Knowledge, attitude, and practice towards COVID-19 among chronic disease patients at Aksum Hospital, Northern Ethiopia, 2020: a cross-sectional study

Iyasu et al. Asthma Research and Practice https://doi.org/10.1186/s40733-021-00074-0 (2021) 7:8 RESEARCH Open Access Knowledge, attitude, and practice towards COVID-19 among chronic disease patients at Aksum Hospital, Northern Ethiopia, 2020: a cross-sectional study Assefa Iyasu* , Berihu Hailu Kidanu and Kidane Zereabruk Abstract Background: The Coronavirus disease 2019 outbreak is the first reported case in Wuhan, China in December 2019 and suddenly became a major global health concern. Currently, there is no vaccine and treatment have been reported. The aim of this study was to assess the knowledge, attitude, and practice of COVID-19 among chronic disease patients. Methods: A hospital-based cross-sectional study was conducted among 422 chronic disease patients from July 01 to August 30, 2020 at Aksum Hospital, Northern Ethiopia. Both bivariable and multivariable logistic regression analyses with 95% confidence intervals were fitted to identify factors associated with poor knowledge and practice towards COVID-19. The adjusted odds ratio (AOR) was used to determine the prevalence of the association between the dependent and independent variables. A P-value < 0.05 was identified as statistically significant. Results: A total of 422 participants participated in this study, with a 100% response rate. The prevalence of poor knowledge, poor practice and unfavorable attitude was 35.1, 48.8, and 40.5%, respectively. Age (AOR = 1.5, 95% CI: (1.411, 2.432)), educational status of “can’t read and write” (AOR = 1.4, 95% CI: (1.332, 9.612)), and rural residence (AOR = 3.12, 95% CI: (2.568, 11.532)) were significantly associated with poor knowledge. Educational status of “can’t read and write” (AOR = 2.7, 95% CI (1.03–7.29)), and rural residence (AOR = 2.7, 95% CI (1.09–6.70)) were significantly associated with poor practice. Conclusions: The prevalence of poor knowledge and poor practice among chronic disease patients were high. Rural residence and educational status with “can not read and write” were significantly associated with poor knowledge and poor practice. Older age was significantly associated with poor knowledge. Keywords: COVID-19, Knowledge, Attitude, Practice, Chronic disease * Correspondence: School of Nursing, Aksum University, PO. box 298, Aksum City, Tigray, Ethiopia © The Author(s). 2021 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. Iyasu et al. Asthma Research and Practice (2021) 7:8 Introduction An outbreak of pneumonia caused by a novel coronavirus occurred in Wuhan, Hubei province, in December 2019 and has spread rapidly throughout China [1]. On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern and on February 12, 2020, the WHO named the disease caused by the novel coronavirus “coronavirus disease 2019” (COVID-19) [2]. The current COVID-19 pneumonia pandemic, caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is spreading globally at an accelerated rate [3]. Six months after the outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan City, China, and about three months after the WHO declared it a pandemic, the disease had infected nearly 8 million people and killed more than 433 thousand globally [4]. Because of the high volume of air traffic and trade between China and Africa, Africa is at a high risk for the introduction and spread of COVID-19 [5]; although only Egypt has reported the first case on Feb 14, 2020 [6]. By June 30, 2020, approximately 16.3 million people in Africa will contract COVID-19 [7]. On 13 March, 2020, Ethiopia confirmed its first case of COVID-19 and on 26 June, 2020, tested 237,464 suspects, of whom 5425 (2.3%) cases had been confirmed positive and Outof the confirmed positive about 89 (1.6%) died and 1688 (31.1%) recovered [8]. Most of the fatal cases and severe illnesses like acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) occur in aged and people who have underlying medical co-morbidities like diabetes, cancer, hypertension, heart, lung, and kidney diseases [9]. The spread of COVID-19 is still alarmingly increasing from day to day and is not controlled, even though there is health promotion, including hand washing and social distancing. Poor understanding of the disease among the community enhances the spread of infection and death. Therefore, successful prevention and minimization of morbidity and mortality due to COVID-19 require changing the behavior, which is influenced by individuals knowledge and attitude [10]. Therefore, understanding the “high-risk” groups, especially those with chronic disease, knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) and possible risk factors is necessary and helps to anticipate the outcomes of planned behavior on COVID-19. Thus, this study aimed to determine the KAP towards COVID-19 and associated factors of poor knowledge and practice among chronic disease patients at Aksum Hospital. The results of this study in the early stages of the pandemic may help to direct the efforts and plans of public health authorities, clinicians, and the media of the country for better and timely control of COVID-19. Page 2 of 9 Methods Study setting and period A hospital-based cross-sectional study was conducted from July 01 to August 30, 2020, at Aksum Hospital in Aksum Town, Northern Ethiopia. Source and study population All patients with chronic diseases (hypertension, diabetes mellitus, heart disease, chronic lung disease, and other diseases) who attended the chronic disease follow-up clinics at Aksum Hospital were the sources of population, while all patients with chronic diseases who attended the chronic disease follow-up clinics at Aksum Hospital during the study period were the study population. Inclusion and exclusion criteria All chronic disease patients whose aged greater than 18 years who were on follow-up at the hospital during the study period were included whereas critically ill or had cognitive impairment and health profession (...truncated)