PONE-D-23-28224Delays in seeking treatment for fever in children under five years of age in Nigeria: Evidence from the National Demographic Health SurveyPLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments:

REF: PONE-D-23-28224

Dear Anayochukwu Edward Anyasodor,

Your manuscript entitled "Delays in seeking treatment for fever in children under five years of age in Nigeria: Evidence from the National Demographic Health Survey" which you submitted to Plos One, has been reviewed. The comments of the reviewers are attached to this letter. The reviewers have recommended some revisions to your manuscript. Therefore, I invite you to respond to the reviewers' comments and to revise your manuscript accordingly. Your revised manuscript should be uploaded on or before 30 November 2023.

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Feel free to contact the Editorial Office with any questions or concerns. We look forward to receiving the revised manuscript.

Sincerely,

Dr Sathiya Appunni, Ph D

PLOS ONE

Academic Editor

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Reviewer 1

The manuscript is technically sound, and the data support the study's conclusion. Moreover, the statistical analysis has been performed appropriately and rigorously. Furthermore, the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available. I found the English language editing in this article unambiguous.

However, I suggest more reporting on bivariate analysis, where the study factors were cross-tabulated with the outcome variables in Table 1. The authors would have looked at the pattern of the percentages and reported the relationship because there is valuable information related to the topic under study.

On page 12 of the article, I was confused. Under the subheading: "Prevalence of delay in treatment-seeking for fever," (The prevalence of delay in treatment-seeking for fever was 62.1% (95%CI: 60.1, 64.1%), which was higher in children whose mothers did not attain a formal education (69.1%), and those who resided in poor households (70.0%) [Table 1]). I need help finding where the authors used the Confidence Interval in Table 1. CI was only used under the multivariate section, where they used binary logistic regression to identify the factors contributing to the predisposing, enabling, need, services, and community factors.

As it is recommended by PLOS policy, the data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information for verification.

Reviewer 2

The authors should find a basis for the choices made to declare that 1 day is a delay and, therefore, before a day, it is not a delay.

Very few recommendations came from the study. But, so many good results were obtained. It would help if you improved your recommendations.

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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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: The manuscript technically sound, and the data support the conclusion of the study. Moreover, the statistical analysis has been performed appropriately and rigorously. Furthermore, the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available. I found the English language editing in this article clear and unambiguous.

However, i would suggest more re porting on bivariate analysis, where the study factors were crosstabulated with the outcome variables in table 1. The authors would have looked at the pattern of the percentages and report the relationship because there is a useful information related to the topic under study.

On page 12 of the article, i was a bit confused. Under the subheading: "Prevalence of delay in treatment-seeking for fever" (The prevalence of delay in treatment-seeking for fever was 62.1% (95%CI: 60.1, 64.1%), which was higher in children whose mothers did not attain a formal education (69.1%), and those who resided in poor households (70.0%) [Table 1]). I fail to see where the authors used Confidence Interval in table 1. CI was only used under multivariate section, where they used binary logistic regression to identify the factors contributing to the predisposing, enabling, need, services, and community factors.

As it is recommended by PLOS policy, I would suggest The data to be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information and for verification.

Reviewer #2: The authors should find a basis for the choices made to declare that 1 day is a delay and therefore before a day it is not a delay.

Very few recommendations came from the study. But, so many good results were obtained. You need to improve your recommendations.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: report Dr LOUGUE.pdf

Delays in seeking treatment for fever in children under five years of age in Nigeria: Evidence from the National Demographic Health Survey

PONE-D-23-28224R1

Dear Dr. Anayochukwu,

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.

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Kind regards,

Sathiya Susuman Appunni, Ph D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: