Assessment of COVID-19 vaccination-related knowledge, attitude and barriers among healthcare professionals working at governmental hospitals in South Gondar Zone, Ethiopia

ABSTRACT

Introduction: with COVID-19 vaccines being developed concurrently, it is clear that inadequate knowledge and poor attitudes among communities around the world provide a significant obstacle and continue to prevent the complete population from being immunized against highly contagious illnesses. The study's objective was to evaluate the knowledge, attitude, and barriers that healthcare professionals have towards the COVID-19 vaccine. Methods: a descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted through a self-administered questionnaire that was disseminated to health care professionals working in the South Gondar zone hospitals, in South Gondar Zone, Ethiopia. SPSS Statistics Version 25 was used to enter and evaluate the data that were gathered. To ascertain the relationship between independent and outcome variables, binary logistic analysis was performed. Results: a total of 450 respondents participated in the survey, and 90% of them completed and returned. The majority of the participants (94.44%) were aware of the COVID-19 vaccination. More than half of them (56.22%) had experience with COVID-19 treatment, and 54.7% had sufficient knowledge about COVID-19 immunization. The importance of the vaccine in maintaining population COVID-19 immunization coverage and in reducing COVID-19 incidence to prevent the onset of new epidemics, respectively, was positively viewed by more than two-thirds (74.43%) and 84.4% of the respondents, respectively. Furthermore, only 6.6% of respondents approved of pharmaceutical companies' advertising of the COVID-19 vaccine. Conclusion: according to the current study, healthcare professionals had a promising view of COVID-19 immunization. However, the overall percentage of positive responses to the attitude questions was only 48.34%. Additionally, more than 76.67% of the respondents reported that if the community does not receive the COVID-19 vaccination, the incidence of the virus will greatly grow. However, only about half of the respondents had adequate knowledge about the COVID-19 vaccination. © Teklie Mengie Ayele et al.