Knowledge on Monkeypox Among Community in Southern Malaysia: Are We Prepared for The Next Battle?

Abstract

Monkeypox is spreading rapidly in countries around the world, thus requiring the global community to be well prepared in order to prevent the infection from becoming the next global pandemic. The purpose of this study was to assess the knowledge of southern Malaysian community regarding their readiness towards a human monkeypox outbreak in 2022.A cross-sectional study was conducted from 15th August to 30th August 2022 by distributing an online survey link to the entire community in southern Malaysia, which was in Johor. The study measured the knowledge of respondents on 18-item scale and gathered explanatory variables. Two-step logistic regression analysis was utilised to determine the participants’ knowledge of monkeypox. A total of 484 participants were included. With the application of 80% criteria for knowledge domain, 25.8% of them had adequate knowledge. According to the conducted logistic regression, knowledge score is a significant predictor of occupation, education level, and salary (p value <0.01). Knowledge about monkeypox is relatively poor across all categories among communities in Johor. Improving the ability of the communities to respond towards human monkeypox cases and report them to a disease monitoring system will depend on a greater understanding of monkeypox.