Healthcare professionals’ awareness, knowledge, attitudes, perceptions and beliefs about Ebola at Gondar University Hospital, Northwest Ethiopia: a cross-sectional study

Tamrat Befekadu Abebe; Akshaya Srikanth Bhagavathula; Yonas Getaye Tefera; Akram Ahmad; Muhammad Umair Khan; Sewunet Admasu Belachew; Brandon Brown; Tadesse Melaku Abegaz

doi:10.4081/jphia.2016.570

Healthcare professionals’ awareness, knowledge, attitudes, perceptions and beliefs about Ebola at Gondar University Hospital, Northwest Ethiopia: a cross-sectional study

https://doi.org/10.4081/jphia.2016.570

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Vol. 7 No. 2 (2016)

Submitted: 29 June 2016
Accepted: 30 November 2016

Published: 31 December 2016

Attitudes, Ebola Virus Disease, Health Care Professionals, Knowledge, Ethiopia

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Authors

Tamrat Befekadu Abebe
Befekadutamrat@gmail.com
Department of Clinical Pharmacy, University of Gondar-College of Medicine and Health Sciences, School of Pharmacy, Gondar, Ethiopia. http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9367-7592
Akshaya Srikanth Bhagavathula Department of Clinical Pharmacy, University of Gondar-College of Medicine and Health Sciences, School of Pharmacy, Gondar, Ethiopia.
Yonas Getaye Tefera Department of Clinical Pharmacy, University of Gondar-College of Medicine and Health Sciences, School of Pharmacy, Gondar, Ethiopia.
Akram Ahmad Department of Clinical Pharmacy, UCSI University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Muhammad Umair Khan Department of Clinical Pharmacy, UCSI University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Sewunet Admasu Belachew Department of Clinical Pharmacy, University of Gondar-College of Medicine and Health Sciences, School of Pharmacy, Gondar, Ethiopia.
Brandon Brown Center for Healthy Communities, Division of Clinical Sciences, UCR School of Medicine, Riverside, CA, United States.
Tadesse Melaku Abegaz Department of Clinical Pharmacy, University of Gondar-College of Medicine and Health Sciences, School of Pharmacy, Gondar, Ethiopia.

A poor understanding of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) among Health Care Professionals (HCPs) may put our lives at risk. We aimed to assess the awareness, knowledge, attitudes, perceptions, beliefs of HCPs towards Ebola at Gondar University Hospital (GUH) in Northwest Ethiopia. We conducted a hospital based, cross-sectional survey among 245 randomly selected HCPs working at GUH from August-October, 2015. A validated, self-administered questionnaire was used to collect the data. We calculated descriptive statistics with P0.05 being statistically significant. Of the 245 participants, 211 (86.1%) completed the study. The majority had heard about EVD and used news media (62%) as a source of information. Still, many were afraid of getting EVD (56.4%; P=0.001). A significant number of HCPs thought EVD can cause paralysis like polio (45%) and can be treated with antibiotics (28.4%). In addition, 46.4% of the HCPs felt anger or fear towards Ebola infected patients (P=0.006). We identified poor knowledge and negative incorrect beliefs among doctors and allied health professionals. There is a need for intensive training for all HCPs reduce EVD risk.

Abebe, T. B., Bhagavathula, A. S., Tefera, Y. G., Ahmad, A., Khan, M. U., Belachew, S. A., Brown, B., & Abegaz, T. M. (2016). Healthcare professionals’ awareness, knowledge, attitudes, perceptions and beliefs about Ebola at Gondar University Hospital, Northwest Ethiopia: a cross-sectional study. Journal of Public Health in Africa, 7(2). https://doi.org/10.4081/jphia.2016.570