ORIGINAL ARTICLES Knowledge of Healthcare Professionals on Hepatitis B Virus Infection and Vaccination Uptake in a Tertiary Hospital in Nigeria

West Afr J Med . 2023 Aug 28;40(8):808-813.

Abstract

Abstract  in English, French

Background/objectives: Healthcare professionals (HCPs) play a key role in the prevention of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. HCPs are expected to have adequate basic knowledge of HBV and readily uptake HBV vaccination as they are a high-risk group, especially those that have direct contact with blood and/or blood products. This study was aimed at assessing the knowledge of and vaccination uptake of HBV among HCPs in a Nigerian tertiary hospital.

Methods: This was a cross-sectional study in which self-administered questionnaires were used to obtain data from different categories of HCPs in a tertiary hospital. The associations between categorical variables were tested using Chi-square test and a P value of 0.05 or less was considered significant.

Results: A total of 355 HCPs comprising 149 medical doctors, 180 nurses and 26 laboratory scientists participated in the study. Majority (90.0%) of the respondents correctly identified blood and/or blood products transfusion, needle stick injury, sharing of sharps and vertical transmission as routes of HBV transmission. About 83.4% of the participants were aware that HBV could be transmitted through unprotected sex. However, 39.2% and 15.8% of the participants reported kissing and HBV vaccination as routes of transmission, respectively. Their knowledge and uptake of HBV vaccination was, however, good.

Conclusion: While majority of the HCPs had good knowledge of the routes of HBV transmission, few still had misconceptions about the routes of transmission, a situation which may cause social discord in the society especially among closely related individuals and potentially result in poor uptake of the highly effective HBV vaccine.

Keywords: Healthcare Professionals; Hepatitis B virus; Knowledge; Vaccination.

S T Suleiman ¹, M K Ogunfemi ², M O Bojuwoye ³, K O Omokanye ², A H Bello ⁴, S O Idris ⁵, A Ahmed ⁶, J O Oni ⁷, J Imran ⁸, C I Oyewopo ⁷