Factors influencing fever care-seeking for children under five years of age in The Gambia: a secondary analysis of 2019–20 DHS data

Table 1 Prevalence of child fever care-seeking by source and mother, child, and household characteristics

	Care from a public provider^a		Care from private provider^b		Care from an informal source^c		Did not seek care/treatment		Wald chi-sq
	n = 661, 45.07%^d		n = 62, 6.96%^d		n = 140, 12.77%^d		n = 463, 35.21%^d		Wald chi-sq
	n^e	%^d	n^e	%^d	n^e	%^d	n^e	%^d	p-value
Region									n/a
Banjul	50	45.19	3	2.78	13	11.56	44	40.47
Kanifing	47	33.03	15	10.63	37	24.58	45	31.76
Brikama	71	40.23	18	9.98	20	11.58	68	38.20
Mansakonko	86	52.29	5	3.37	6	4.20	66	40.14
Kerewan	62	67.93	0	–	4	4.79	25	27.28
Kuntaur	137	55.01	2	0.82	26	9.92	83	34.25
Janjanbureh	76	47.36	17	9.07	6	3.52	62	40.05
Basse	132	55.40	2	1.11	28	12.21	70	31.28
Residence^f									< .0001
Rural	391	56.83	20	2.43	40	5.23	252	35.51
Urban	260	39.98	37	9.38	93	16.57	187	34.07
HH wealth quintiles									0.0169
2 lowest	299	46.63	17	5.31	51	8.64	222	39.42
3 highest	362	43.92	45	8.16	89	15.79	241	32.13
Needing money for care for self									0.6306
Not a problem	470	44.90	49	7.60	107	13.10	314	34.40
A big problem	191	45.52	13	5.19	33	11.87	149	37.41
Perceived access as distance									0.3869
Not a problem	456	46.01	43	7.54	95	13.25	281	33.21
A big problem	205	42.89	19	5.61	45	11.66	182	39.84
Mother’s education									0.0032
None/some	361	48.73	23	5.03	56	8.18	256	38.06
Primary	138	47.79	12	8.25	32	16.64	73	27.32
Secondary or higher	162	38.46	27	8.98	52	17.17	134	35.40
Child’s age in months									0.0831
0–23 months	382	45.05	32	6.34	64	10.54	267	38.07
24–59 months	279	45.09	30	7.75	76	15.65	196	31.52
Under-5 s in HH
n-size and mean	661	3.60	62	3.73	140	2.57	463	3.29	0.0002

DHS, Demographic and Health Survey; HH, Household; NGO, nongovernmental organization
^aPublic sources included: government hospital; government health centre; government health post; reproductive and child health outreach clinic
^bPrivate sector health services included: private hospital/clinic; private doctor; mobile clinic; and NGO hospital/clinic
^cInformal sources of treatment included: private pharmacy; shop; traditional practitioner; and “other.”
^dUnweighted sample size
^eWeighted row proportions
^fResidence variable is missing 3.4% of observations due to indeterminate or irreconcilable responses

ISSN: 1475-2875