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[An epidemiological study of health care seeking behavior by children under the age of 5 years at hospital emergency services in Togo].

The functioning and efficacy of pediatric emergency services are currently being questioned in many Northern countries, as well as in the South, for example in North Africa. Reference is often made to unjustified medical emergencies in the face of an influx of patients with benign problems who come from socially disadvantaged families. In the university and regional hospitals in three regions in Togo, we compared three categories of under-5 patients: children sent to "day-time" emergency services after triage done by health personnel; those sent to the "ordinary consultation"; and children brought after hours by their family (without referral by a health professional in 92% of cases) and seen in the "after-hours" emergency service. Serious tropical pathology (cerebral malaria, malaria, sickle cell disease) is mainly seen in emergency consultations, in which high hospitalization rates are noted (83% during the day, 67% at night) and a lethality of 3.4%. One cannot therefore use terms such as "false emergencies", "felt" and "medically unjustified" and the pediatric supervisor for the research considered that recourse to after-hours emergency services was justified in 75% of cases. Families using night services have higher educational levels than those sent to day emergency services, the mother's educational level being the main factor associated with certain characteristics of health seeking behavior (duration of symptoms prior to arrival at hospital, recourse to modern medical drugs). There is often a long delay before recourse to hospital: only 45% of children seen after hours and half of those who died came the 1st or 2nd day of the illness. Self-medication at home is usual but recourse to tradi-practitioners appears rare (4%). Several solutions can be envisaged and should be linked: strengthening of the first level of care, technical improvements in emergency services, training of tradi-practitioners in the recognition and referral of emergency cases, improvement of reception practices at the hospital level, prophylactic and preventive measures for tropical diseases.