Assessment of Primary Care Doctors’ Practice Regarding Asthma Management in Health Centers in Khartoum State, Sudan, 2017

Background: Primary health care (PHC) is the gateway to the health system, and is expected to resolve up to 85% of health problems in general. Sub-optimal management of asthma can be attributed to patient’s, doctor’s or health services’ factors. The aim of this study was to assess the Primary care doctors’ practice regarding asthma management in health centers in Khartoum State, Sudan.

Methods: This is a descriptive cross-sectional health facility based study in which a pre-tested self-administered questionnaire was used to collect information from the primary care doctors regarding their practice in asthma management.

Results: Of 131 primary care doctors (PCDs), covering 29 health centers, 87% of them were females and 75.5% were family medicine specialists (registrars and physicians). The majority of PCDs (>90%) identified environmental triggers/inducers of asthma and checked for treatment adherence at each visit. More than half of the PCDs (50%-89%) addressed patients concerns about disease/treatment, provided smoking cessation counseling and/or recommended cessation measures, and prescribed an inhaled corticosteroid (ICS) as initial maintenance therapy. Less than half of them (<50%) provided a written action plan for both exacerbation management and asthma education.

Conclusion: Although the results were acceptable and comparable in most aspects of managing asthma there was a considerable gap between practice and known guidelines on asthma management. There is an urgent need to develop and implement a national protocol on asthma management.