Assessment of Agglomerative Clustering Techniques On Grouping of Malaria Infected Patients in Kaduna State, Nigeria (Published)
This study was carried out on assessment of agglomerative clustering techniques on grouping of malaria infected patients in kaduna state. The objective of this paper was to apply Agglomerative Hierarchical clustering techniques to group the variables, such that those similar to malaria infection will be identified. Reported cases of data relating to malaria cases were obtained on 1107 patients. Single linkage grouped sex and marital status at an early stage and joined by occupation at a farther distance which formed cluster I, while location and age joined at the same distance level to form cluster II. Complete Linkage grouped sex and marital status at a lower similarity which was later joined by occupation at a slightly higher distance to form cluster I. Average linkage, median. Centroid and ward’s method also have sex grouped to marital status and joined closely by occupation to form cluster I. While age grouped with location to form cluster II. The location shows high similarity in all the method used which could be due to the swampy nature of the patient’s environment. This paper concludes that the use of agglomerative clustering provides a suitable tool for assessing the diseases. It was recommended that the public health practitioners, policy makers, religious leaders and other stakeholders should use hierarchical clustering to develop strategies as a tool for disease control.
Keywords: Malaria, agglomerative clustering, mortality rate
Collaborative Identification of the Health Needs/Assets of Ikot Ishie Community, Calabar, Nigeria (Published)
Background: Identification of health needs within Nigeria has often been done with a top-down approach where policy and funding determines what health needs to focus on for interventions. Communicable diseases such as malaria have been studied extensively however; lack of cohesiveness and continuity often derails the gains achieved.
Objectives: To work collaboratively with stakeholders in Ikot Ishie Community in identifying their health needs/assets.
Methodology: A community organizing exercise using Key Informant Interviews, observation and Focus Group Discussions (FGD) was implemented.
Findings/Results: As a community embedded in a malaria endemic area, people are aware of malarial signs and symptoms and can easily identify its management/preventive measures. Persistent self-diagnoses/treatment of malaria, lack of information about the causes, signs/symptoms of other conditions and poor patronage of the primary health centre for preventive and early diagnoses of diseases were the identified needs. Collaborative identification of needs/assets builds trust and ownership of interventions, encouraging continuity.
Keywords: Collaboration, Community ownership, Continuity, Diabetes, Malaria, Self-diagnoses