Knowledge of Causes, Prevention and Management of Chronic Diseases among Academic Staff in Nigerian Universities

Abstract

The paper examined the knowledge of academic staff regarding the causes, prevention, and management of chronic diseases in Nigerian Universities. The objectives of the study are to identify the causes of chronic diseases among academic staff; to examine ways of preventing the occurrence of chronic diseases and to explore the management strategies used for managing chronic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, and arthritis by academic staff in the Nigerian Universities. A cross-sectional research design was adopted for the study, the population comprised all the Nigerian universities and their academic staff, and the sample of study was 390 academic staff selected through a multi-stage sampling procedure. A self-developed questionnaire with a reliability index of r = 079, named KMCDQ was used as an instrument for data collection. Chi-square statistics was used to test all the 3 null hypotheses at a 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study show that various chronic illnesses exist among the academic staff, which include diabetes, hypertension, arthritis, and asthma. The findings also revealed that academic staff of Nigerian universities have knowledge of the causes of hypertension, and diabetes but they do not have knowledge of the causes of arthritis. The findings show that the academic staff have adequate knowledge of preventive measures of hypertension, but they had no knowledge of the preventive measures of diabetes and arthritis. The paper concludes that there are prevailing chronic diseases among academic staff in Nigerian Universities, these include diabetes, arthritis, and hypertension, but the outcome of care of patients with these conditions is poor in Nigeria.