COVID-19 infection: Knowledge, attitude, practices, and impact among healthcare workers in a South-Eastern Nigerian state

Abstract

Introduction: The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) infection rate and mortality among Nigerian health care workers appear to be on the increase. This study determined the level of knowledge, attitude, practices, and impact of COVID-19 infection on healthcare workers (HCWs) working in a South-Eastern Nigerian state.
 Methodology: This was a web-based, cross-sectional study conducted among healthcare workers in South-eastern, Nigeria during the lockdown period. Socio-demographic profile, knowledge of COVID-19, fears and impact concerning COVID-19, attitude of health workers to work, preventive practices during this pandemic period were obtained. Data were analysed using STATA 16.0. Chi-square and Fisher’s exact tests of association were used to determine the association between variables, with the significance level set at p < 0.05.
 Results: A total of 403 health care workers participated in the study. Majority of participants (n = 357, 88.59%) had good knowledge and good preventive practices (n = 328, 81.39%) of COVID-19. A significant proportion of respondents had a poor attitude to work (n = 101, 25.06%) and an attitude of indifference (n = 233, 57.82%). Almost half (48.64%) of participants had been negatively affected by COVID-19. Knowledge significantly influenced practice (p = 0.029). Lack of Personal protective equipment, fear of dying and going to common places, had a significant impact on the attitude of workers.
 Conclusion: Good knowledge which influenced practice, high use of preventive practices, with associated poor and indifferent attitude was noted among healthcare workers. Fear of death and lack of personal protective equipment had a strong impact on attitude. Female HCWs had poorer attitude to work than males.

Knowledge, attitude, perception, and preventative practices towards COVID-19 in sub-Saharan Africa: A scoping review

“…The included studies were all conducted in sub-Saharan Africa and published in 2020. Ten of the studies were conducted in Ethiopia [10,12,[29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36], eight in Nigeria [37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44], three in Cameroon [45][46][47], two in Uganda [9,48], one each in Rwanda [49], Ghana [50], Democratic Republic of Congo [51], Sudan [52], and Sierra Leone [53], (Fig 2). A total number of 14,353 study participants were reported in the included studies, with over half (51%) of them being males.…”

“…The KAP components of the included studies (Fig 3), showed that participants from 24 studies had a good knowledge [9, 10, 29-32, 34-46, 48-50, 52, 53], with only 4 studies reporting a low knowledge of COVID-19 [12,33,47,51]. Participants in fifteen studies had a good attitude/perception [29, 34-37, 41-49, 52], average in five studies [10,12,33,40,53], and low in four studies [9,31,38,51]. Good preventative practice towards COVID-19 was found in twelve studies [9, 30, 36-38, 42, 43, 45, 46, 49, 50, 52], average in six [10,12,29,39,48,53], and low in other six studies [31-33, 35, 47, 51].…”

“…Good preventative practice towards COVID-19 was found in twelve studies [9, 30, 36-38, 42, 43, 45, 46, 49, 50, 52], average in six [10,12,29,39,48,53], and low in other six studies [31-33, 35, 47, 51]. Thirteen of the included studies were from the Eastern African region of SSA, with Ethiopia [10,12,[29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36], Uganda [9,48] and Rwanda [49] accounting for ten, two and one, respectively, whereas West Africa contributed ten studies, with eight being from Nigeria [37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44], one from Ghana [50], and one from Sierra Leone [53]. A total of four studies were from the Central Africa, with one and three representing the Democratic Republic of Congo [51], and Cameroon [45][46][47], respectively.…”

Knowledge, attitude, and practices towards COVID-19: a cross-sectional study among nursing and midwifery students in Jalingo, Nigeria

“…In the study area, only about 56.9% of the adult population is literate in English. 25 Also, Taraba State has a poverty headcount rate of 87.73% and this means that a large number of the inhabitants in the state will be probably illiterates and under-privileged. 24 Undoubtedly, this will translate to poor knowledge and negative attitudes towards COVID-19 and thus negates all the efforts put forward by the Government toward flattening the curve of the disease.…”

“…[19][20][21][22][23] As far as the authors are aware, this is the first crosssectional study to assess and evaluate the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of individuals in Taraba State, within North-Eastern Nigeria that is ravaged by high poverty and illiteracy levels. 24,25 The fact that very few studies have been conducted in this context and none have been done among nursing and midwifery students in Nigeria further justified the need for this study. Since these students are among the future HCWs who will be directly interacting with patients, there is a need to assess their KAP as inadequacy will translate to practices that may directly increase the risk of spread among staff and further spread to the communities.…”