Knowledge, attitude and practice of health care workers on Lassa fever in Taraba State, Nigeria, January 2017

Introduction : lassa fever (LF) is a highly infectious viral haemorrhagic febrile illness. The disease is endemic in Nigeria and parts of West Africa. Outbreaks have been recorded among healthcare workers predicated on a dearth of knowledge and infection prevention practice. We explored the knowledge, attitude and practices of healthcare workers (HCW) on LF during an outbreak in November 2016 in Taraba State. Methods : a cross sectional study was conducted among HCW in eight public health facilities in the seven affected LGAs using a semi structured questionnaire to assess their knowledge, attitude and practice. Recruitment of HCWs was purposively done from those available. A standard checklist was used to collect data on practices and infection prevention and control (IPC) methods. Knowledge and attitude were scored using the Likert scale: poor (0-4), satisfactory (5-7) and good (8-10). HCWs that answered 5 of 9 questions on practice were considered as having good practice. Frequencies and relative frequencies, means and standard deviation were calculated using Epi info version 7. Results : of 125 respondents, 103(82.4%) had good knowledge, 13(10.4%) and 9 (7.2%) had satisfactory and poor knowledge respectively. In terms of attitude, 31 (24.8%), 25 (20%) and 69 (55.2%) had good, satisfactory and poor attitudes respectively. For specific knowledge and practice, 23 (18.9%) knew that a suspected case should be isolated, notified and referred; 47 (40%) knew Ribavirin as drug of choice, 63 (50.4%) used hand gloves and 12 (9.6%) used face mask. Three health facilities (37.5%) had at least hand gloves, apron, face mask and boots for IPC. Conclusion : knowledge of HCWs on LF was good. However, their attitude and practice on IPC for LF were poor. We did a sensitization and awareness campaign for the HCWs on IPC. We also made an advocacy for training on IPC for HCWs to the State Ministry of Health.