Incidence of neonatal tetanus in a Nigerian State Hospital, Benin, Nigeria

Aim: The study was aimed at determining the incidence of neonatal tetanus (NT) in Stella Obasanjo State Hospital, Benin City over a period of 5 years. Settings and Design: Retrospective design was used where past records were reviewed from January 2008 to June 2013 and analyzed. Materials and Methods: An observational checklist was developed for manual collection of secondary data from the case notes and the neonatal ward register (the admission and discharge records of patients). The checklist includes information on the following; age at birth, age at discharge, duration of hospitalization, date of manifestation of the disease, entry point of the disease, mother's immunization, place of birth, treatment modality, and outcome of treatment. Statistical Analysis: Descriptive statistics was used which involves the use of simple percentage and bar chart to analyze the data. Results and Conclusions: The result of findings shows that 5 cases were admitted in 2008 and 2010 and the age at manifestation of disease range from 3 to 15 days old while age at admission ranges from 5 to 17 days old. The highest number of days infants stayed in the hospital is 44 days while the least was 2 days whereas the age at discharge ranges between 7 and 52 days. The result further revealed that 60% of the cases were born in the hospital, 26.6% were born out of the hospital while 13.3% gave were born in traditional birth attendant quarters. Finally, this study showed that the percentage of unimmunized mothers outweighs that of immunized mothers. NT is a key cause of neonatal mortality even though it is preventable and it was recommended that all babies born on the floor, roadside, or in a motor vehicle due to precipitated labor should be given injection ATS 4 units/kg before the disease appears.