Cross-sectional survey of knowledge and attitudes of healthcare workers and community members toward the Ebola virus disease and antimicrobial resistance pathogens outbreaks in Nigeria.

INTRODUCTION: the 2014 Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak in Nigeria has further raised the awareness of health-care workers (HCWs) and community members (MCs) on the threat posed by infectious diseases and the need for improvement on infection control practices. However, awareness of dangers of increasing incidences of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in hospitals and communities remained low. METHODS: a cross-sectional survey of awareness of 195 HCWs and 265 MCs toward EVD and AMR was conducted through a structured questionnaire. RESULTS: majority of HCWs (95.4%) and MCs (82.8%) still have knowledge of EVD´s danger and give reasons like its unique way of killing and unavailability of drugs for their awareness. Only 17.2% of MCs are aware of AMR as a problem, and only 3.4% of MCs and 10.3% of HCWs agreed that AMR is more dangerous than EVD. On the contrary, 76.4% of doctors, 95.1% nurses, 67.9% laboratory scientists, 66.7% pharmacists, 77.4% students and 100% of civil servants, drivers and religious leaders believed that EVD is more horrific and spread faster. They both attributed the rapid awareness of EVD in Nigeria, despite being new at the time of the outbreak, to the seriousness with which stakeholders and the media fought EVD, the gesture AMR is yet to receive. Though both HCWs and MCs agreed that prevention, not treatment is the best option to tackle Ebola like-diseases, but surprisingly, about 37% and 65% of HCWs and MCs respectively, still believe that traditional medicines can be used to treat Ebola related illnesses. CONCLUSION: AMR awareness remains low among MCs and some HCWs when compared with EVD. It is recommended that efforts put in place during EVD outbreak by all stakeholders and the media need to be doubled to increase the knowledge of both HCWs and MCs toward AMR.

Cultivation of Lentinus subnudus Berk (Polyporales: Polyporaceae) on woodlogs.

Studies were carried out on the cultivability of Lentinus subnudus on woodlogs of various hardwood trees and the effect of chemical treatments of these woodlogs with citric, tartaric, indole-3-acetic (IAA) and gibberellic (GA3) acids on fruitbody production and yield. Of the four hardwood species of Chlorophora excelsa, Terminalia ivorensis, Terminalia superba and Spondias mombin tried, woodlogs of C. excelsa were the best in supporting L. subnudus fructification, followed by those of S. mombin. On the effect of chemical treatments of C. excelsa and S. mombin woodlogs on L. subnudus' fruitbody production and yield, bed logs treated with 50 ppm indole-3-acetic and gibberellic acids were the best in enhancing fructification and yield with C. excelsa GA3 and IAA treated bed logs consistently producing more fruitbodies and greater yields than S. mombin bed logs given the same treatments. The implication of these findings in relation to results obtained in previous studies are discussed.