JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

On 13 March 2020, Ethiopia reported the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in Addis Ababa. COVID-19 is likely to overwhelm an already fragile health- care delivery system and reduce the availability of services for endemic health concerns such as malaria and diarrheal diseases. This analysis of data from Somali region of Eastern Ethiopia on health workers knowledge, attitude and practice towards the prevention and control of COVID-19 may be used in planning health education programs about the emerging viral disease.

Objective:

This study is aimed to investigate the knowledge, attitude and practice of health workers towards COVID-19 infection

Methods:

Cross sectional study was conducted on health care workers in three public health facilities in Somali region, Eastern Ethiopia. A questionnaire with 43 questions was shared to the all health workers working at the public health facilities. Knowledge and practice questions were scored as 1 or 0 for correct and incorrect responses, respectively. Whereas, attitude responses were provided with 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 for “Strongly Agree, “Agree”, “Neutral”, “Disagree” and “Strongly Disagree”, respectively. Mean scores were calculated and used as a cut point to dichotomize the outcome variables. T-test and ANOVA were used to analyze the relationship between the dependent, and independent variables. Spearman’s correlation was used to assess the relationship between mean knowledge and attitude scores.

Results:

Of the 686 HCWs approached, total of 434 HCWs responded (response rate = 63%). A vast majority of the participants were male (n = 293, 67.5%), with a mean age of 27.6 (SD: 5.3) years. The mean knowledge score was 13.7 (SD: 2.6). Almost ninety percent (n = 381) of the participants scored 12 or more and were considered to have sufficient knowledge. The mean attitude score 10.5 (SD: 4.1). Overall, there was poor attitude among HCWs toward COVID-19. Only 45.2 % (n = 196) of the participants had a good attitude toward COVID-19. There was a negative correlation between knowledge scores, attitude scores (r=-0.295, P<0.001) and practice (r=-0.298, P<0.001).

Conclusions:

The overall level of knowledge was good. However, the attitude and practice were relatively low. We recommend strategies for enhancing the capacity of healthcare workers to develop positive attitude and practice.