Is Cleft Lip a Spiritual Thing? – A Pilot Study of Beliefs and Attitudes amongst Some Future Primary Health Care Workers in Ibadan Metropolis, Nigeria

Background: The birth of a baby with cleft lip is regarded as evil in many Nigerian communities. Cleft lip babies tend to suffer from social neglect or infanticide due to superstitious beliefs associated with their births. This study aimed to explore the awareness, beliefs, and attitudes of students in primary health care-related diploma programmes in Ibadan, Nigeria, towards babies born with cleft lip.

Methodology: A pilot study was conducted among 88 students of primary health care-related diploma programmes in three conveniently selected schools in Ibadan, Nigeria. Information on their bio-data, awareness, beliefs and attitudes towards of cleft lip babies were obtained through the use of a self-administered questionnaire. All administered questionnaires were returned filled, 5 were discarded due to incomplete data. Data analysis was done using the SPSS version 16 Software.

Results: The mean age (±SD) of the 83 respondents was 35.32 (±10.22) years, 72.3% were females, 69.9% were Yorubas, and 60.2% were married. Forty-six respondents (55.4%) had never seen a baby with cleft lip before, while the rest had seen at least one baby with such deformity. The majority (≥61.5%) did not believe that cleft lip could be caused by witchcraft, curses, God, evil spirits, and bad luck. Less than 60% of the respondents believed that excessive alcohol consumption, viral infection, genetic factors, cigarette smoking, irradiation, and drugs are potential risk factors for cleft lip formation. The majority (≥78.3%) showed positive attitude towards delivering health care services to cleft lip babies.

Conclusion: The majority of the students of primary health care-related diploma programmes in this study were not superstitious about cleft lip. However, their knowledge of its risk factors is inadequate. There exists the need to educate them on the risk factors/aetiologies of cleft lip.