Hepatitis B vaccine knowledge and vaccination status among health care workers of Bahir Dar City Administration, Northwest Ethiopia: a cross sectional study

BACKGROUND: Hepatitis B infection is a major public health problem in Ethiopia. Health care workers are at increased risk of acquiring hepatitis B infection due to occupational exposure. There is effective and safe vaccine against hepatitis B infection. But many health care workers in developing countries are not vaccinated. There is no study in Ethiopia that describes hepatitis B vaccine knowledge and vaccination status of health care workers. Therefore, this study was done to assess hepatitis B vaccination status and knowledge among health care workers’ of Bahir Dar city administration, Northwest Ethiopia. METHODS: Institution based cross sectional study design was employed from April 1 to 30, 2012. All healthcare workers who were working in Health care facilities of Bahir Dar city administration were the study populations. A total of 374 health care workers were included in the study. Simple random sampling technique was used to select eligible study participants from the list of health care workers. Self administered questionnaire was used to collect data. The completeness of questionnaires was checked every day by facilitators and principal investigators. Data were entered and analyzed with statistical package for social sciences version 16.0 software. RESULT: In this study, 64.7% of respondents perceived their risk of acquiring hepatitis B infection very high or high. Only 52% of the respondents were knowledgeable about hepatitis B infection. In this study, only 62% of health care workers were knowledgeable about hepatitis B vaccine. From the total of 370 respondents, only 20(5.4%) reported that they took three or more doses of hepatitis B vaccine. CONCLUSION: Hepatitis B vaccination status of health care workers in the study area was low. Health care workers’ knowledge about hepatitis B infection and hepatitis B vaccine was also low as all health care workers should be knowledgeable.