By Onwa Ekor
Determined to build the knowledge of journalists in Cross River on how health reviews are accessed, critiqued and accurately presented from findings, Cochrane recently held a media roundtable in Calabar.
Cochrane is an independent international organisation that helps people know what medical treatments and health interventions actually work.
Instead of carrying out new medical experiments, Cochrane collects all existing high quality research on a health question, carefully evaluate and summarises the findings in a way that doctors, nurses, government and the public can trust.
Director Cochrane Nigeria and former Commissioner for Health in Cross River, Prof Angela Oyo-Ita, at the Tropical Diseases Treatment and Prevention Centre venue of the event in Calabar, explained that Evidence Based Health Care uses the best available information for care.
According to her, “it is about combining information with expertise, asking the right question, accessing the sources that will help one get the information, critiquing and putting what you have into work, being able to understand what the systematic review is, the bias the studies had, the confidence one can place in the findings and how applicable the findings are to the person of interest as well as re-evaluating.”
She remarked that there was need to summarise various health publications that float daily so that clinicians, patients, policymakers and the citizenry can be guided on the best information for any particular question and how applicable it is to their own circumstances.
Oyo-Ita reasoned that Evidence Based Medicine brings out researches in a way that whoever is interested can have access and critique reviews to know whether it is beneficial or not and to reach some of those things that sounds technical for people to understand.
A facilitator, Prof Ifeanyichukwu Ezebialu, remarked that Evidence Based Medicine does not mean practising medicine without experience, must not be Randomised Control Trial (RCTs) and not a direct application of research finding on clinical situation, admitting also that, “the research evidence do not displace clinical skills.”
For a senior research officer, Dr. Dachi Arikpo, the main product Cochrane creates is the systematic review which is a comprehensive summary of all the reliable research on a specific health question.
According to Arikpo, “researchers use strict methods to find every relevant study, access its quality, combine the results where appropriate while explaining what the evidence means.”
Associate Director Cochrane Nigeria and Head, Department of Public Health, Dr. Ekpereonne Esu, in his presentation, “Introduction to Cochrane library, PubMed and evidence based resources,” pointed out that the structure of a search strategy includes participants, intervention, comparison, outcomes and study designs (PICOS).
He added that the Cochrane library is an online evidence based resource that involves collection of databases that contain high quality independent evidence to inform healthcare decisions making.
For senior research officer, Dr. Morian Chibuzor, health reporting remains vital as it moulds public behaviour, builds public confidence and community awareness, including health seeking decisions, among others.
Chibuzor also remarked that poor reporting leads to misinformation, panic, false hope, vaccine hesitancy, harmful behaviour including wasted healthcare resources.
The event which was interactive also featured talks on environmental drivers of Lassa fever.
