Community Knowledge and Perception of COVID-19 in the Middle Belt of Ghana

Abstract

Background Research has shown that health behaviour is an outcome of individuals’ knowledge of the balance between the barriers to and benefits of action. The perceived severity and susceptibility to a disease influence individual's perceived threat of disease and perceived benefits and barriers influence perceptions of the effectiveness of health behaviour. This study sought to assess the knowledge and perceptions of community members in middle Ghana on COVID-19. Materials and Methods This was a mix-method descriptive study. A structured questionnaire was administered to collect quantitative data among 517 randomly selected participants. The data were analyzed using STATA version 14, descriptive statistic was performed and results were presented in charts and frequency tables. For the qualitative arm, in-depth interviews were conducted among 20 purposively selected community members. Thematic analysis was performed using NVivo version 10. Results Knowledge of COVID-19 was high (99.8). Knowledge of the mode of transmission was also high (93%). This is comparable to the findings from the qualitative arm where fever, headache, runny nose, sneezing, difficulty in breathing, pain in the lungs and weakness or loss of energy emerged as some of the signs and symptoms of COVID-19. The majority (99.6%) of the respondents indicated that COVID-19 is not transmitted spiritually and collaborates with the qualitative findings where it was indicated that, COVID-19 is a medical condition that has no relationship with spirituality. Conclusion and Recommendation COVID-19 infection is widely known and perceived as a fearful and serious infection. COVID-19 was identified to be treatable spiritually. Education on the appropriate treatment of COVID-19 should be intensified.