Practices of herbal management of malaria among trading mothers in Shai Osudoku District, Accra

Evans Osei Appiah; Stella Appiah; Ezekiel Oti-Boadi; Albert Oppong-Besse; Dorothy Baffour Awuah; Priscilla Ofosuhemaa Asiedu; Lt Emmanuel Oti-Boateng

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0271669

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionMarch 7, 2022
7 Mar 2022 Author Response Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: RESPONSE TO EDITOR.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0271669.r001
23 May 2022 Decision Letter - Michael Ansong, Editor PONE-D-22-06121PRACTICES OF HERBAL MANAGEMENT OF MALARIA AMONG TRADING MOTHERS IN SHAI OSUDOKU DISTRICT, ACCRA.PLOS ONE Dear Mr Evans Osei Appiah Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by Jul 07 2022 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. 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Note that it is not acceptable for the authors to be the sole named individuals responsible for ensuring data access. We will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide in your cover letter. 4. Please include your full ethics statement in the ‘Methods’ section of your manuscript file. In your statement, please include the full name of the IRB or ethics committee who approved or waived your study, as well as whether or not you obtained informed written or verbal consent. If consent was waived for your study, please include this information in your statement as well. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. Additional Editor Comments (if provided): Malaria is undoubtedly one of the leading causes of morbidity in the world, including in the country where the study was conducted. In the paper, the authors explored the practices of herbal management of malaria among trading mothers. Qualitative methodology was used. I have a few comments that I would like the authors to address as they revised the manuscript. 1. Could there be a clear clarification and justification for why Trading mothers were used? And why the study area was selected among numerous markets in Ghana? 2. It is well established that there are four aspects of trustworthiness that qualitative researchers must establish: credibility, dependability, transferability, and confirmability. In the current study, the authors tried to explain how credibility was established ie explained as the accuracy and authenticity of a research finding. Credibility essentially asks the authors to clearly link their findings with reality in order to demonstrate the truth of the research study’s findings. This is not well clarified in the current version of the paper. Also, the other aspect of trustworthiness ie dependability, transferability and confirmability must clearly be explained in the paper. 3. The authors should be specific about which approach of content analysis did they use: conventional, directed, or summative? 4. Result section, the second line … “The participants were between twenty-six (26) and fifty-nine (59)”?? Sentence is not complete. 5. What does JSS, SSS and Form 4 level of education means? 6. Table 1..The Title should be made complete 7. Table 2…Table should be well formatted..lines are missing 8. Overall, the paper needs to be well formatted, for example, the section titles and Tables should follow the journal style. All the Tables should be cited in the text. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Partly ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: N/A ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? 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Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review?** For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: review comments.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0271669.r002
Revision 1
26 May 2022 Author Response REVIEWER COMMENT RESPONSE EDITOR We note you have included a table to which you do not refer in the text of your manuscript. Please ensure that you refer to Tables 1 and 2 in your text; if accepted, production will need this reference to link the reader to the Table. Table 1 and 2 have been included in the test as suggested EDITOR 3. In your Data Availability statement, you have not specified where the minimal data set underlying the results described in your manuscript can be found. PLOS defines a study's minimal data set as the underlying data used to reach the conclusions drawn in the manuscript and any additional data required to replicate the reported study findings in their entirety. All PLOS journals require that the minimal data set be made fully available. For more information about our data policy, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability. All data are made available and attached as supplementary files EDITOR 4. Please include your full ethics statement in the ‘Methods’ section of your manuscript file. In your statement, please include the full name of the IRB or ethics committee who approved or waived your study, as well as whether or not you obtained informed written or verbal consent. If consent was waived for your study, please include this information in your statement as well. Revision has been made as suggested REVIEWER 1 1. Could there be a clear clarification and justification for why Trading mothers were used? And why the study area was selected among numerous markets in Ghana? These trading mothers were selected from rural communities where malaria was prevalent and mothers who came to trade were from different communities in the district REVIEWER 1 2. It is well established that there are four aspects of trustworthiness that