Study locations
1. South-West; The Lepers’ Colony, Ogbomosho, Oyo state
2. South-South; The Lepers’ Colony, Osiomo, Edo state
3. South-East; Uzuakoli Leprosy Colony, Abia state
4. North-Central; Chanchaga Leprosy Hospital, Niger state
5. North-East; RafinKada Leper Colony, Wukari, Taraba state
6. North-West; Lepers’ Colony, kutareGusau in Zamafara state
7. Alheri community, Yangoji village, Kwali Area Council, FCT
The questionnaire assessment includes the state of health centres, water supply, sanitation, hygiene, human resources, and healthcare resources. The Focus group discussions and interviews with settlement leaders include descriptions of the quality of life of people living in leprosy communities and the amenities available. The questionnaire and interview questions were drafted after a literature review and were pretested first with 4 participants and the person in charge at the leprosy settlement in Abuja as pilot study participants. The two representatives of The Leprosy Mission Nigeria, Abuja were also part of the Pilot study. The questionnaire and FGDs were then consolidated with insights from the pilot. The Key Informant Interviews explore the contribution of non-governmental organisations to leprosy control and management in Nigeria.
The FGD sessions enabled exploratory and confirmatory questions to be asked to achieve a deeper understanding of their interests and needs. Focus groups were constructed in ways that will not hamper the discussion of sensitive topics due to differences in occupation, lifestyle, roles, and status in the community. This allowed participants to discuss topical issues in detail, and explore and clarify their points of view, thus enhancing in-depth discussions. The questionnaire and interview questions were translated into local languages before data collection. Two data collectors who understand local languages accompanied research assistants to the selected leprosy settlements.This study does not measure the expertise but explores the experiences of professionals working at leprosy settlements or that of representatives of organisations concerned about leprosy control in Nigeria.
Data analysis: NVIVO and IBM SPSS 25 were used for qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis of responses respectively. Quantitative data were entered into Microsoft Excel 2010 from where the dataset was imported into SPSS. Data were subsequently cleaned, coded and analysed. Quantitative data were presented as frequencies and proportions. For the qualitative data, transcripts and field notes were analysed using thematic analysis to provide an accurate reflection of participants’ ideas. NVIVO 10 software was used for the systematic data coding to generate recurring themes by 2 data analysts. Another member of the team subsequently triangulated 10% of the transcripts to improve validity and draw up more perspectives which were compared with those generated by NVIVO analysis. This is necessary to reduce bias and revise the themes that might have occurred due to discrepancies and unexpected findings . The team subsequently reviewed the generated themes to ensure that they reflect respondents’ ideas as opposed to the likelihood of bias often associated with a single analyst.
The outcomes of the study are listed below, no cause-effect relationship was measured. Also, outcomes were not measured but only described based on responses from respondents.
Ethical Considerations: Ethical approval was gotten from the Health research ethics committee of Federal Capital Territory, Nigeria, and consent was gotten as appropriate for all the data collection steps. The anonymity of respondents’ identity was guaranteed. Approval Number: FHREC/2021/01/137/8-12-21