Knowledge, attitude, and preventive practices toward rodent-borne diseases in Ngorongoro district, Tanzania

Journal of Public Health in Africa

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Knowledge, attitude, and preventive practices toward rodent-borne diseases in Ngorongoro district, Tanzania
 
Creator Issae, Amina Chengula, Augustino Kicheleri, Rose Kasanga, Christopher Katakweba, Abdul
 
Subject — knowledge; attitude; practice; rodents; diseases; humanwildlife; Ngorongoro
Description In addition to their economic significance, rodents are hosts and transmit diseases. Most of rodent-borne diseases are endemic in rural Africa and sporadically lead to epidemics. Ngorongoro district is inhabited by humans, livestock, and wild animals. Therefore, a cross-sectional study was conducted to assess the level of knowledge, attitudes, and practices toward rodent-borne diseases among communities. The study used 3 focus groups, 20 key informant interviews, and the questionnaire (N=352) to collect data. The study found that 8.52% of respondents had good knowledge, 35.5% had a positive attitude and 94.3% had good practices toward rodent-borne diseases. The study revealed that only 28.13% of participants were aware of rodent-borne zoonoses. The majority of them (77.27%) believe that rodents are pests that destroy crops and do not transmit pathogens. Moreover, the results showed that the majority of them (82.9%) live in dilapidated huts that serve as rodent breeding places. Additionally, except for education and religion, the level of knowledge had no significant relationship with most of the participants’ demographic variables. When compared to individuals who didn’t attend school, those with secondary education (OR=7.96, CI=1.4-45.31, P=0.017) had greater knowledge of rodent-borne diseases and management. Similarly, to how attitude and practice were found to be considerably (r=0.3216, P=0.000) positively correlated, general knowledge and general practice scores were found to be significantly (r=0.1608, P=0.002) positively correlated. Despite showing good practices, the communities still lack knowledge of rodent-borne zoonosis. Rodent-borne disease education should be considered in Ngorongoro and other places.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor
Date 2023-06-21
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — —
Format text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4081/jphia.2023.2385
 
Source Journal of Public Health in Africa; Vol 14, No 6 (2023); 10 2038-9930 2038-9922
 
Language eng
 
Relation
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https://publichealthinafrica.org/index.php/jphia/article/view/152/199 https://publichealthinafrica.org/index.php/jphia/article/view/152/200
 
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Rights Copyright (c) 2024 Amina Issae, Augustino Chengula, Rose Kicheleri, Christopher Kasanga, Abdul Katakweba https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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