COVID-19 knowledge and practices in Jigawa State, Nigeria: A cross-sectional survey conducted during the second wave.

Population knowledge of COVID-19 and adherence to prevention measures may not be equitably distributed, limiting the success of public health measures. We aimed to understand whether COVID-19 knowledge differed by socio-economic status in a rural low-income setting of Jigawa State, Nigeria. We conducted a secondary analysis of the baseline cross-sectional survey of the INSPIRING cluster randomised controlled trial in Kiyawa Local Government Area, Jigawa State, from January-June 2021. Compounds were selected using simple random sampling proportional to trial cluster size. Within each compound, a representative head of compound and all women aged 16-49 years were eligible to complete a survey, which asked about socioeconomics, knowledge of COVID-19 symptoms, prevention strategies and risks for poor outcomes. We converted these into binary outcomes of "good knowledge" for symptoms, prevention and risks. Associations between woman and head of compound characteristics and good knowledge were assessed using adjusted logistic regression. We surveyed 3800 compound heads and 9564 women. Overall, <1% of respondents had been tested for COVID-19, but access to facemasks (HoC 60.0%; women 86.3%) and willingness to be vaccinated (HoC 73.9%; women 73.4%) were high. COVID-19 knowledge was low, with 33.2% of heads of compounds and 26.0% of women having good symptom knowledge, 39.5% and 30.4% having good prevention knowledge, and 17.7% and 15.4% having good risk knowledge, respectively. Those with more education, from higher wealth quintiles and access to a radio had better knowledge. Access to a mobile phone was associated with good symptom knowledge, but worse prevention and risk knowledge. We found significant differences in COVID-19 knowledge associated with socio-economic factors in rural Jigawa state, and access to communication devices was not consistently associated with better knowledge. Public health messaging in Nigeria needs to be adapted and delivered in way that ensures accessibility to all.

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Copyright: © 2024 Salako et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

I have read the journal’s policy and the authors of this manuscript have the following competing interests: SA, TA, PV and CC were employed by Save the Children UK at the time of the research. TFO and MMcM are employees of GSK, a multinational for-profit pharmaceutical company that produces pharmaceutical products for childhood pneumonia, including a SARS-CoV2 vaccine.