With the high prevalence of mortality due to SCD in the Nigeria and the cost of managing the condition, prevention of anemia is a paramount issue to be addressed. And being a culturally ingrained country where everyone particularly family members are involved in the care of any condition, assessing the knowledge of such primary caregivers in the prevention and management of anemia is a urgent need for reducing the ill effects and mortality due to Sickle Cell Disease.
Purpose-The high incidence of SCD in Nigeria makes it a public health burden. It has great implication on the overall health of the sufferer with significant effects on the quality of life of the patients, the families and the significant others. Poor knowledge about the condition and prevention of anemia among the primary caregivers has been documented to have ill consequences on the health of the sufferer. Hence this study tried assessing the prevention and management of anemia among caregivers of patients with sickle cell disease in a tertiary hospital, Southwestern Nigeria,
Methodology- The study adopted descriptive design with the target populations being parents, guardians and significant others that serve as caregivers for people living with sickle cell disease. Considering the small size of the target population, all the caregivers available at the time of study and willing to participate were included in the study. Thus, a total number of One hundred and eleven (111) participants were recruited using a convenient sampling approach. The instrument used for data collection was an interviewer-administered questionnaire with good validity and reliability value (Cronbach value of 0.72) using test re-test method. Ethical clearance was obtained from the Health Research Ethics Committee (HREC) of the hospital. Informed consent was gained from the participants after due in-depth explanation about the study. The data collected was coded and entered using the SPSS version 23.0. Frequency, percentage and mean scores were used to present the data while chi-square was used to test the hypotheses at level of significance of 0.05.
Results- the caregivers’ ages ranged from 20 years and above with a mean age of 39.40±9.97. Female gender carried the highest percentage of about 73.9%. Educational status was encouraging as majority were primary school leavers and above. Knowledge about anemia in SCD was just average as 46.8% had a good knowledge, 32.5% had fair knowledge while 20.7% had poor knowledge. Non adherence to prescribed drugs (1.63), non-use of prophylactic antimicrobial to prevent infection (1.41), poor accessibility to health care services (1.38), and infection (1.32) were major factors perceived to contribute to anemia in SCD. Surprisingly, poor diet (1.15) and fever (1.14) ranked low in the list. Actions such as prompt reporting to the hospital (0.99), provision of food rich in nutrients (0.95), full participation in care (0.91) and use of prescribed drugs (0.87) such as folic acid were some of the mentioned preventive and management activities carried out by the caregivers. However, no significant association was found between their knowledge of anemia and educational level of the participants (0.29).
Conclusion- Prevention of anemia in people suffering from SCD necessitates the provision of quality and consistent care. Provision of rightful information to the primary caregivers increase their knowledge and reduce poor preventive practices towards anemia in SCD as they are fore front in caring for and influencing the quality of care.