Awareness of Hepatitis B Virus Infection and Vaccination Rate Among Adults Attending the Out-Patient Clinic of General Hospital, Ilorin, Nigeria

Abstract

Background: Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is a potentially life-threatening infection affecting the liver from acute disease to chronic infection state and sometimes even leading to death. This study was done to determine the level of awareness of the hepatitis B virus as a disease, the availability of its vaccine, as well as the vaccination rate among the study population. Methods: This study was a descriptive cross-sectional study, and it was done at the General Hospi-tal Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria. The study population was adults aged 18 years and above attend-ing outpatient clinics. The sample size for this study was 377, with a male to female ratio of 128:249. The study instrument was a structured and semi-structured interviewer-administered questionnaire. The data was analyzed using Statistical Packages for Social Sciences IBM (SPSS) 21. Results: The overall level of awareness of HBV infection was very low (19.4%), only 38% of the participants knew HBV infection as a disease, while very few of them knew the causative agent (4.9%), and only 15.4% of the participants knew the transmission routes of the HBV. However, about half of the participants were aware of the existence of the HBV vaccine (50.8%). Only very few participants had ever received the vaccine as an adult, with a vaccination rate of 4.6%. There were statistically significant associations between HBV vaccination status, knowledge of the dis-ease, knowledge of HBV causative agent (P <0.001), and knowledge of HBV transmission routes (P <0.001). These factors positively impact vaccination uptake in this study. It was also observed that more young people were more likely to have received the HBV vaccine when compared to the elderly ones (P <0.001). Similarly, secondary education students were more likely to receive the HBV vaccine (P = 0.039). Conclusion: The awareness of HBV infection and the knowledge of the disease were very low, same with vaccination uptake. Young people and those with formal education would likely obtain the HBV vaccination.