Temi Filani
Pan-African Technology Company, Nigeria
Scientific Tracks Abstracts: Journal of HIV & Retro Virus
The COVID-19 virus has rapidly crossed borders and spread across countries and the entire globe. As of June 2021, over one year after reports of the first case in November 2019 were reported in Wuhan, China, over 222 countries have been affected worldwide. The total number of confirmed cases is about 180 million and counting. Although there are now vaccines to lessen the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, testing is critical, as it provides visibility into data for disease detection and surveillance. There was a national agenda in Nigeria to scale up testing capacity and between March and June 2020, the number of testing sites more than quadrupled across the country. Concurrently, samples tested in Nigeria increased exponentially from a total of about 10,000 to 113,000 between April and June 2020. As with the control of outbreaks and pandemics before it, controlling the COVID-19 pandemic rests on the detection and containment of clusters of infection and the interruption of community transmission to mitigate the impact on human health. These public-health measures for outbreak response remain relevant today, including surveillance, rapid case identification, interruption of community transmission, and strong public communication. Monitoring how these measures are implemented and their impact on incidence and mortality is essential. In view of this, testing for COVID-19 has been identified as the key step in curbing the outbreak of the disease around the world. Hence, this study aimed at assessing the level of testing knowledge, attitudes, and behaviour among residents in Lagos and Ondo States. A descriptive, cross-sectional (comparative) study involving 704 respondents was selected via purposive sampling technique, using SurveyCTO for data collection. Relevant data were collected and analyzed via IBM SPSS 23.0. A total of 704 respondents who participated in the study, 43.6% (n=307) are from Lagos and 56.3% (n=397) are from Ondo State. Some of the predictors of testing knowledge, attitude, and behaviour were pre-conditions, symptoms, and where to go, which were found to be statistically significant at (P P<0.001) among respondents in both states. Findings from this study show that testing behaviours are dependent on the level of knowledge in both states. Therefore, it is imperative to provide the populace with more information on COVID-19 practices. The study showed that more of those in Ondo state are aware of a nearby test center compared to their counterpart in Lagos. While a greater percentage of those who are in the age group of late adolescent and young people have not tested for COVID-19 compared to other age groups. However, a greater proportion of those who have tested for COVID-19 in Lagos have good knowledge of the symptoms compared to those in Ondo. It is plausible to infer that the higher the level of knowledge of COVID-19 the greater the willingness to test for the disease.
Dr Temi (Adaramewa) Filani is a medical doctor and a public health professional with over a decade of experience devoted to expanding access to safe and effective healthcare services across Africa. She is currently the Design for Health Practice Lead at Cocreation Hub (a Pan-African technology company). She has served as a Senior Technical Advisor with the World Bank and as Team Lead at the Health Strategy and Delivery Foundation (HSDF), designing programs focused on strengthening health systems, reducing mortality and improving quality service delivery across Africa. She holds a Masters in Healthcare Quality from Harvard Medical School and a Master’s in Public Health from the University of York. Temi is considered a key strategic player and thought leader in healthcare and has hands-on experience implementing and evaluating high-impact population-centred programs within a diverse network of stakeholders and partners. Her interests include maternal and child health, mHealth, innovative solutions.
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