Are the medical interns ready to deal with the treatment, prevention and control of Nipah virus infection at the tertiary care hospital?

Abstract

Context:Nipah virus infection is an emerging life threatening zoonotic disease. Health care workers are at the highest risk of getting the infection.Objectives:To assess the level of knowledge and attitude regarding Nipah virus infection among medical interns of a tertiary care hospital, Mangaluru and also to assess the readiness of medical interns dealing with cases of Nipah virus infection.Setting and Design:A cross-sectional study was conducted among 94 medical interns of a teaching hospital in Mangaluru.Methods and Material:Questionnaire comprising of 33 questions was used to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice behaviors of the medical interns.Statistical Analysis Used:Descriptive statistics as mean and standard deviation and Pearson correlation coefficient.Results:The mean knowledge, attitude and practice scores were 10.28 (± 2.31), 8 (± 2.9) and 15.85 (± 3.7). Three (3.2%) of the medical interns correctly knew the best modality of diagnosis of Nipah. All the interns correctly answered the samples to be collected for diagnosis and 72 (76.6%) correctly answered the lab where samples have to be sent. Majority i.e. 64 (68.1%) of the medical interns correctly enumerated the preventive measures to be employed. Eighty four (89.4%) of them were aware about the availability of vaccine. The correlation between the adequate facilities available with practice domain and training provided with practice domain were found to be statistically significant.Conclusion:In this study, the knowledge, attitude and practice regarding Nipah virus infection were found to be inadequate. There is an urgent need to address these gaps.