Background: Rabies is one of the fatal animal diseases with significant public health issue. Local dogs are the main reservoir and source of this disease, especially, in developing countries. Even though rabies is a highly fatal disease, it is a preventable disease. Community awareness about rabies is one of the key components for prevention. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to investigate predictors for the level of knowledge, attitudes and practices among rural community towards the prevention of rabies disease in North Wollo zone, Ethiopia.
Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted from June 2022 to September 2022. A structured questionnaire was used to collect the data for face to face interviews among 206 respondents. The data were analyzed using SPSS software version 27.
Results: The current study indicated that about half of the participants (50.6%) did not have awareness about the way how the disease (rabbis) is transmitted. Among the respondents, about 50% of them said that rabies is considered to be a fatal disease, while 52.8% of the respondents did not believe that the disease is preventable using vaccine. About half of the participants did not know that salvation and madness were described as a major clinical sign of rabies in animals. Only 39.3% of the participants stated that they washed the wounds with water and soap. Among those individuals contacted with dogs and cats, about half 46% did not have a habit of washing hand after contact. Among the participants, 130 (63.1%) of them stated that, go to the traditional healer is the first choice to cure from the disease and only 30.1% of the participants prefer health center to be free from the viral disease. The findings in the current study indicates that marital status, educational status, household size, dog ownership and family exposure to dog bite had statistically significant association with attitude about rabies at 5% level of significance.
Conclusion: The level of knowledge, attitude and practice of the rural households regarding to rabies and its means of transmission in the study area is very low. Especially, the practice of using regular vaccination for domestic dogs and cats in the study area is very low. Hence, health related education is recommended to the rural community on how the disease can be prevented, sources of infection for the disease, mode of transmission and measures to be taken after contamination.
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