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Performance of general health workers in leprosy control activities at public health facilities in Amhara and Oromia States, Ethiopia

BACKGROUND: Leprosy is a chronic infectious disease of public health importance and one of the leading causes of permanent physical disability. Nevertheless, the drop in prevalence following multidrug therapy has resulted in the neglect of leprosy. The annual incidence of leprosy has remained the sa...

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Autores principales: Abeje, Tadiye, Negera, Edessa, Kebede, Eshetu, Hailu, Tsegaye, Hassen, Ismaile, Lema, Tsehainesh, Yamuah, Lawrence, Shiguti, Birru, Fenta, Melkamu, Negasa, Megersa, Beyene, Demissew, Bobosha, Kidist, Aseffa, Abraham
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4823854/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27052558
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12913-016-1329-2
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author Abeje, Tadiye
Negera, Edessa
Kebede, Eshetu
Hailu, Tsegaye
Hassen, Ismaile
Lema, Tsehainesh
Yamuah, Lawrence
Shiguti, Birru
Fenta, Melkamu
Negasa, Megersa
Beyene, Demissew
Bobosha, Kidist
Aseffa, Abraham
author_facet Abeje, Tadiye
Negera, Edessa
Kebede, Eshetu
Hailu, Tsegaye
Hassen, Ismaile
Lema, Tsehainesh
Yamuah, Lawrence
Shiguti, Birru
Fenta, Melkamu
Negasa, Megersa
Beyene, Demissew
Bobosha, Kidist
Aseffa, Abraham
author_sort Abeje, Tadiye
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Leprosy is a chronic infectious disease of public health importance and one of the leading causes of permanent physical disability. Nevertheless, the drop in prevalence following multidrug therapy has resulted in the neglect of leprosy. The annual incidence of leprosy has remained the same in Ethiopia since decades with more than 76 % of the reported new cases coming from Oromia and Amhara Regional States. This study was aimed to assess the knowledge, attitude and skill of general health workers in leprosy control activities at public health facilities in Oromia and Amhara Regional States. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted from September 2011 to February 2012 at different public health facilities in selected eight zones in Oromia and Amhara Regional States. A multistage sampling method was used to obtain representative samples. High and low endemic zones for leprosy were included in the study in both regional states. Data were collected from general health workers through a structured self-administered questionnaire and at on-site assessment of their performance. Baseline socio-demographic data, health workers’ attitude towards leprosy and their knowledge and skill in the management of leprosy were assessed. Bloom’s cut off point was used to describe the knowledge and practical skills of the respondents while Likert’s scale was used for attitude assessment. RESULT: A total of 601 general health workers responsible for leprosy control activities at public health facilities were included in knowledge and attitude assessment and 83 of them were subjected to practical evaluation, with on-site observation of how they handle leprosy patients. These included medical doctors (4 %), health officers and nurses with Bachelor degree in Science (27 %), clinical nurses with diploma (66 %) and health assistants (2.8 %). The median age of the respondents was 26.0 years and females made up of 45 %. Generally the knowledge and skills of the respondents were found to be poor while attitude towards leprosy was positive for the majority of the respondents. The result showed that 519 (86.3 %) had poor knowledge. Overall 155 (25.8 %) of the respondents had positive attitude towards leprosy while 205 (34.1 %) had intermediate (mixed) attitude and 241 (40.1 %) had negative attitude to the disease. Among 83 respondents assessed for diagnosis of leprosy only 15(18.0 %) diagnosed leprosy correctly. Variation in knowledge and attitude indicated a significant difference (p < 0.05) among different health institutions, professions, gender, in-service training and years of experience. CONCLUSION: The current finding underlines that although leprosy control activities are integrated to the general health services in the country, the knowledge and skills of leprosy diagnosis, treatment and management by health workers was unsatisfactory. Hence, attention should be given to develop training strategies that can improve health worker knowledge and promote better leprosy management at public health facilities. This could be achieved through pre-service and in-service training and giving adequate emphasis to leprosy related practical work and continuous follow- up.
