Socioeconomic constraints to effective management of Burkitt's lymphoma in south‐eastern Nigeria
- 12 January 2005
- journal article
- Published by Wiley in Tropical Medicine & International Health
- Vol. 10 (1), 92-98
- https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-3156.2004.01348.x
Abstract
This paper presents health outcomes and associated socioeconomic factors of 41 children admitted to a tertiary care institution in south-east Nigeria with Burkitt's lymphoma (BL) between 1987 and 2004. BL responds well to chemotherapy and does not pose a significant threat to health in industrialized nations. However, in resource-poor settings where it is endemic, socioeconomic factors significantly affect access to care for affected children, making this readily treatable condition a cause of considerable distress and early death in affected children. Half of the children reported in this paper presented with late stage disease. Although laboratory facilities were available, they were not accessible to all the children. Nearly a quarter of parents of these children could not afford the cost of confirmatory tests, and about a fifth (n = 8; 19.5%) of the children received no chemotherapy because of their parents' inability to pay. Only 21 of 41 children (51.2%) remained on treatment long enough (at least 12 weeks) to enable them to be confirmed either as short-term cure (n = 9; 64.3%), or as early relapse (n = 2; 4.9%). Owing to financial constraint, 13 of the parents (31.7%) withdrew their children against medical advice (n = 7; 17.1%) or left the hospital (n = 6; 14.6%). To address the challenge posed by these factors, we call for the establishment of a regional BL programme in Africa to help establish a critical mass of resources (human and material) to facilitate the development of an effective and accessible control programme in the region.Keywords
This publication has 13 references indexed in Scilit:
- Socio-economic differences and health seeking behaviour for the diagnosis and treatment of malaria: a case study of four local government areas operating the Bamako initiative programme in south-east NigeriaInternational Journal for Equity in Health, 2004
- Genetic and molecular genetic studies in the diagnosis of B-cell lymphomas I: Mantle cell lymphoma, follicular lymphoma, and Burkitt's lymphomaHuman Pathology, 2003
- Promiscuous expression of Epstein‐Barr virus genes in Burkitt's lymphoma from the central African country MalawiInternational Journal of Cancer, 2002
- Factors determining the outcome of management of patients with Burkitt′s lymphoma at the University College Hospital Ibadan, Nigeria--an eleven year reviewNigerian Postgraduate Medical Journal, 2002
- African Burkitt's lymphoma: a new perspectiveTransactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 2001
- Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma in ChildhoodThe New England Journal of Medicine, 1996
- Burkitt's Lymphoma in Turkish Children: Clinical, Viral [EBV] and Molecular StudiesLeukemia & Lymphoma, 1994
- Relationship between parental socio-economic status, sex and initial pubertal problems among school-going adolescents in NigeriaJournal of Adolescence, 1992
- African Burkittʼs LymphomaJournal of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology, 1991
- A sarcoma involving the jaws in african childrenBritish Journal of Surgery, 1958