Interrogating ‘routinely collected data’ to develop a user-friendly analysis framework for gender equity in mass drug administration to ensure no one is left behind in neglected tropical disease interventions in Nigeria

Main Objectives

• To develop a standardised framework for conducting gendered NTD analysis across a variety of endemic settings in Nigeria where disaggregated data is available, while building capacity of programme implementers to complete such analyses and utilising the data to provide equitable geographic and therapeutic access to mass administration of medicine (MAM)

Summary

Gender has been shown to affect exposure and vulnerability to NTDs, access to treatment, and consequently disparities in ill-health. Understanding spatial and temporal patterns in NTD programme delivery based on gender is therefore critical to making context-specific programmatic adaptations which ensures ‘no one is left behind’ in our NTD elimination efforts.

This study seeks to develop an easy to use analytical framework for the spatial and temporal analysis of disaggregated data, as well as strengthen the capacity of implementers at the national and state levels to identify disparities and make improvements based on identified gender and other related inequities.

In collaboration with the national and state NTD programmes, all available data will be cross-referenced, consolidated and refined into a unified gendered NTD database. Subsequently, a scoping analysis will be performed on each state’s consolidated database to produce high resolution digital maps of gender-disaggregated preventative chemotherapy (PC) coverage. Gendered coverage treatment data will then be overlaid with programmatic inputs to give a full picture about potential influences and interactions of gender with NTD prevalence, coverage and other covariates.

The research will be carried out across three selected states in Nigeria where there is availability of recent NTD prevalence data for at least two endemic PC NTDs.