ArticleThe Pan African medical journal2019
Healthcare seeking behaviour for common infectious syndromes among people in three administrative regions of Johannesburg, South Africa, 2015: a cross-sectional study.
Article in The Pan African medical journal, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Trends and factors associated with pneumonia mortality at Buea Regional Hospital in Cameroon from 2020 to 2023.PloS one · 2025Article
- Healthcare utilization during the first two waves of the COVID-19 epidemic in South Africa: A cross-sectional household survey.PloS one · 2023Article
- Public Awareness, Knowledge of Availability, And Willingness to Use Neurosurgical Care Services in Africa: A Cross-Sectional E-Survey Protocol.International journal of surgery protocols · 2021Article
- Understanding health seeking behaviors to inform COVID-19 surveillance and detection in resource-scarce settings.Journal of global health · 2020Review
- Progress towards unique patient identification and case-based surveillance within the Southern African development community.Health informatics journalArticle
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
introductionHospital-based surveillance programs only capture people presenting to facilities and may underestimate disease burden. We conducted a healthcare utilisation survey to characterise healthcare-seeking behaviour among people with common infectious syndromes in the catchment areas of two sentinel surveillance hospitals in Johannesburg, South Africa.
methodsA cross-sectional survey was conducted within three regions of Johannesburg from August to November 2015. Premises were randomly selected from an enumerated list with data collected on household demographics and selected syndromes using a structured questionnaire. Fisher's exact or chi-square tests were used to determine association of characteristics among different regions.
resultsOf 3650 selected coordinates, 3358 were eligible dwellings and 2930 (87%) households with 9850 individuals participated. Four percent of participants (431/9850) reported influenza-like illness (ILI) in the last 30 days; equal numbers of participants (0.2%, 20/9850) reported pneumonia or tuberculosis symptoms in the last year and <1% reported diarrhoea or meningitis symptoms. Sixty eight percent (295/431) of participants who reported ILI, 75% (6/8) of children with diarrhoea and all participants who reported pneumonia (20), tuberculosis (20) or meningitis (6) sought healthcare. For all syndromes most sought care at registered healthcare providers. Of these only 10% (24/237) attended sentinel hospitals, predominantly those that lived closer to the hospitals. In contrast, of patients with meningitis, 50% (3/6) sought care at sentinel hospitals.
conclusionPatterns of seeking healthcare differed by syndrome and distance from facilities. Surveillance programs are still relevant in collecting information on infectious syndromes and reflect a proportion of the hospital's catchment area.
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