Knowledge, Attitude & Practice of Health Care Workers on COVID-19 in Babylon Governorate, Iraq 2020

Abstract

During the last month of 2019 a highly contagious infectious disease caused by a corona virus known as COVID-19 that identified in Wuhan/China, then the WHO declared the outbreak to be a public health emergency of international concern, after two months the disease entered our country with the international travelers and started its rapid spread in our society. The level of knowledge of health care workers about COVID-19 is one of the key factors in the battle against COVID-19 infection. The objectives of this study are to assess Knowledge, attitude, and practice of HCWs at primary health care centres regarding COVID-19 infection, also to assess the possible association with the sociodemographic factors of the study sample. Method: A cross sectional study was conducted in Babylon governorate/Iraq during the period of lockdown (from 15-march to15-may 2020) to assess the level of knowledge, attitude and practice of health care workers at the level of primary health care centers, by doing a multistage sampling; fifteen primary healthcare centers were selected randomly involving specialized and non-specialized family health care centers, a self-administered questionnaire with four aspects was prepared (knowledge, attitude, practice and source of information) then distributed to 403 participant. Results: Most frequent age group was 30-40 years 141 (35.0%), the study group included 94 (23.3%) physicians & 309 (76.7%) other medical staff. means of knowledge, attitude and practice score were (88.5±9.4 SD), (69.2±28.9 SD), (91.5±8.1 SD) respectively, there was a positive correlation between knowledge and practice scores (r=.196, p=.000). working in specialized family health care centers was found to have a high knowledge score (90.1±9.5 SD, p=0.00), while gender didn’t have significant difference in knowledge score. Knowledge about clinical symptoms of COVID-19 was of high percentage (96.3%). Regarding attitude (36.7%) of participants agreed that herbals and garlic are beneficial in prevention of the disease. Wearing gloves during the work was the most common practice reported (94.3%) followed by wearing face mask during work (91.6%), while (88.1%) performing washing hands regularly for 20 seconds. Conclusion: Good knowledge and practice but ordinary attitude among health care workers working in primary health care centers, this reflects the rapid spread of information's through TV, radios, websites and social medias after the announcement of WHO that this new infectious disease is a pandemic.