Assessment of Knowledge, Attitude and Practice towards Hepatitis B among Clinical Medical Students at Chukwuemeka Odimegwu Ojukwu University Teaching Hospital

Abstract

Hepatitis, a term used to describe liver inflammation has 5 identified strains (A, B, C, D and E). Hepatitis B infection, a disease caused by hepatitis B virus, is a major cause of cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinomas. It is a highly infectious disease that is responsible for numerous deaths worldwide. It is transmitted through contact with infected body fluids like blood, semen, vaginal fluid and mucus membrane. This makes unprotected sex, blood transfusion and perinatal transfusion, the major means of transfusion. Medical students, who are part of health workers, are at greater risk of the infection than the general public. So, this research is to assess the knowledge, attitude and practices of Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University Medical students’ towards hepatitis B. Sample size was estimated based on the findings of knowledge regarding hepatitis B among Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University Teaching Hospital clinical medical students. A self-administered questionnaire that was written in English was used as instrument for data collection in this study. Descriptive analyses followed by normality test using statistical tests like Chi-square and Spearman’s correlation were used to analyze the data. The overall response rate was 86.91%. Out of 352 respondents, 199 (56.5%) were males and the 153 (43.5%) were females, all of which were within the ages of 20 and 40 years. There were significant positive correlation between knowledge and practice towards hepatitis B were 0.81 with P value <0.001 and 0.225 with P value <0.001 respectively. Correlation between attitude and practice towards hepatitis B is 0.312 p-value <0.004, thus, showing that more respondents have more knowledge of hepatitis B. The results showed that the percentages of medical students who knew more about hepatitis B were generally typical. A little over half of the respondents have a good attitude towards the disease.