China health statistics yearbook.BMC health services research · 2021Article
- Assessing Facilitators and Barriers to Referral of Children Under the Age of Five Years at Ndirande Health Centre in Blantyre, Malawi.Global pediatric health · 2021Article
- Determinants of healthcare seeking and out-of-pocket expenditures in a "free" healthcare system: evidence from rural Malawi.Health economics review · 2020Article
- Health insurance and the financial implications of sickle cell disease among parents of affected children attending a tertiary facility in Lagos, south-west Nigeria.The Pan African medical journal · 2020Article
- Sustainability of 'mHealth' interventions in sub- Saharan Africa: a stakeholder analysis of an electronic community case management project in Malawi.Malawi medical journal : the journal of Medical Association of Malawi · 2019Article
- Household relationships and healthcare seeking behaviour for common childhood illnesses in sub-Saharan Africa: a cross-national mixed effects analysis.BMC health services research · 2019Article
- People Welcomed This Innovation with Two Hands: A Qualitative Report of an mHealth Intervention for Community Case Management in Malawi.Annals of global health · 2019Article
- Sources of Health Care Among Under-5 Malawian Children With Diarrhea Episodes: An Analysis of the 2017 Demographic and Health Survey.Global pediatric health · 2019Article
- Article
- Univariate and multivariate spatial models of health facility utilisation for childhood fevers in an area on the coast of Kenya.International journal of health geographics · 2017Article
- Using participatory methods to design an mHealth intervention for a low income country, a case study in Chikwawa, Malawi.BMC medical informatics and decision making · 2017Article
- Observational
- Assessment of Malawian mothers' malaria knowledge, healthcare preferences and timeliness of seeking fever treatments for children under five.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2015Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
11 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Failure to access healthcare is an important contributor to child mortality in many developing countries. In a national household survey in Malawi, we explored demographic and socioeconomic barriers to healthcare for childhood illnesses and assessed the direct and indirect costs of seeking care. Using a cluster-sample design, we selected 2,697 households and interviewed 1,669 caretakers. The main reason for households not being surveyed was the absence of a primary caretaker in the household. Among 2,077 children aged less than five years, 504 episodes of cough and fever during the previous two weeks were reported. A trained healthcare provider was visited for 48.0% of illness episodes. A multivariate regression model showed that children from the poorest households (p = 0.02) and children aged > 12 months (p = 0.02) were less likely to seek care when ill compared to those living in wealthier households and children of higher age-group respectively. Families from rural households spent more time travelling compared to urban households (68.9 vs 14.1 minutes; p < 0.001). In addition, visiting a trained healthcare provider was associated with longer travel time (p < 0.001) and higher direct costs (p < 0.001) compared to visiting an untrained provider. Thus, several barriers to accessing healthcare in Malawi for childhood illnesses exist. Continued efforts to reduce these barriers are needed to narrow the gap in the health and healthcare equity in Malawi.
Indexed as
Identifiers
24847595PMC4089074W1517679876What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.