Conference Abstract | Volume 8, Abstract ELIC2025458 (Oral 065) | Published: 14 Aug 2025
Ibrahim Mahmood Maigari1,&, Ibrahim Adamu2, Yusuf Bara Jibrin1, Alejandra Naranjo Garcia3, Till Omansen4, Amina Mohammed5, Hassan Faruq Hassan6
1Department of Medicine, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University/Teaching Hospital, Bauchi Nigeria, 2Department of Medicine, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Teaching Hospital Bauchi/Gombe State University, Gombe State Nigeria, 3Médecins Sans Frontiers (MSF), Operation Centre Geneva (OCG) Project Medical Referent Bauchi, Nigeria, 4Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine, Hamburg, Germany, 5Department of Community Medicine, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi, Nigeria, 6Department of Community Medicine, Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, Kano, Nigeria
&Corresponding author: Ibrahim Mahmood Maigari, Department of Medicine, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi, Nigeria. Email: immaigari@atbu.edu.ng
Received: 20 May 2025, Accepted: 09 Jul 2025, Published: 14 Aug 2025
Domain: Infectious Disease Epidemiology
Keywords: Rational Prescription, Lassa Fever, Treatment Centre, posology
©Ibrahim Mahmood Maigari et al Journal of Interventional Epidemiology and Public Health (ISSN: 2664-2824). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Cite this article: Ibrahim Mahmood Maigari et al., Improving rational prescription in Lassa fever treatment centre: The role of prescriber education. Journal of Interventional Epidemiology and Public Health. 2025;8(ConfProc5):00065. https://doi.org/10.37432/JIEPH-CONFPRO5-00065
Lassa Fever (LF) clinically presents with non-specific features like many other tropical febrile illnesses. Patients may also present with complications making diagnosis challenging. Consequently, physicians attending to suspects and confirmed cases face broad differential diagnosis posing to risk of multiple/inappropriate prescriptions with potential harm to patients. The study aimed to promote rational prescription (RP) practices among doctors in LF treatment centre (LFTC) through structured training.
An RP training was conducted at LFTC in Bauchi, Nigeria between January and March 2024. Baseline prescription practice was assessed using the Médecins Sans frontiers (MSF) RP tool (version 4, 2018.OCG QoC tool) and repeated two months post RP training. The training covered the key RP components of diagnostic clarity, use of guiding protocols, contraindications, and appropriate drug use with respect to posology, treatment duration, and route of administration. Forty patients case files (10% of admissions) were randomly selected and reviewed by a group 4 of four trained reviewers for both pre- and post assessments. Compliance was categorised as high (above 75%)., medium (60 – 75%), and low (below 60%).
The overall RP compliance rate improved from 40% to 68% post training. Improvement across key RP components were, diagnostic clarity 60% to 75%. protocol compliance 65% to 93%, posology from 65% to 98%, treatment duration from 50% to 100%, route of administration rose to 98% from 73% and consideration for contraindication was 73% and improved to 98%.
RP practices can significantly improve during LF outbreak through targeted prescribers training. Although significant improvement was observed at three months, the outcome may improve more with continuous training over time. We recommend regular RP training as a standard component of LF outbreak case management to promote anti-microbial stewardship.
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