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Background: The National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) now named National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) was launched to achieve easy access to affordable quality healthcare for all Nigerians. This study aimed at evaluating patients' satisfaction with the services accessed at the NHIS clinic in a tertiary teaching hospital in Southwest, Nigeria., Methodology: This cross-sectional study carried out at the Federal Teaching Hospital, Ido-Ekiti, Nigeria included all adult patients (> 18 years) who have been enrolled in the scheme for at least one year and have accessed healthcare at the clinic within three months preceding the study. Data was collected from 391 patients using a semi-structured interviewer-administered questionnaire in an exit interview. Data on patients' satisfaction with the quality of care was adapted from the Patient Satisfaction Questionnaire (PSQ 18). Data entry and analyses were done with the SPSS version 26.0., Results: The mean age (±SD) of the respondents was 43.5±14.5 years. More than half 204 (52.2%) of the patients were male, 291 (74.4%) were married, and 319 (81.6%) had attained tertiary level education. The overall satisfaction score was 75.02 ± 6.37, with communication (78.5 ± 11.6) and interpersonal manner (79.6 ± 10.0) having the highest scores. Predictors of overall satisfaction were longer travel time (p < 0.001) and readiness to return to the clinic for treatment (p = 0.001)., Conclusion: There was a high level of patient's satisfaction with the quality of healthcare services rendered at the NHIS clinic, with domains related to interpersonal and communication ranked highest. Travel time and willingness to return were factors significantly associated with patients' satisfaction. There is the need for the management of NHIS clinics to continuously improve on the quality of healthcare services provided., Competing Interests: The authors have no conflict of interest to declare., (Copyright © 2024 Nigerian Medical Association.)

Background: Much previous research on exclusive breastfeeding has focused on urban and semi-urban communities, while there is still a paucity of data from rural areas. We assessed the attitude and practice of exclusive breastfeeding and its predictors among mothers attending the under-five welfare clinics in a rural community., Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among consecutively recruited 217 mothers attending the three health facilities under-five welfare clinics in Ido-Ekiti, Southwest, Nigeria. Information was collected with a semi-structured interviewer-administered questionnaire adapted from previously published research works. Descriptive and inferential statistics were carried out using IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 26.0., Results: More than half of the mothers, 117(53.9%) were ≥30 years old, and 191(88.0%) were married. Almost all, 216 (99.5%) attended an ante-natal clinic; however, 174(80.2%) delivered in the health facility. The respondent's mean ± SD exclusive breastfeeding attitudinal score was 29.94 ± 2.14 (maximum obtainable score was 36), and the proportion of mothers that practiced exclusive breastfeeding was 40.6%. Married mothers were more likely to practice exclusive breastfeeding than their unmarried counterparts (AOR:6.324, 95%CI:1.809-22.114). The common reasons for not practicing exclusive breastfeeding were work schedule 57(26.3%), cultural beliefs and the need to introduce herbal medicine 32(14.7%), and insufficient breast milk 30(13.8%)., Conclusion: This study revealed a good disposition with a suboptimal practice towards exclusive breastfeeding. Also, being married was a positive predictor of exclusive breastfeeding. Therefore, we recommend policies that will improve exclusive breastfeeding among mothers in rural areas, especially those targeting the unmarried, to achieve the World Health Organization's target., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Ipinnimo et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Background: Currently, <10% of Nigerians are insured by the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) and this among other things has led to the signing of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) Act in May 2022, which aims at ensuring the effective implementation of a national health insurance policy and attainment of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) in Nigeria., Objective: To highlight the new features of the NHIA Act and its policy implications for the Nigerian health system., Methods: A modified Delphi method was used for extracting the differences in the two Acts. A total of three rounds of reviews were carried out among 5 reviewers within three weeks. Differences were tabulated and also presented in prose., Findings: The NHIA Act makes health insurance mandatory for all residents of Nigeria with the introduction of the vulnerable group fund and implementation of the Basic Health Care Provision Fund through the established State Health Insurance Schemes. Unlike the NHIS which is a Scheme, the NHIA is an Authority and has an expanded function to regulate, promote, manage and integrate all health insurance schemes and practices in Nigeria. Also, funds management has been transferred from Health Maintenance Organizations to the State Health Insurance Schemes and the Health Maintenance Organizations are now excluded from the Governing Council., Conclusion: Certainly, the journey towards UHC could be safer and more equitable with health insurance now mandatory for all Nigerians and the introduction of vulnerable group funds in the new Act. This will eliminate the catastrophic expenses of poor Nigerians if the Act is correctly implemented., Competing Interests: The Authors declare that no competing interest exists, (Copyright © 2023 by West African Journal of Medicine.)

COVID-19 is an infectious disease caused by the most recently discovered coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). The virus and disease were unknown before the outbreak began in the city of Wuhan, China, in December 2019. Nigeria and other sub-Sahara Africa countries like the rest of the world introduced several lockdown measures as part of their public health response to mitigate the spread of the virus. This, however, was not without the likelihood of consequences considering the weak health systems. The access and supply side of vaccination was more likely to have been affected by the lockdown measures. When vaccination services are disrupted even for brief periods during emergencies, the risk of outbreak-prone vaccine-preventable diseases increases, leading to excess morbidity and mortality. This highlights the importance of maintaining essential services such as vaccination in times of emergency. There is therefore an urgent need to ensure that children are protected against those diseases for which vaccines already exist. The COVID-19 outbreak has posed a new hindrance to vaccination activities in Nigeria and across Sub-Saharan Africa with associated threat to surveillance of vaccine-preventable diseases. Achieving and sustaining high levels of vaccination coverage during this period must, therefore, be a priority for all health systems.