Journal of Health Education Research & Development

Introduction: Community-led total sanitation is a community approach of inspiring and empowering communities to stop open defecation and to build and use latrines, without offering external subsidies to purchase hardware such as pans and pipes.

Objectives: The aim of this study was to determine the knowledge, attitudes and practices towards community led total sanitation among the residents of Bunga community of Twapia Ndola.

Methodology: A cross-sectional study design was used among females and males between 18 and 60 years of age, using a questionnaire. The data was then entered and analyzed using Statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) version 26.. Multivariate analysis was used in the correlations of knowledge, attitudes, and practices and intestinal worm infestation.

Results: For this study, a total of one hundred and thirty households from Bunga community were recruited upon obtaining informed consent from them and having met the criteria for selection. A total of 130 individuals were interviewed giviing the response rate to be at 100%. This study determined the levels of knowledge of the participants to be 63(48.5%) and 67 (51.5%) for poor and good knowledge levels respectively. Furthermore, it revealed that 107(82.8%) attributed financial challenges as the main difficulty hindering their improved toilet situation and to a lesser extent, 1 (0.8%) no space indoor or outdoor had the lowest frequency. Generally, a good attitude 89 (68.5%) was found among the participants. When asked where their family members usually defecate from when home, 90(69.8%) and 96(73.8) used their own toilet for children and adults respectively. The p value was > 0.01 (p=0.745) between the knowledge levels and attitude, and also >0.01 (p=0.660) between knowledge and practice levels. However, the correlation between attitude and practice levels had a p value that was <0.01 (p=0.008).

Conclusion/Recommendations: The overall knowledge levels in this study were poor. Associated factors that were significant in hindering people from improving their sanitation included financial challenges, no materials available, no laborers available and no support/assistance. Most of the people used their own toilet to defecate for both children and adults belonging to the same household with adults never using open defecation and only some children of a few houses using open defecation sometimes. No correlation was found between knowledge and practice levels. However, a significant correlation was found between attitude and practice of the households. There is need to for more holistic methods of ways to penetrate the community and make sure people are adequately educated about community led total sanitation.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted all aspects of our lives and caused severe disruption to everyday life around the world. And as any other sector, education has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in many ways. The current study that focused on the impact of the COVID-19 on medical students’ leaning is essential in order to allow students and educators to evaluate the effects of the current changes the pandemic has brought to learn and apply new principles and practices to the future of the medical field by not only contributing towards the advancement of medical education in terms of curricular changes but also developing different disciplines of medicine in the country.

Objectives: The objective of this study was to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on medical students’ learning at CBU-SOM and the students’ perspective on online learning.

Methods: One hundred and twenty students (58.3% males and 41.7% females) responded to an online cross-section survey. A structural questionnaire link using ‘Google form’ was sent to students through WhatsApp in specific CBU-SOM students’ WhatsApp groups. Data collected was downloaded from Google form and imported to IBM SPSS where it was statistically analysed. Descriptive, independent sample T-test, oneway ANOVA, and logistic regression analyses were conducted.

Results: Majority of the responses indicated that students did not experience effective and constant access to online teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic and they were not satisfied with the way it was conducted hence more disadvantages than advantages of online education were highlighted. In rating their overall online learning experience, more than 70% of respondents gave a rating of between 1 and 5 out of 10 (terrible-okay) and 54.17% indicated that they preferred face-to-face mode of teaching. Pandemic on different aspects of students' learning at the CBU-SOM. Besides, almost 70% of the respondents indicated that the COVID-19 pandemic affected students’ learning in medical school. Independent sample t-test and One-way ANOVA analyses demonstrated P-value for age (0.0230), year of study (0.003) and place residing during school closures (0.002) to be less than 0.05 (Significance value) hence concluding that the respondents’ age, year of study and the place they were residing (at own home, boarding house, relatives place etc.) had a significant impact on their responses. Inferential statistical analysis (Regression) showed that P value was 0.752, thereby concluding that there was no statistically significant relationship between teaching and learning towards the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on students’ learning at CBU-SOM.

Conclusion: The study showed that COVID-19 pandemic had a negative impact on the learning of students at CBU-SOM and that students had an unfavourable perspective on online education. However, there was no statistically significant relationship between the students’ perspective on online education and the impact of COVID-19 on medical students’ learning.