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spelling pubmed-48238542016-04-08 Performance of general health workers in leprosy control activities at public health facilities in Amhara and Oromia States, Ethiopia Abeje, Tadiye Negera, Edessa Kebede, Eshetu Hailu, Tsegaye Hassen, Ismaile Lema, Tsehainesh Yamuah, Lawrence Shiguti, Birru Fenta, Melkamu Negasa, Megersa Beyene, Demissew Bobosha, Kidist Aseffa, Abraham BMC Health Serv Res Research Article BACKGROUND: Leprosy is a chronic infectious disease of public health importance and one of the leading causes of permanent physical disability. Nevertheless, the drop in prevalence following multidrug therapy has resulted in the neglect of leprosy. The annual incidence of leprosy has remained the same in Ethiopia since decades with more than 76 % of the reported new cases coming from Oromia and Amhara Regional States. This study was aimed to assess the knowledge, attitude and skill of general health workers in leprosy control activities at public health facilities in Oromia and Amhara Regional States. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted from September 2011 to February 2012 at different public health facilities in selected eight zones in Oromia and Amhara Regional States. A multistage sampling method was used to obtain representative samples. High and low endemic zones for leprosy were included in the study in both regional states. Data were collected from general health workers through a structured self-administered questionnaire and at on-site assessment of their performance. Baseline socio-demographic data, health workers’ attitude towards leprosy and their knowledge and skill in the management of leprosy were assessed. Bloom’s cut off point was used to describe the knowledge and practical skills of the respondents while Likert’s scale was used for attitude assessment. RESULT: A total of 601 general health workers responsible for leprosy control activities at public health facilities were included in knowledge and attitude assessment and 83 of them were subjected to practical evaluation, with on-site observation of how they handle leprosy patients. These included medical doctors (4 %), health officers and nurses with Bachelor degree in Science (27 %), clinical nurses with diploma (66 %) and health assistants (2.8 %). The median age of the respondents was 26.0 years and females made up of 45 %. Generally the knowledge and skills of the respondents were found to be poor while attitude towards leprosy was positive for the majority of the respondents. The result showed that 519 (86.3 %) had poor knowledge. Overall 155 (25.8 %) of the respondents had positive attitude towards leprosy while 205 (34.1 %) had intermediate (mixed) attitude and 241 (40.1 %) had negative attitude to the disease. Among 83 respondents assessed for diagnosis of leprosy only 15(18.0 %) diagnosed leprosy correctly. Variation in knowledge and attitude indicated a significant difference (p < 0.05) among different health institutions, professions, gender, in-service training and years of experience. CONCLUSION: The current finding underlines that although leprosy control activities are integrated to the general health services in the country, the knowledge and skills of leprosy diagnosis, treatment and management by health workers was unsatisfactory. Hence, attention should be given to develop training strategies that can improve health worker knowledge and promote better leprosy management at public health facilities. This could be achieved through pre-service and in-service training and giving adequate emphasis to leprosy related practical work and continuous follow- up. BioMed Central 2016-04-07 /pmc/articles/PMC4823854/ /pubmed/27052558 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12913-016-1329-2 Text en © Abeje et al. 2016 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. 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
Abeje, Tadiye
Negera, Edessa
Kebede, Eshetu
Hailu, Tsegaye
Hassen, Ismaile
Lema, Tsehainesh
Yamuah, Lawrence
Shiguti, Birru
Fenta, Melkamu
Negasa, Megersa
Beyene, Demissew
Bobosha, Kidist
Aseffa, Abraham
Performance of general health workers in leprosy control activities at public health facilities in Amhara and Oromia States, Ethiopia
title Performance of general health workers in leprosy control activities at public health facilities in Amhara and Oromia States, Ethiopia
title_full Performance of general health workers in leprosy control activities at public health facilities in Amhara and Oromia States, Ethiopia
title_fullStr Performance of general health workers in leprosy control activities at public health facilities in Amhara and Oromia States, Ethiopia
title_full_unstemmed Performance of general health workers in leprosy control activities at public health facilities in Amhara and Oromia States, Ethiopia
title_short Performance of general health workers in leprosy control activities at public health facilities in Amhara and Oromia States, Ethiopia
title_sort performance of general health workers in leprosy control activities at public health facilities in amhara and oromia states, ethiopia
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4823854/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27052558
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12913-016-1329-2
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