Covid-19 Pandemic: Impacts Survey of Fertility Practitioners in Nigeria.
AKINOLA, Lateef Adekunle
Medison Specialist Women’s Hospital. Lekki phase 1, Lekki, Lagos
No conflict of interest
Keywords: Fertility practitioners, COVID-19, cross-sectional survey
Abstract
Background: COVID-19 pandemic has created a huge disruption to the activities of physicians and other healthcare providers all over the world. Fertility centres, fertility practitioners and patients alike are not left out. Infertile couples and families also face significant disruptions to their treatment schedules, financial plans as well as uncertainty about when their fertility treatments will begin. This survey evaluates the impacts that COVID-19 pandemic will have on the budgetary and operational activities of Fertility Centers’ and practitioners in Nigeria.
Methods: A cross-sectional survey of registered fertility practitioners of the Association for Fertility and Reproductive Health of Nigeria (AFRH) carried out in 10TH to 15TH of April 2020.
Results: Majority of the respondents felt that their fertility enters made a good adaptation to the new working environment. The majority agreed that services have been negatively impacted, while 78.08% of responding practitioners felt the pandemic had not resulted in staff retrenchments. Also, majority believe that business continuity and plan is not been disrupted by the pandemic. A third of the respondents use travel and exposure histories, physical examinations and taking temperature for diagnostic assessments. AFRH and NCDC performance and response to Covid-19 pandemic were rated to be above average.
Conclusion: COVID-19 pandemic and its containment strategies negatively impacted work, services and budgetary needs of fertility practitioners in Nigeria, with no significant reduction in staff level.