Community’s Knowledge, Attitude and Practice on Rabies and Retrospective Survey on the Disease in Jimma Zone, South Western Ethiopia
Konjit Samirew *
School of Veterinary medicine, Jimma University college of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine, Ethiopia.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Rabies is a widely distributed viral zoonotic disease of major public health importance that affects human, domestic and wild animals. The public awareness play important role in preventing this fatal disease. A cross sectional and retrospective studies were conducted from May, 2018- July, 2019 in Limu Kosa District, Jimma Zone, And South West Ethiopia. To assess the knowledge, attitude and practice of community on rabies and retrospective study of the disease A multistage sampling procedure was employed to select 250 respondents, data were collected from respondent by face to face interview and retrospective data was collected from registered casebook. Data was cleaned, coded and entered for analysis by SPSS version 23. The frequency distribution of both dependent and independent variables were worked out by using descriptive statics techniques (frequencies and percentage). Association between independent variables and knowledge, attitudes and practices scores on rabies was calculated using multi vareiabelogistic regression. Out of 250 respondents, males were 76.4% and 72.4% were rural. The majority of the respondents 191(76.4%) were Muslims. All of the respondents 250 (100%) were heard of rabies .However; most of the respondents have misunderstanding on the cause, incubation period and mode of transmission of rabies. Residence, sex and educational status of the respondents were the variables found to be significantly associated with Knowledge on rabies. Education has statistically significant association with knowledge, attitude and practice score. The retrospective review result indicated that 344 peoples that were bitten/infected by rabies suspected animals within the period of 2015-2018 were received anti-rabies post exposure vaccine. Majority of these cases were among males (222/344, 64.5%) and children under 15 years of age (163/344, 47 .4%). Generally, in the study area, there is a lack of awareness on KAP of rabies. Therefore, different NGO, government bodies, Veterinarians and health professionals should be prepare and deliver continuous and strategic community awareness programmes on prevention and control of rabies in the study area
Keywords: Attitude, knowledge, practice, rabies, retrospective, Limu Kosa district