Integrated community case management of childhood illnesses; impact on training of community health workers in Vandeikya, North-East Zone of Benue State, Nigeria

Abstract

Community health workers appropriately trained on Integrated Community Case Management (ICCM) of childhood illnesses can correctly treat children below 5 years who have pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria. In Benue State, Nigeria, primary healthcare workers care for most children at community level, as such they need to be trained on ICCM. The objective of this study was to find out if training of primary healthcare workers in Vandeikya, North-East Zone of Benue State can improve their knowledge on ICCM. In Benue North-East, Vandeikya Local Government Area (LGA) was randomly selected out of seven LGAs. Health Officers’ in-charge of 30 Primary HealthCare Clinics were selected and trained based on our adapted ICCM training manual. The Pre- and Post-training assessment test for this study was designed based on the training manual. Paired sample t-test was conducted to find out if there was any significant difference in the knowledge of primary health care workers before and after receiving training. There was statistical difference in pre-training scores (X = 142.100, S₁ = 25.925) and post-training scores (X =177.600, S₂ =13.587) at (t=6.643, P=0.000). This result strongly indicated that the teaching intervention has improved the knowledge of the Primary Health Care workers on ICCM in Vandeikya LGA.