Community Health Awareness and Health Education on Diphtheria Among Residents of a Local Government Area in Edo State, Nigeria

This study investigated community health awareness and health education on diphtheria among residents of a local government area in Edo State. Two research questions and two hypotheses were formulated for the study. The population comprised 117,209 from which a sample of 399 was selected by means of cross sectional descriptive research design. Data collection was by means of a structured questionnaire and analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics with hypotheses tested at 0.05 level of significance. Reliability coefficients of 0.84 and 0.79 were obtained for awareness and health education respectively. Results revealed low awareness on diphtheria among majority (93.5%), 24.1% had moderate awareness, 2.0% had high awareness. 93.5% claimed there had never been community awareness campaign on diphtheria in their community, 85.7% reported never to have attended seminar/health talks on diphtheria infection. Level of education on diphtheria was low (21.2%). Majority of the respondents (61.4%) had low level of education on diphtheria. Gender and educational background were significantly associated with community health awareness on diphtheria (p = .000). The study recommends that since the level of health awareness and education was low among the population, nursing practitioners should consider community health awareness campaign on diphtheria in communities in other to raise awareness. Females and those with low educational background, should be targeted to ensure they seek information on diphtheria to protect their health.