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

Abstract

Background Knowledge, attitudes, perception, and preventative practices regarding coronavirus- 2019 (COVID-19) are crucial in its prevention and control. Several studies have noted that the majority of people in sub-Saharan African are noncompliant with proposed health and safety measures recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) and respective country health departments. In most sub-Saharan African countries, noncompliance is attributable to ignorance and misinformation, thereby raising questions about people’s knowledge, attitudes, perception, and practices towards COVID-19 in these settings. This situation is particularly of concern for governments and public health experts. Thus, this scoping review is aimed at mapping evidence on the knowledge, attitudes, perceptions, and preventive practices (KAP) towards COVID-19 in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Methods Systematic searches of relevant articles were performed using databases such as the EBSCOhost, PubMed, Science Direct, Google Scholar, the WHO library and grey literature. Arksey and O’Malley’s framework guided the study. The risk of bias for included primary studies was assessed using the Mixed Method Appraisal Tool (MMAT). NVIVO version 10 was used to analyse the data and a thematic content analysis was used to present the review’s narrative account. Results A total of 3037 eligible studies were identified after the database search. Only 28 studies met the inclusion criteria after full article screening and were included for data extraction. Studies included populations from the following SSA countries: Ethiopia, Nigeria, Cameroon, Uganda, Rwanda, Ghana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, and Sierra Leone. All the included studies showed evidence of knowledge related to COVID-19. Eleven studies showed that participants had a positive attitude towards COVID-19, and fifteen studies showed that participants had good practices towards COVID-19. Conclusions Most of the participants had adequate knowledge related to COVID-19. Despite adequate knowledge, the attitude was not always positive, thereby necessitating further education to convey the importance of forming a positive attitude and continuous preventive practice towards reducing contraction and transmission of COVID‐19.

Knowledge, Attitude, Practice, and Fear of COVID-19: an Online-Based Cross-cultural Study

“…Especially in the South Asian and Oceania region, participants who did attend university are scored lower. These findings were consistent with other studies where the authors found poor knowledge about the infectious disease among non-graduate populations (Nwagbara et al, 2021 ; Wang et al, 2018 ). We found significant differences in overall and Middle East regional knowledge scores by educational status.…”

Greek population’s perceptions of nonpharmacological interventions towards the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic mitigation: A regressionbased association analysis

“…The public's positive perceptions were correlated with self-reported adherence to home-quarantine, acknowledging thus the relation between beliefs and behavior, in agreement with established findings 29 . Similarly to previous research, females appeared more likely to consider NPI important, scored better in awareness questions 8 , held more positive attitudes 30 and adherence levels to COVID-19 mitigation strategies 7 . Also, respondents from Athens demonstrated higher perceived importance of NPI, like the residents of Hubei when compared with people from other areas of China 7 .…”

“…In the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, even though vaccines have been rolled out and the vaccination campaigns in some countries have already been followed by a decline in number and severity of cases 4 , non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) are still playing an important role on COVID-19 management, such as social distancing through lockdown of institutional and professional facilities, and entertainment venues, or personal hygiene measures such as frequent hand washing 5,6 . Existing literature provides strong evidence that individuals' perception of NPI plays a major role in successful disease mitigation 7,8 .…”

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“…The people in sub-Saharan Africa have adequate knowledge about COVID-19, but there is a significant gap in their perception toward COVID-19 and utilization of prevention measures. 39 In Ethiopia, people infected with SARS-CoV-2 have been increasing significantly despite government mitigation measures. 40 As of May 14, 2021, over 264,000 confirmed cases and 4000 deaths have been reported.…”