Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices Regarding COVID-19 among Healthcare Workers in Uganda: A Cross-Sectional Survey.

Onesmus Kamacooko,Robin J Shattock,Anne Wajja,Alfred Lumala,Robert Asaba,Edward Ssemwanga,Pontiano Kaleebu,Ubaldo M Bahemuka,Eugene Ruzagira,Freddie M Kibengo,Ayoub Kakande,Paddy Kafeero,Joseph Mugisha,Vincent Basajja,Jonathan Kitonsa,Benjamin F Pierce

doi:10.3390/ijerph18137004

Abstract

Healthcare workers (HCWs) are at high risk of COVID-19. However, data on HCWs’ knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) toward COVID-19 are limited. Between September and November 2020, we conducted a questionnaire-based COVID-19 KAP survey among HCWs at three hospitals in Uganda. We used Bloom’s cut-off of ≥80% to determine sufficient knowledge, good attitude, and good practice, and multivariate Poisson regression with robust variance for statistical analysis. Of 717 HCWs invited to participate, 657 (91.6%) agreed and were enrolled. The mean age (standard deviation) of enrollees was 33.2 (10.2) years; most were clinical HCWs (64.7%) and had advanced secondary school/other higher-level education (57.8%). Overall, 83.9% had sufficient knowledge, 78.4% had a positive attitude, and 37.0% had good practices toward COVID-19. Factors associated with KAP were: Knowledge: being a clinical HCW (aRR: 1.12; 95% CI: 1.02–1.23) and previous participation in health research (aRR: 1.10; 95% CI: 1.04–1.17); Attitude: age > 35 years (aRR: 0.88; 95% CI: 0.79–0.98); Practice: being a clinical HCW (aRR: 1.91; 95% CI: 1.41–2.59). HCWs in Uganda have good knowledge and positive attitude but poor practices towards COVID-19. Differences in COVID-19 KAP between clinical and non-clinical HCWs could affect uptake of COVID-19 interventions including vaccination.

Highlights

In this study among Healthcare workers (HCWs) in three PNFP community hospitals in Uganda, we found that 83.9% of the participants had sufficient knowledge of COVID-19
Consistent with previous studies [30,37], we found that clinical HCWs were more likely to have sufficient knowledge on COVID-19 compared to their non-clinical counterparts
Our findings show that HCWs who are employed in community PNFP hospitals in Uganda generally have good knowledge and positive attitudes but poor practices towards

Summary

Introduction

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by the SARS-CoV-2 novel human coronavirus was first reported in December 2019 in Wuhan, China [1,2]. The disease quickly spread to all continents and on 11 March 2020 was declared a global pandemic by the. World Health Organization (WHO) [3]. As of 1 May 2021, 150,110,310 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 3,158,792 deaths, had been reported to the WHO globally [4]. Over 4.5 million confirmed cases including more than 121,000 deaths were in subSaharan Africa. Initially slow to spread in Africa, confirmed cases of COVID-19 on the continent are rising steadily [5]

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Discussion

Conclusion