Abstract:

The knowledge and awareness of the risks associated with Lassa fever (LF) are still shallow in some endemic communities and even among some HCWs. This study aimed to evaluate the awareness and adoption of LF prevention practices in select endemic states of Nigeria vis-à-vis the public health implications. This research was a cross-sectional study with two phases: observation and desk review of other related data from study communities where situation reports from the Federal Ministry of Health and the CDC from 2012-2022 were reviewed and analysed. There was a high level of awareness (95.0%) and knowledge of the risk factors (93.7%) of LF, with gender playing a pivotal role as the females had more awareness likelihood (p<0.05). The age, geographical location, and socio-economic class of the respondents do not have any effect on the awareness of LF (p>0.05). There was no association between gender, age, and geographical location and the risk factor knowledge for LF (p>0.05); however, it showed that the socio-economic class directly affected the risk factors awareness (p<0.05). Gender should be considered in raising LF awareness, channeling effort into improving the socio-economic class of people to increase LF knowledge which will consequently reduce the devastating public health impact.

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