A cross sectional assessment of knowledge, attitude and practice towards Hepatitis B among healthy population of Quetta, Pakistan

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 healthy population of Quetta city, Pakistan METHODS: A cross sectional, descriptive study was undertaken. One thousand healthy individuals (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 patients' demographic characteristics. Inferential statistics (Mann--Whitney U test and Kruskal Wallis test) were used for comparison while Spearman's rho correlation was used to identify association between the study variables. All analyses were performed using SPSS 16.0. RESULTS: Out of 1000 distributed questionnaires, 780 were returned with a response rate of 78.0%. Four hundred and twenty (53.8%) respondents were male with mean age of 32.76 [PLUS-MINUS SIGN] 9.40 year. Two hundred and eight (26.7%) had intermediate level of education and 354 (45.4%) were unemployed. Mean scores for knowledge, attitude and practice were 8.74 [PLUS-MINUS SIGN] 2.7, 3.72 [PLUS-MINUS SIGN] 1.2 and 2.76 [PLUS-MINUS SIGN] 1.1 respectively. Significant and positive linear correlations between knowledge-attitude (r = 0.296, p < 0.01) knowledge-practice (r = 0.324, p < 0.01) and attitude-practice (r = 0.331, p < 0.01) were observed. Area of residence (locality) was the only variables significantly associated with mean KAP of the study respondents. CONCLUSION: Results from the current study heighted poor KAP of healthy population towards HB. 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 general population and especially to the residents of rural areas.