Epilepsy and Education in developing countries: a survey of school teachers’ knowledge about epilepsy and their attitude towards students with epilepsy in Northwestern Nigeria

INTRODUCTION: Students living with epilepsy still find themselves confronted with social barriers that prevent them from academic achievements. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to evaluate knowledge and attitudes of school teachers and to determine the factors associated with good knowledge and positive attitude among nursery, primary and secondary school teachers in Kano, Northwestern Nigeria. METHODS: A 20-item validated semi-structured questionnaire was self-administered to 200 teachers, selected through multistage sampling technique, in Kano, Northwestern Nigeria. RESULTS: The respondents comprised 124 (62%) males and 76(38%) females. Their age ranged between 17 and 55 with a median age of 26 years. All the respondents have heard or read about epilepsy, 13% have had students with epilepsy in their classes before, fifty one (25.5%) of them would object to having an epileptic child in their class. To one hundred and seventy one (85.5%) all seizures were convulsive, 81% of them admitted to not havingadequate knowledge of the initial procedure should their student develop epileptic seizure, 60% believed that epileptic student should be separated from non-epileptic students in the classroom and 44.5% of them preferred alternative medicine. Overall, fifty nine (29.5%) teachers had fair to good knowledge about epilepsy. and one hundred and sixty four (82%) had positive attitude to students with epilepsy. Statistically significant association was found between level of education attained by the respondents and good knowledge about epilepsy as well as between female gender and good attitude. However, none of the variables was statistically significant predictor of knowledge or attitude among the respondents. CONCLUSION: There was low level of knowledge and misconceptions about epilepsy but fair attitude towards epileptic students in Northwestern Nigeria. Higher level of education of the teachers was significantly associated with good attitude.