Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a pandemic affecting over 106 million and killing over 2.3 million people. Inadequate knowledge of the disease coupled with scarce or improper use of infection prevention and control (IPC) measures by healthcare workers (HCWs) and support staff may be contributing to the rapid spread of infection. This survey aims to assess knowledge, risk perception, and precaution practices of HCWs and support staff toward COVID-19 under resource-constrained circumstances at a major referral hospital in Ethiopia. An institution-based survey was conducted in April 2020 using 422 subjects selected by stratified random sampling. A five-section survey instrument was distributed, and the collected responses were cleaned and entered into Epi data (v3.1) and exported to SPSS (v.26) for further statistical analysis. The survey found that about 58% of the HCWs and support staff in the hospital appear to have adequate awareness and perceive COVID-19 to be a high-risk disease. Seven out of 10 subjects practice some form of IPC measures. However, the knowledge among allied HCWs and support staff appears to be inadequate. Gender, occupation, and years in service correlated with the level of awareness. Of those surveyed, 78% were concerned about the lack of personal protective equipment and perceived public transportation to be a high-risk factor for the transmission of infection. Additional campaigns may be necessary to reinforce existing knowledge of HCWs, but more emphasis should be geared toward educating allied HCWs and support staff.
<p class="abstract">A double appendix is a rare congenital malformation with a frequency ranging from 0.004 to 0.009% and only a small percentage of instances presenting as appendicitis. Although the cause of appendiceal duplication is unknown, it poses a difficult clinical picture in patients with right lower quadrant pain. In this case report, we presented two cases of operative treatment of acute appendicitis in a doubled vermiform appendix in 4 and 17 years old male patients. Both cases did not have any pertinent prior medical condition and presented with shifting right lower quadrant (RLQ) abdominal pain associated with nausea, vomiting and anorexia. Clinical exam, laboratory investigations as well as imaging findings were consistent with features of acute appendicitis. In both patients, the diagnosis of the duplicated appendices was unsuspected until two tubular structures arising from the cecal wall were discovered intraoperatively and confirmed on histopathological examination after appendectomy of the two appendices was performed. Hence, in all situations where acute appendicitis is suspected clinically and radiologically, surgeons must maintain a high level of suspicion for the potential of duplicated appendices to avoid missing the duplication and resulting post-operative difficulties and medicolegal concerns.</p>
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