A Cross Sectional Assessment of Knowledge, Attitude and Practice Towards Hepatitis B Among Female Health Care Workers of Kashmir Valley.

Abstract

Background: Hepatitis B (HB) is a serious global public health problem. This study aims to evaluate Knowledge, Attitude and Practice (KAP) towards Hepatitis B (HB) among female health care workers of Kashmir valley Methods: A cross sectional, descriptive study was undertaken. Around four hundred female multipurpose health care workers (aged 18 years and above) were approached for the study. KAP towards HB was assessed by using a pre validated questionnaire. Descriptive statistics were used for elaborating workers demographic characteristics. Inferential statistics (Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal Wallis test) were used for comparison while Pearson"s correlation was used to identify association between the study variables. All analyses were performed using SPSS 20. Results: Out of 450 distributed questionnaires, 49 were rejected for not correctly filling in the details.401 respondents with the mean age of 28.9 ± 4.3 year. 249 (30.9%) had 10 th grade level of education and 221 (27.4%) had an income 10,001-15,001 per month. Mean scores for knowledge, attitude and practice were 14.15 ± 4.6, 5.42 ± 1.1 and 5.76 ± 1.5 respectively. Significant and positive linear correlations between knowledge-attitude (r = 0.249, p < 0.001) knowledge-practice (r = 0.174, p < 0.001) and attitude-practice (r = 0.134,p < 0.05) were observed. Age was the only variables significantly associated with mean KAP of the study respondents. Conclusion: Results from the current study heighted average KAP of female multipurpose health care workers towards Hepatitis B. The positive linear correlations reaffirms that better knowledge can lead to positive attitude and subsequently in good practices. This will further help in prevention and management of HB. Therefore, extensive health educational campaign should be provided to health care workers, general population and especially to the residents of rural areas.