Knowledge, attitude and practice towards Coronavirus disease 2019 prevention in Ethiopia: Systematic review and meta-analysis

Introduction: Level of knowledge, Attitude and Practice (KAP) of the community towards corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is important to prevent and control the disease . In Ethiopia there are some studies that assess the KAP’s of different segments of the community and reported different results. However, there is limited review evidence that pooled the proportion of KAP of the community to wards COVID-19 prevention and control of the disease in Ethiopia. The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to summarize and pool the proportion of KAP towards COVID-19 prevention and control in general community. Methods: A systematic review and meta-analysis study was conducted to estimate the pooled proportion of Knowledge, Attitude and Practice towards COVID-19 prevention and control in general community. Electronic databases such as PubMed, Google Scholar and Science Direct were searched for studies reported in English language without restricting publication year. The search strategy was used by combining the keywords: “Knowledge”, “Attitude”, “Practice”, “COVID-19”, and “Ethiopia” both in Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) and free text terms. Data was analyzed using STATA version 14. Random effects model meta-analysis was employed to estimate pooled proportion of KAP’s towards COVID-19 in general community Results: Data on 12391 participants which retrived from 26 studies included into this review .The study was pooled to estimate the pooled proportion of knowledge, attitude and practice towards COVID-19 prevention and control in the community. Our meta-analysis revealed that the pooled proportion of good knowledge was 62% (95% CI: 54%-71%), while favorable attitude 64 %( 95% CI: 58%-71%) and prevention practice 44% (95% CI: 32%-56%). Conclusion: Our review indicated that the knowledge, attitude and practice towards COVID-19 prevention and control in general community were considerably insufficient. There are several different factors that affects the level of practice towards COVID-19 prevention. Therefore, collaborative efforts should be made by the government, partners and the media to improve the knowledge,attitude and practice of the general community towards COVID-19 preventive practices.