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Awareness, knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors related to COVID-19 in Libya: a nation-wide online survey

INTRODUCTION: the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak to be a global pandemic in March 2020. However, the pandemic cannot be ended overnight and more social distancing and other self-care measures are needed to protect our communities. Therefore, people´s awareness, knowledge, a...

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Autores principales: Jahan, Alhadi, Mohamed, Marwa, Alabani, Eman, Almaziq, Aymaan, Elarriesh, Huda, Alagelli, Fatma, Alhadar, Farag, Ben Tahir, Khadejah, Berrah, Hazar, Abudabbous, Mohammed, Hamouda, Wedad, Albahloul, Najla, Elzoubia, Joma, Dier, Amal
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The African Field Epidemiology Network 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8683462/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34970398
http://dx.doi.org/10.11604/pamj.2021.40.156.29455
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author Jahan, Alhadi
Mohamed, Marwa
Alabani, Eman
Almaziq, Aymaan
Elarriesh, Huda
Alagelli, Fatma
Alhadar, Farag
Ben Tahir, Khadejah
Berrah, Hazar
Abudabbous, Mohammed
Hamouda, Wedad
Albahloul, Najla
Elzoubia, Joma
Dier, Amal
author_facet Jahan, Alhadi
Mohamed, Marwa
Alabani, Eman
Almaziq, Aymaan
Elarriesh, Huda
Alagelli, Fatma
Alhadar, Farag
Ben Tahir, Khadejah
Berrah, Hazar
Abudabbous, Mohammed
Hamouda, Wedad
Albahloul, Najla
Elzoubia, Joma
Dier, Amal
author_sort Jahan, Alhadi
collection PubMed
description INTRODUCTION: the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak to be a global pandemic in March 2020. However, the pandemic cannot be ended overnight and more social distancing and other self-care measures are needed to protect our communities. Therefore, people´s awareness, knowledge, attitudes, and appropriate behaviors are instrumental to containing the pandemic. The aim of this study was to determine COVID-19 awareness, knowledge, attitudes, and related behaviors in Libya. METHODS: a cross-sectional online survey was conducted from October 10(th) to November 10(th), 2020 in 24 cities in Libya. The participants were non-medical professionals who were living in Libya for at least 2 years and were at least 18 years old. RESULTS: a total of 1018 participants completed the questionnaire, with ages ranging from 18-74 years (Mean ± SD = 33.49±13.24); nearly two-thirds were < 40, and 68.2% were females. Almost half of the participants considered the potential threat of COVID-19 to be low, and one in five reported that they were “Not worried at all” about getting COVID-19. In multivariate analyses, participants who were 40-49 years old, had master´s degrees or higher, and worked in the private sector reflected high mean scores for both knowledge and attitudes, while those who lived in the Eastern or Southern regions had lower mean attitude scores. CONCLUSION: the low levels of awareness as well as the attitudes and behaviors among the public in Libya are worrisome. This study highlighted profound gaps that may put Libyan communities at high risk of a COVID-19 explosion. Therefore, immediate action is needed to address public awareness and attitudes and to improve COVID-19 related behaviors among the Libyan public.
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spelling pubmed-86834622021-12-29 Awareness, knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors related to COVID-19 in Libya: a nation-wide online survey Jahan, Alhadi Mohamed, Marwa Alabani, Eman Almaziq, Aymaan Elarriesh, Huda Alagelli, Fatma Alhadar, Farag Ben Tahir, Khadejah Berrah, Hazar Abudabbous, Mohammed Hamouda, Wedad Albahloul, Najla Elzoubia, Joma Dier, Amal Pan Afr Med J Research INTRODUCTION: the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak to be a global pandemic in March 2020. However, the pandemic cannot be ended overnight and more social distancing and other self-care measures are needed to protect our communities. Therefore, people´s awareness, knowledge, attitudes, and appropriate behaviors are instrumental to containing the pandemic. The aim of this study was to determine COVID-19 awareness, knowledge, attitudes, and related behaviors in Libya. METHODS: a cross-sectional online survey was conducted from October 10(th) to November 10(th), 2020 in 24 cities in Libya. The participants were non-medical professionals who were living in Libya for at least 2 years and were at least 18 years old. RESULTS: a total of 1018 participants completed the questionnaire, with ages ranging from 18-74 years (Mean ± SD = 33.49±13.24); nearly two-thirds were < 40, and 68.2% were females. Almost half of the participants considered the potential threat of COVID-19 to be low, and one in five reported that they were “Not worried at all” about getting COVID-19. In multivariate analyses, participants who were 40-49 years old, had master´s degrees or higher, and worked in the private sector reflected high mean scores for both knowledge and attitudes, while those who lived in the Eastern or Southern regions had lower mean attitude scores. CONCLUSION: the low levels of awareness as well as the attitudes and behaviors among the public in Libya are worrisome. This study highlighted profound gaps that may put Libyan communities at high risk of a COVID-19 explosion. Therefore, immediate action is needed to address public awareness and attitudes and to improve COVID-19 related behaviors among the Libyan public. The African Field Epidemiology Network 2021-11-16 /pmc/articles/PMC8683462/ /pubmed/34970398 http://dx.doi.org/10.11604/pamj.2021.40.156.29455 Text en Copyright: Alhadi Jahan et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/The Pan African Medical Journal (ISSN: 1937-8688). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research
Jahan, Alhadi
Mohamed, Marwa
Alabani, Eman
Almaziq, Aymaan
Elarriesh, Huda
Alagelli, Fatma
Alhadar, Farag
Ben Tahir, Khadejah
Berrah, Hazar
Abudabbous, Mohammed
Hamouda, Wedad
Albahloul, Najla
Elzoubia, Joma
Dier, Amal
Awareness, knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors related to COVID-19 in Libya: a nation-wide online survey
title Awareness, knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors related to COVID-19 in Libya: a nation-wide online survey
title_full Awareness, knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors related to COVID-19 in Libya: a nation-wide online survey
title_fullStr Awareness, knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors related to COVID-19 in Libya: a nation-wide online survey
title_full_unstemmed Awareness, knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors related to COVID-19 in Libya: a nation-wide online survey
title_short Awareness, knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors related to COVID-19 in Libya: a nation-wide online survey
title_sort awareness, knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors related to covid-19 in libya: a nation-wide online survey
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8683462/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34970398
http://dx.doi.org/10.11604/pamj.2021.40.156.29455
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