ABSTRACT
Background: More than 95% of the population in sub-Saharan Africa (S.S.A.) does not have ready access to safe, affordable surgical care, and there is a desperate need for E.N.T. (ear, nose, and throat), audiology, and speech therapy services. Therefore, from an international outlook, the most significant challenge confronting hearing and cancer care delivery is not high-technology and high-cost medicine but the lack of access to even the most elementary E.N.T. care Materials and Methods: A literature search for studies on the analysis of trends and outcomes of otorhinolaryngology practices in sub-Saharan Africa was performed using Google Scholar search database, PubMed, Medline, and ScienceDirect. The bibliographies of included studies were also searched for additional references. About 95 articles were identified. Twenty-one articles were considered suitable for the review. The whole residents of the 22Results: countries illustrated in a study reviewed were 720,500,000; this symbolizes 75% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa. Among the 22 countries that were tested, 847 ENT surgeons, 580 audiologists, 906 speech therapists, 264 ENT clinical officers, and 320 oncologists were reported. When data have combined the sample, the regional ratio was 1.2 million people per E.N.T. surgeon, 0.8 million people per audiologist, and 1.3 million people per speech therapist. Conclusion: Basic E.N.T. and airway-related interventions are possible in most countries that responded; life-saving procedures such as tracheostomy (and tracheostomy tubes), bronchoscopy, and balloon dilatation were not readily available in all countries. Access to hearing screening was very poor in most countries, highlighting the undocumented burden of disease of hearing loss in Africa and other LMICs, estimated at 5% of the world's population
ABSTRACT
Background:The COVID-19 pandemic and its vaccine have been met with varying perceptions that may have both negative and positive effects on the willingness to uptake the COVID-19 vaccine. The study is set to determine the perception and willingness of the household heads to the uptake of COVID-19 vaccine in a rural community in Southwestern, Nigeria.Materials and Methods:A cross-sectional study was carried out among 409 household heads selected through a multistage sampling technique. The instrument of data collection was a semi-structured interviewer-administered questionnaireusing the Health Belief model constructs. Data were analyzed with IBM SPSS version 21.0 and Pearson's Chi-square test was used to determine the association between perception and willingness to uptake vaccine. P<0.05 was taken as significant at 95% confidence interval.Results:The majority of the unvaccinated respondents in the study were not willing to take the COVID-19 vaccine (60.1%). There was a poor perception of the susceptibility/severity of unvaccinated respondents to COVID-19 infection and a poor perception of the benefit/barrier to the uptake of the COVID-19vaccine. Perception of susceptibility and severity of COVID-19 infection were statistically related to the willingness to uptake the COVID-19vaccine.Conclusion:There should be an increase in awareness campaigns to change the perception of people positively to COVID-19 infection and uptake of the COVID-19vaccine.