Knowledge, Attitude and Prevention of Lassa fever among Primary School Teachers in Ondo State

The study explained the knowledge, attitude and prevention of Lassa fever among primary school teachers in  Ondo state. Lassa fever is viral haemorrhagic fever, an animal borne viral illness of 2-21 days incubation period.  The signs and symptoms of Lassa fever include high fever, sore throat, general muscle pains, cough, vomiting,  bloody diarrhoea, stomach pain, swollen face, eyes and neck, bleeding from orifices like nose, mouth, ears, eyes  and other body openings. Lassa fever infection is associated with personal and environmental hygiene. The research design for this study is descriptive cross sectional  Survey method. The population for the study comprises of all primary school teachers in Ondo state. The samples  for the study were 300 primary school teachers in all the primary school in Ondo state using simple random  sampling technique. The instrument for the study was self developed questionnaire with validity index of 0.87.The  data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics for all the research, questions and inferential statistics for  all hypotheses and same tested at 0.05 level of significant. It was revealed that they have good knowledge of Lassa  fever in terms of its courses, causes, signs and symptoms. The respondent had good knowledge towards the  prevention of the disease. The respondent had good positive attitude towards precautionary measures and poor  attitude towards fumigation of premises for prevention of Lassa fever. Lassa is associated with personal and  environmental sanitation with the r-cal of 0.71 is greater than r-tab at 0.40 level of significance. It was equally  recommended that there should be periodic fumigation of premises to combat the spread of Lassa fever.

Keywords: knowledge, attitude, prevention, fumigation, awareness, safety precautions.