Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices related to COVID-19 among People in Kurdistan Region of Iraq: A Cross-Sectional Survey
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15218/ejnm.2022.03Keywords:
COVID-19, Knowledge, Attitude, Practice, Kurdistan RegionAbstract
Background and objective: COVID-19 illness is a serious public health concern worldwide. The people in Iraqi Kurdistan have little knowledge about Coronaviruses. It was noticed that in the Kurdistan Region, the COVID-19 infection was not dealt with as required in terms of knowledge, attitudes, and practice. This study aimed to identify the level of knowledge and attitudes of Kurdish people in addition to their practices concerning COVID-19.
Methods: This study adopted an online cross-sectional survey design and was conducted from March 23 to April 2, 2020, to collect data from Iraqi Kurdistan Region citizens who were asked about their knowledge, attitudes, and practices related to COVID-19.
Results: The majority of the study participants were young and male (62.5%). Most respondents (92.9%) were optimistic that the government could take necessary procedures to reduce the risks of COVID-19 infection. Less than half of the participants wore masks and gloves when they left home (41.4%, 45.1% males and females respectively). Most of the participants had good knowledge (74%), and good practice (64.6%), and the vast majority had a positive attitude (98.1%) concerning COVID-19.
Conclusions: Less than half of the participants who got engaged in this study wore masks and gloves whenever they went out. Hereby, the participants are to be provided with an extensive health education program so they can increase their awareness of COVID-19 infection.
Metrics
References
Zhong B, Luo W, Li H, Zhong Q, Liu X, Li W, et al. Knowledge, attitudes, and practices to-wards COVID-19 among Chinese residents during the rapid rise period of the COVID-19 outbreak: a quick online cross-sectional sur-vey. International Journal of Biological Sci-ences. 2020;16(10):1745-52
Riou J, Althaus CL. The pattern of early hu-man-to-human transmission of Wuhan 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) from Decem-ber 2019 to January 2020. Euro Surveill. 2020:25(4):1-5.
Chan JF, Yuan Sh, Kok KH, To K, Chu H, Yang J, et al. A familial cluster of pneumo-nia associated with the 2019 novel corona-virus indicating person-to-person trans-mission: a study of a family cluster. Lancet. 2020; 395(10223):514-23.
Chen N, Zhou M, Dong X, Qu J, Gong F, Han Y, et al. Epidemiological and clinical characteristics of 99 cases of 2019 novel coronavirus pneumonia in Wuhan, China: a descriptive study. Lancet. 2020; 395(10223):507-13.
World Health Organization. Country and technical guidance - coronavirus disease (COVID-19). 2020. Available from: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/technical-guidance
Phan LT, Nguyen TV, Luong QC, Nguyen TV, Nguyen HT. Importation and human-to-human transmission of a novel corona-virus in Vietnam. The new England journal of medicine. 2020; 382(9):872-4.
Cao J, Hu X, Cheng W, Yu L, Tu WJ, Liu Q. Clinical features and short-term outcomes of 18 patients with coronavirus disease 2019 in the intensive care unit. Intensive Care Medicine. 2020: 98(2):1-3.
World Health Organization. Coronavirus disease (COVID-2019) situation reports. 2020. Available from: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019?gclid=CjwKCAjw_D3BRBIEiwAjVMy7HtM_P8XKlBMrE_eAsnfO6dxREWViKSTkQ6UuXp1UJb0b7pL7z-S5hoCyWkQAvD_BwE
Leung K, Wu JT, Liu D, Leung GM. First-wave COVID-19 transmissibility and severi-ty in China outside Hubei after control measures, and second-wave scenario plan-ning: a modelling impact assessment. Lan-cet. 2020; 395(10233):1382-93.
Azlan AA, Hamzah MR, Sern TJ, Ayub SH, Mohamad E. Public knowledge, attitudes and practices towards COVID-19: A cross-sectional study in Malaysia. Plos one. 2020; 15(5):1-15.
Podder D, Paul B, Dasgupta A, Bandyo-padhyay L, Pal A, Roy S. Community per-ception and risk reduction practices to-ward malaria and dengue: A mixed-method study in slums of Chetla, Kolkata. Indian Journal of Public Health. 2019; 63(3):178-85.
Kurdistan Regional Government. What you should know Coronavirus (COVID19). 2020. Available from: https://gov.krd/coronavirus-en/situation-update/
Chirwa GC. “Who knows more, and why?” Explaining socioeconomic-related inequality in knowledge about HIV in Malawi. Scientific African. 2020; 7(e00213)1-15.
RAOSOFT. Sample Size Calculator 2020. In-ternet. The software; 2020, Available from: http://www.raosoft.com/samplesize.html.
European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (COVID-19). Questions and answers on COVID-19. 2020. Available from: https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/COVID-19/questions-answers
Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Coronavirus (COVID-19). 2020. Available from: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nCoV/index.html.
World Health Organization. Coronavirus dis-ease (COVID-19). 2020. [cited 2020 March 16]; Available from: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/question-and-answers-hub/q-a-detail/q-a-coronaviruses
Cronbach’s Alpha. Statistics solution ad-vancement through clarity. The Scale; 2020. Available from: https://www.statisticssolutions.com/cronbachs-alpha/#:~:text=The%20general%20rule%20of%20thumb,90%20and%20above%20is%20best
Kurdistan Region Government. COVID-19 in the Kurdistan Region. 2020. Available from: https://gov.krd/coronavirus-en/dashboard/
Al-Hanawi MK, Angawi Kh, Alshareef N, Qattan AM, Helmy HZ, Abudawood Y, et al. Knowledge, Attitude and Practice Toward COVID-19 Among the Public in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: A Cross-Sectional Study. Front Public Health. 2020;8(217)1-10.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Shalaw Faris Ahmed, Dara Abdulla Al-Banna, Jamal Kareem Shakor, Sairan Khurshed Nariman, Ari Ahmed Taha (Author)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.