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Community awareness of stroke in Accra, Ghana

BACKGROUND: Community awareness of stroke, especially the risk factors and warning signs is important in the control of the disease. In sub-Saharan Africa, little is known about community awareness of stroke though the brunt of stroke is currently borne in this region. The aim of the study was to ev...

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Autores principales: Donkor, Eric S, Owolabi, Mayowa O, Bampoh, Patrick, Aspelund, Thor, Gudnason, Vilmundur
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3943505/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24559414
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-14-196
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author Donkor, Eric S
Owolabi, Mayowa O
Bampoh, Patrick
Aspelund, Thor
Gudnason, Vilmundur
author_facet Donkor, Eric S
Owolabi, Mayowa O
Bampoh, Patrick
Aspelund, Thor
Gudnason, Vilmundur
author_sort Donkor, Eric S
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Community awareness of stroke, especially the risk factors and warning signs is important in the control of the disease. In sub-Saharan Africa, little is known about community awareness of stroke though the brunt of stroke is currently borne in this region. The aim of the study was to evaluate stroke awareness in Accra (capital city of Ghana) particularly, the risk factors and warning signs. METHODS: This was a cross-sectional study involving systematic sampling of 63 households in each of the 11 sub metropolitan areas of Accra. A structured questionnaire was used to collect stroke awareness data from respondents randomly sampled in the selected households. Logistic regression analyses were done to identify predictors of the main outcome variables including recognition of stroke risk factors, stroke warning signs and the organ affected by stroke. RESULTS: Only 40% (n = 277) of the 693 respondents correctly identified the brain as the organ affected in stroke. Similarly, less than half of the respondents could recognize any of the established stroke risk factors as well as any of the established stroke warning signs. Over 70% (n > 485) of the respondents either believed that stroke is a preventable disease, or lifestyle alterations can be made to reduce the risk of stroke, or stroke requires emergency treatment. In multivariate analysis, predictors of stroke awareness were: age <50 years (OR = 0.56, CI = 0.35-0.92, p = 0.021), presence of a stroke risk factor (OR = 2.37, CI = 1.52-3.71, p < 0.001) and Christian Religion (OR = 14.86, CI = 1.37-161.01, p = 0.03). CONCLUSION: Though stroke is perceived as a serious and preventable disease in Accra, community awareness of the risk factors and warning signs is sub-optimal. This indicates that community-based education programs to increase public awareness of stroke could contribute to decreasing the risk of stroke and to increasing the speed of hospital presentation after stroke onset.
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spelling pubmed-39435052014-03-06 Community awareness of stroke in Accra, Ghana Donkor, Eric S Owolabi, Mayowa O Bampoh, Patrick Aspelund, Thor Gudnason, Vilmundur BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: Community awareness of stroke, especially the risk factors and warning signs is important in the control of the disease. In sub-Saharan Africa, little is known about community awareness of stroke though the brunt of stroke is currently borne in this region. The aim of the study was to evaluate stroke awareness in Accra (capital city of Ghana) particularly, the risk factors and warning signs. METHODS: This was a cross-sectional study involving systematic sampling of 63 households in each of the 11 sub metropolitan areas of Accra. A structured questionnaire was used to collect stroke awareness data from respondents randomly sampled in the selected households. Logistic regression analyses were done to identify predictors of the main outcome variables including recognition of stroke risk factors, stroke warning signs and the organ affected by stroke. RESULTS: Only 40% (n = 277) of the 693 respondents correctly identified the brain as the organ affected in stroke. Similarly, less than half of the respondents could recognize any of the established stroke risk factors as well as any of the established stroke warning signs. Over 70% (n > 485) of the respondents either believed that stroke is a preventable disease, or lifestyle alterations can be made to reduce the risk of stroke, or stroke requires emergency treatment. In multivariate analysis, predictors of stroke awareness were: age <50 years (OR = 0.56, CI = 0.35-0.92, p = 0.021), presence of a stroke risk factor (OR = 2.37, CI = 1.52-3.71, p < 0.001) and Christian Religion (OR = 14.86, CI = 1.37-161.01, p = 0.03). CONCLUSION: Though stroke is perceived as a serious and preventable disease in Accra, community awareness of the risk factors and warning signs is sub-optimal. This indicates that community-based education programs to increase public awareness of stroke could contribute to decreasing the risk of stroke and to increasing the speed of hospital presentation after stroke onset. BioMed Central 2014-02-21 /pmc/articles/PMC3943505/ /pubmed/24559414 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-14-196 Text en Copyright © 2014 Donkor et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Donkor, Eric S
Owolabi, Mayowa O
Bampoh, Patrick
Aspelund, Thor
Gudnason, Vilmundur
Community awareness of stroke in Accra, Ghana
title Community awareness of stroke in Accra, Ghana
title_full Community awareness of stroke in Accra, Ghana
title_fullStr Community awareness of stroke in Accra, Ghana
title_full_unstemmed Community awareness of stroke in Accra, Ghana
title_short Community awareness of stroke in Accra, Ghana
title_sort community awareness of stroke in accra, ghana
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3943505/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24559414
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-14-196
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