Knowledge, attitude and practice towards COVID-19 among reproductive age women in Debre Tabor Town, Northwest, Ethiopia, 2020. A community based cross sectional study

Abstract

Background Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Corona virus and a novel corona virus, Wuhan China have raised great public health concern globally. The virus is zoonotic which has a tendency to be transmitted between animal to human and human to human. The major route of transmission of COVID-19 is droplet and close contact and has an incubation period of 2-14 days. To date, no antiviral treatment or vaccine has been explicitly recommended for COVID-19. Objective The aim of this study was to asses knowledge, attitude and practice of COVID-19 among reproductive age women in Debre Tabor Town, North West Ethiopia, 2020. Methods This cross-sectional study was conducted from June 1 to June 25, 2020. A total of 660 women in Debre Tabor Town were included. The study participants were selected using simple random sampling technique from the study population. The collected data were checked for completeness. The data were entered and cleaned using EpiData version 4.2 then exported to SPSS version 23 for analysis. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the status of knowledge, attitude and practices. Results Six hundred sixty women participated in the study with a response rate of 100%. Among these, 48.8%, 52.1% and 30% of respondents had good knowledge, positive attitude and good practice about COVID-19 respectively. The mean age of the respondents was 31.3 (SD ±6.241) with a range of 15– 49 years. Conclusion The overall knowledge, attitude and practice in the study area is very low. COVID-19 risk communication and public education efforts should focus on building an appropriate level of knowledge while enhancing the adoption of recommended self-care practices with special emphasis on high-risk audience segments.