Knowledge and Attitude of Public Secondary School students towards Sickle Cell Disease in Lagos, Nigeria

Abstract

Introduction: Sickle cell disease (SCD)is the most prevalent genetic disorder in Africa. Nigeria has the largest population of people with sickle cell disease, with about 150,000 births annually.
Objectives: This study assessed awareness, knowledge and attitude of students in public secondary schools in Lagos state about SCD.
Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted among 350 senior secondary students selected through multistage sampling technique. Data were collected using aself-administered structured questionnaire and analyzed with SPSS version 20 with level of significance set at p≤0.05.Knowledge score of respondents was graded as poor, fair and good based on the total percentage score while the attitude score was graded as poor and good based on the average score.
Results: The mean age of respondents was 15±1.3 years. More than half of the respondents 227 (64.9%) had ever heard of SCD and the most common source of information was from mass media 80(35.2%).About ten percent of the respondents 34(9.7%) had good  knowledge of SCD. The mean knowledge score of the respondents was 12.80±2.73 out of 22.More than two-third 266(76.0%) of the respondents did not know the difference between genotype and blood group while more than half 200 (57.1%) referred to genotype
as being same as blood group and a higher proportion of the respondents233(66.4%) did not know their haemoglobin genotype. Less than half 150(42.9%) knew that premarital genotype testing was a method of prevention of sickle cell disease. About half (52.3%) of the respondents had good attitude.
Conclusion: Good knowledge of SCD was found to be very low and good attitude towards SCD was average among the respondents. Ahigher proportion of the respondents did not know their haemoglobin genotype. Hence, more education and awareness to improve the knowledge and attitude of secondary school students towards SCD is recommended.

Key Words: Knowledge, Attitude, Sickle-cell Disease, Secondary School Students.