COVID-19 knowledge, attitudes and practices in a conflict affected area of the South West Region of Cameroon

Abstract

Introduction since December 2019, the world is experiencing, the COVID-19 pandemic caused by the Virus SARS-CoV-2. It is feared that the pandemic maybe more devastating in conflict affected areas in the world. This study assessed the knowledge, attitudes and practices with regard to the COVID-19 in Buea municipality, Cameroon. Methods this was a cross-sectional study carried out in communities selected from 5 health areas of the Buea Health District. A questionnaire was administered to collect data on the knowledge, attitudes and practices on COVID-19. The knowledge was measured using a 26-points Liker scale on awareness, mode of transmission, clinical manifestation, site of the infection and prevention. The data was analyzed in SPSS version 25. Results of the 545 particpants who consented, 21.9% had a correct knowledge of COVID-19, 43.8% had intermediate knowledge, 34.4% had poor knowledge and 11.93% had no knowledge. Majority of the participants (73.3%) knew they were at risk of contacting the infection. They were aware that cleaning and disinfecting the environment (78.8%), reducing contact with animals (56.3%) could help prevent the infection. Even though participants knew about the face mask (93.5%) and hand sanitizers (88.8%), only 21.7% and 32.9% had purchased them respectively. Few participants reported that they will go to a man of God (6.0%), native doctor (3.5%) and auto-medication (25.8%) if infected. Conclusion There is still a knowledge gap in the Buea population with respect to COVID-19. The population is aware of the disease and preventive measures, but few have taken steps to procure essential tools for the prevention. There is need to intensify sensitization to fill the knowledge gap the population has with regards to COVID-19.

Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice and Associated Factors towards COVID-19 among College Students in Amhara Region, Ethiopia; A Cross-Sectional Study

“…This finding is similar to a study done among Debre Birhan University students [34], Kingdom of Saudi Arabia [45], Tanzanian residents [37,46], China [33], Medical college students in Uttarakhand, India [32]. Adolescents are very eager to know emerging new events including the new novel virus (COVID-19) than adults [47]. Hence, students in the late age group are more knowledgeable compared to adults.…”

Response to the Novel Corona Virus (COVID-19) Pandemic Across Africa: Successes, Challenges, and Implications for the Future

“…Following initial studies in China, coupled with the findings of Gautret et al (2020) (Boulware et al, 2020;Das et al, 2020;Cortegiani et al, 2020;Gao et al, 2020;Gautret et al, 2020), its use was endorsed among a number of governments and medical societies (Bokpe, 2020;Channnel News Asia, 2020;East African, 2020;Rich, 2020;Sciama, 2020;Tilangi et al, 2020). However, the lack of a comparator arm in the initial studies has been heavily criticised coupled with concerns with sideeffects including cardiac side-effects with hydroxychloroquine (International Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, 2020; Gautret et al, 2020;ISAC/ Elsevier, 2020;Borba et al, 2020;Ferner and Aronson, 2020;Littlejohn, 2020) as well as reports of fatal overdoses (Abena et al, 2020;Das et al, 2020;GuruGamer, 2020;Nga et al, 2020;Politi, 2020). Recent studies have failed to demonstrate any clinical benefit for both the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 (Boulware et al, 2020;Geleris et al, 2020;Recovery Trial, 2020a;Rosenberg et al, 2020).…”

“…Surveys in the UK and US have also shown that participants generally had good knowledge about the main means of transmission and the common symptoms of COVID-19 ( Geldsetzer, 2020 ). In Cameroon, the population is also aware of the disease and preventive measures ( Nicholas et al., 2020 ). Further research is ongoing regarding why some people fail to adhere to suggested preventative measures, and we will be monitoring this ( Chan et al., 2020 ).…”

Assessment on knowledge, attitude, practices and risk of infection towards COVID-19 in Ethiopia: An online cross-sectional survey

“…Our study evinced that a low fraction (11.5 %) of respondents was unconvinced with the government's efforts in ghting against COVID-19. To talk about other African nations, pertinently, 71 % and 60.9 % of Nigerians and Sudanese respectively are buoyant about the win against COVID-19 through their respective governmental actions [22,23]. Augmented attitude scores bore a direct correspondence with the age and education level in our study.…”

“…Public knowledge and attitudes towards the disease is germane to adoption of appropriate practices, which are expected to eventually contain the disease. To facilitate outbreak management of COVID-19, many countries including various African nations (Egypt, Kenya, Sudan, Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana and Tanzania [19][20][21][22][23][24][25]) piloted KAP surveys for their citizens, health workers as well as policy makers. The Ministry of Science and Higher Data-collection for this cross-sectional survey among Ethiopian citizens commenced on May 13, 2020 and concluded on May 25, 2020.…”