Quality of Care for Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) Syndromic Case Management at Public Health Facilities of Gamo Gofa Zone, Southern Ethiopia

Abstract

Background: Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) and their associated complications are regarded as one of the top five reasons for which adults avail themselves for health care services in developing countries. Objective: This is study was aimed to assess quality of care for STIs Syndromic case management at public health facilities of Gamo Gofa Zone, Southern Ethiopia. Methods: Facility based cross sectional study that used both quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection was conducted from Jan 1 to Feb 28, 2015. The study included 10 health centers and 2 hospitals selected by simple random sampling, their respective 12 heads, 250 clinicians selected by simple random sampling from the health facilities after proportional allocation to size and 26 mystery clients. The data were entered into EPI info version 7.0.1 and exported to SPSS version 20 for analysis. Results: Overall there were no STI Syndromic management guidelines in all health facilities, only 12.8% of clinicians have taken training on Syndromic management of STIs, highest knowledge of clinicians was of urethral discharge (27.2%). Profession of clinicians and type of health facility (AOR= 0.194; 95% CI= 0.092, 0.412) were determinants of urethral discharge knowledge. Only in 8.3% of cards did the clinicians correctly follow the guideline. Only 11.54% of mystery clients were satisfied with the services and only 15.38% will recommend the provider to a friend. Conclusion: The quality of care for STIs Syndromic case management at public health facilities of Gamo Gofa Zone was poor.