Authors: Abubakar Imam1, Hezekiah Isa2,3, Akinyemi O D Ofakunrin4, Obiageli Nnodu2,3
KEYWORDS: Sickle Cell Disease, Barriers, Quality of care, Nigeria
Abstract
Sickle cell disease (SCD) is a major genetic disease that manifests early in life and may lead to a lifelong illness with complications affecting almost every organ system in the body. Limited access to high quality primary care services may contribute to more severe SCD complications and subsequent hospitalizations. Information cited in this article was extracted from published works on this subject in both developed and developing countries including Nigeria. The study aimed to explore relevant literatures on the barriers to care and quality of health care services in children and adults with sickle cell disease in Nigeria and beyond. The information was extracted over a period of 5 months from April 2022 to August 2022 from various sources and search engines including Scientific Journals, Google search, Google scholar search, PubMed and Medline databases. The result reveals that despite recent advances in the management of this disorder, there is room for improvement in quality of care and there are barriers that need to be addressed. In conclusion, barriers to SCD care assessed in studies across various countries included financial, cultural, technical and governance. The barriers occurred at different levels such as individual, family, provider and organizational levels. The quality of care for patients with SCD has been shown to be lower than that in non-SCD patients with poor access to care, poor disease outcome, lack of primary care providers, inadequate access to specialized care, poor newborn screening, poor funding and insufficient disease-modifying treatments among others.