qualitative researchers must establish: credibility, dependability, transferability, and confirmability. In the current study, the authors tried to explain how credibility was established ie explained as the accuracy and authenticity of a research finding. Credibility essentially asks the authors to clearly link their findings with reality in order to demonstrate the truth of the research study’s findings. This is not well clarified in the current version of the paper. Also, the other aspect of trustworthiness ie dependability, transferability and confirmability must clearly be explained in the paper. This has been revised and shown in track changes REVIEWER 1 3. The authors should be specific about which approach of content analysis did they use: conventional, directed, or summative? Conventional approach was used and has been included as suggested REVIEWER 4. Result section, the second line … “The participants were between twenty-six (26) and fifty-nine (59)”?? Sentence is not complete. This has been corrected REVIEWER 5. What does JSS, SSS and Form 4 level of education means? 6. Table 1..The Title should be made complete 7. Table 2…Table should be well formatted..lines are missing 8. Overall, the paper needs to be well formatted, for example, the section titles and Tables should follow the journal style. All the Tables should be cited in the text. REVISION MADE TO THESE COMMENTS Reviewer Remove full stop after the title. Change “the researchers, therefore aim … “ to “ The study aims at …” The conclusion in the abstract is misplaced. Authors must summarize their findings Complete the statistics on the number of deaths attributed to malaria. Is it per annum or monthly? Scientific names of trees should be written in italics. Full stop has been removed This has been revised The conclusion has been revised This has been completed as suggested Scientific names have been italicized Researchers (plural) has been used in the preceding paragraph but researcher (singular) has been used here. The same is repeated in the last paragraph and other pages of the manuscript Change “a) women who have mentally impaired” to “women who are mentally impaired”. “ … that were shown” make the sentence confusing. Capitalise the first letters of Ghana health service. That is “Ghana Health Service”. What sort of compensation was given to participants? Correct it if it is a mistake. Change the sentence from future tense to past tense. That is, “ … will be …” to “was”. What does the figures 26 and 59 stand for? I presume they are age ranges. Add “of respondents”. That is Demographic characteristics of respondents First income bracket should be 100-1000 and NOT 100-100. Add the currency The content is ambiguous. Revision has been made This has been changed appropriately It has been changed to “A tape recorder was used to capture the interviews during the recording Corrected This has been corrected Corrected Corrections made Respondents have been added Corrected The content has been revised REVIEWER Change “younger” to “young”. CORRECTED Authors write “… prefer herbal remedies due to how ineffective the orthodox are.” This statement presumes orthodox medicine are ineffective. This statement is not backed by any scientific evidence. Authors should be mindful that their findings are based on perceptions of respondents. This should reflect in the sentence above. It has been revised appropriately as suggested REVIEWER “…when I take it …” is confusing. What does the “it” refers to? I suggest you replace “it” with “orthodox medicine” and use the pronoun later. because I felt dying…” should be change to “ … because I felt like dying…” “ … I can’t get up …” should be change to “…. I couldn’t get up” Change “sit” to “sat” Change “… after I take towel off …” to “after I took …” Change “the dose for that remedy was determined by …” to “… that remedy is determined by …” Revised Revision made Revised Revised REVIEWER Change “… you separate the leaves for it” to “… you separate the leaves from it” Change “what I know off is that…” to “what I know is that ... ” Change “ … they would take herbal treatment of malaria over …” to “ they would take herbal treatment for malaria over …” Changed “ … contracted these results.” to “ … contrasted these results”. This has been changed as suggested Corrected Changes have been made This has been revised REVIEWER Authors could reflect on the influence of education and religion on the Ghanaian culture. This has been included in the discussion REVIEWER The conclusion should emanate from the research findings. What authors currently have written are problem statement and recommendations. The conclusion has been revised Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: RESPONSE TO REVIEWERS COMMENT.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0271669.r003
6 Jul 2022 Decision Letter - Michael Ansong, Editor PRACTICES OF HERBAL MANAGEMENT OF MALARIA AMONG TRADING MOTHERS IN SHAI OSUDOKU DISTRICT, ACCRA PONE-D-22-06121R1 Dear Mr Appiah We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Michael Ansong, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): The paper needs to be formatted according to the journal's style. Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0271669.r004
Formally Accepted
8 Jul 2022 Acceptance Letter - Michael Ansong, Editor PONE-D-22-06121R1 PRACTICES OF HERBAL MANAGEMENT OF MALARIA AMONG TRADING MOTHERS IN SHAI OSUDOKU DISTRICT, ACCRA Dear Dr. Appiah: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Michael Ansong Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0271669.r005

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