Ethiopian teachers: their knowledge, attitude and practice towards epilepsy

Abstract

BackgroundIn Ethiopia where the burden of epilepsy is highest among school age children and teenagers, and where people with epilepsy (PWE) and their relatives suffers from high level of perceived stigma, there had not been any study that assessed the knowledge, attitude and practice of teachers towards PWE. This study aims to assess and understand the social and demographic determinants of knowledge, attitude and practice of teachers towards PLW in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.MethodsMultistage cluster sampling procedure was used to identify twenty schools from three sub cities of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Standardized self administered questionnaire was used to collect data from 845 volunteer teachers in the pre identified schools. Frequencies were used to characterize the demographic variables while multiple response frequencies were used to characterize the multiple response variable sets. Non-parametric statistical methods were used to describe the association among the demographic variables of interest and the count sums of multiple response variables which were grouped into biologically and culturally plausible responses.ResultsThe most common biologically plausible responses were: brain diseases (26.5 %) from causes, allow my offspring to play with PWE (19.1 %) from attitude, protect the subject from injury (20.4 %) from first aid measures and seek help from medical doctors (52.2 %) from epilepsy treatment. On the contrary, the most common culturally plausible responses were: psychiatric illness (12.9 %) from causes, epilepsy be cured before attendance to school (21.6 %) from attitude, smelling the smoke of struck match (14.2 %) from first aid measures and Holy water treatment (20.3 %) from epilepsy treatment suggestions. The biologically and culturally plausible responses were negatively correlated. Level of education was positively associated with biologically plausible responses while teaching experience was negatively correlated with culturally plausible responses.ConclusionA high percentage of teachers in Addis Ababa considered epilepsy as a psychiatric illness closely linked to insanity. This explains their suggestions of Holy water treatment and Church healing sessions as epilepsy remedies. This is in agreement with Ethiopian culture, in which evil spirit and insanity are believed to be better treated by religious remedies than with modern medical treatments. Incorporating special needs educational training courses in the curriculum of teachers training may help them shift their knowledge, attitudes and practices from that of the culturally plausible to biologically plausible one.

Knowledge, attitudes, and practices with respect to epilepsy among primary and secondary school teachers in the city of Niamey, Niger

“…Epilepsy is considered to be a psychiatric illness by 15.9% of teachers surveyed in our study. This percentage is higher than the percentages observed among South Korean teachers (3.5%) and Egyptian teachers (10.2%) and lower than that observed among Ethiopian teachers (25.9%) (Gebrewold et al, 2016;Lee et al, 2010;Shehata & Mahran, 2010). These differences could be explained by several parameters such as the socio-cultural context, the religious beliefs of the population, and the education system.…”

“…In this study, the main transmission routes reported were the contact with the places of crisis, physical contact with an epileptic person, and contact with saliva. On the other hand, low proportions ranging from 1% to 11.9% of teachers considering epilepsy as a contagious disease have been reported in other African studies (Gebrewold, Enquselassie, Teklehaimanot, & Gugssa, 2016;Millogo & Siranyan, 2004;Shehata & Mahran, 2010). In some Asian studies, epilepsy is considered to be contagious in 0.2-15.3% of teachers surveyed and in 44.4-83.6% as a brain disease (Alkhamra, Tannous, Hadidi, & Alkhateeb, 2012;Lee, Lee, Chung, Yun, & Choi-Kwon, 2010;Thacker, Verma, Ji, Thacker, & Mishra, 2008).…”

An ambispective cohort study on treatment outcomes of patients with epilepsy in a tertiary epilepsy center in Rwanda and recommendations for improved epilepsy care

“…7 Our cohort of 235 patients had a broad age distribution, ranging from 1-to 78-years-old, with a substantial proportion younger than 20 years: up to 42% of the children included in our study were younger than10 years old and 24% were even younger than 2 years. [17][18][19] Several findings point to stigmatization of PwE. Indeed, limited information is available on the etiology and exact diagnosis of seizure type or syndrome.…”

“…It is unclear whether this is due to stigma or cognitive decline in our patients. [17][18][19] Several findings point to stigmatization of PwE. Sebera et al 20 reported in 2005 that more than two-thirds of the Rwandan population considered PwE not apt to get married.…”

Beliefs and attitudes towards child epilepsy: A structural equation model

“…However, when analyzing studies published at national and international levels, no consensus in the literature has yet been observed regarding the influence of educational levels on beliefs and attitudes towards epilepsy, thus showing the lack of information regarding the disease affects all educational levels and may be a factor of considerable influence on inappropriate knowledge. Some research shows that inadequate knowledge is more closely associated with lower levels of education, while other studies conducted with people with higher education also show the remarkable presence of inappropriate beliefs [2,5,18,19,20,21].…”