Client, provider and facility characteristics for outpatient visits for sick children in seven sub-Saharan African countries
| Weighted n or mean | % or SD | |
| Total visits | 16 352 | |
| Total providers | 4627 | |
| Total facilities | 3898 | |
| Visit level | ||
| Caregiver’s age (years) | 28.1 | 8.2 |
| Caregiver is female | 13 744 | 91.2% |
| Caregiver’s education | ||
| None | 3705 | 22.7% |
| Any primary | 8701 | 53.3% |
| Any secondary | 3430 | 21.0% |
| Any tertiary or higher | 493 | 3.0% |
| Caregiver is child’s parent | 14 446 | 89.0% |
| Child’s age (months) | 20.3 | 15.2 |
| Child is female | 7904 | 48.5% |
| Client paid for visit | 6769 | 41.4% |
| Client has insurance* | 3102 | 19.1% |
| Duration of visit (min) | 12.9 | 15.8 |
| Reasons caregiver brought child to the facility† | ||
| Fever | 11 894 | 73.5% |
| Cough | 11 102 | 68.1% |
| Diarrhoea | 4898 | 30.2% |
| Vomit | 4083 | 25.2% |
| Problems feeding | 3724 | 23.0% |
| Excessive sleepiness | 3516 | 21.7% |
| Convulsions | 653 | 4.0% |
| Provider level | ||
| Provider is female | 7552 | 46.2% |
| Provider’s years of education | 15.0 | 2.9 |
| Provider’s years since graduation | 9.9 | 10.0 |
| Provider years in this facility | 4.7 | 6.4 |
| Provider’s cadre | ||
| Doctor or clinical officer | 7480 | 45.8% |
| Nurse | 6633 | 40.6% |
| Non-clinical staff | 2224 | 13.6% |
| Provider is a manager | 9987 | 61.5% |
| Received recent training on sick child care | 6332 | 38.9% |
| Number of in-service training topics covered in past 3 years | 5.0 | 3.4 |
| Facility level | ||
| Private facility | 3461 | 21.2% |
| Hospital | 2620 | 16.0% |
| Received supportive supervision in last 6 months | 12 378 | 76.2% |
| Infrastructure index‡ | 0.55 | 0.17 |
Data from Rwanda and Namibia are self-weighted, and in Malawi, a non-response weight is used. Data from Kenya, Senegal, Tanzania and Uganda are weighted to reflect sampling probability.
For some rows, denominators differ from the total ‘n’ owing to missing data.
*Client has medical aid, insurance or other prepayment plan.
†Caregivers could report multiple reasons for bringing the child to the facility for services.
‡Mean proportion of 22 items including water, ambulance, electricity, phone, toilet, cleanliness, wait room, system for maintenance, sharps disposal, waste disposal, sterilised equipment storage, consumables storage, no expired medications, medication storage, medication supply, stock ledger, pourable water, soap, gloves, sharps box, surface disinfectant and hand disinfectant.