Awareness about Hepatitis B and/or C Viruses amongResidents of Adama and Asella Cities

Abstract

Hepatitis B and C viruses affect the liver and cause major global public health problem. Thepresent study intended to asses awareness of residents at Adama and Assela cities towardsinfectious disease, Hepatitis B and/or C, using classical logistic regression models. A two stagestratified random sampling method was employed to select 589 households from Adama city and533 from Assela city. Awareness of respondents was determined based on the mean scoreaggregated over 19 items. Respondents who scored above the mean value were categorized asaware and those scored below mean value were categorized as not aware. About 45.8% of therespondents at Adama city and 44.9% respondents at Assela city were aware about the infectiousdiseases. From logistic regression analysis, we identified four out of twelve predictors as amajor determinates on awareness of the residents towards the infectious diseases. These wereeducational level, monthly income, reading habit and use of media. The results indicate that, forinstance, odds of awareness for respondents with high school level of education increased by thefactor 1.151 as compared with respondents with elementary and less level of education. It isrecommended that awareness campaigns should be enhanced to increases the knowledge of thepublic on Hepatitis B and/or C infections with emphasis on its mode of transition and measuresto reduce the risk of controlling the viruses (practicing safe sex and avoiding of sharing infectionneedles, tooth brushes, or shaving razors).