Elsevier

Epilepsy & Behavior

Volume 16, Issue 2, October 2009, Pages 254-259
Epilepsy & Behavior

A survey of public knowledge, attitudes, and practices with respect to epilepsy in Badissa Village, Centre Region of Cameroon

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yebeh.2009.07.026Get rights and content

Abstract

Objective

The aim of this study was to assess knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) with respect to epilepsy in Badissa, as part of a series of studies mandated by the Cameroon Ministry of Public Health.

Method

We interviewed 164 subjects face-to-face during a door-to-door survey.

Results

All of the subjects had heard about epilepsy; 98.8% knew at least one patient with epilepsy, and 97.6% had seen at least one epileptic seizure. With respect to attitudes, 16% and 32% would respectively prevent their children from associating with and marrying, people with epilepsy; 55.5% would offer people with epilepsy equal employment. The independent determinants of attitudes were the belief that epilepsy is a form of insanity (P = 0.004) or is caused by a mental illness (P = 0.003), having read about epilepsy (P = 0.018), and being married (P = 0.007).

Conclusions

Our study demonstrates a high level of awareness and fairly good knowledge of epilepsy, a lower level of misconceptions, and better attitudes, in the study area confirming our hypothesis of a regional variation in these characteristics. This model of care may be useful in scaling up the epilepsy education program in Cameroon.

Introduction

Epilepsy is the most frequent neurological brain disorder worldwide [1]. The perception of this condition in the world varies depending on the regions and the cultures of the people studied (2). Several studies have shown the influence of culture and the way of life of the people on their attitudes and practices with respect to epilepsy in developed countries [2], [3], [4], [5] and in Cameroon [6], [7], [8], [9], [10]. Cameroon is one of the countries most affected by epilepsy in Africa [11]. The recognition of epilepsy as a public health problem led to the creation of the National Epilepsy Control Programme in the Ministry of Public Health of Cameroon in 2006.

Badissa is located in a rural area in Cameroon where one of the highest prevalence rates of epilepsy (6%) has been reported [11]. An epilepsy education and treatment program was introduced in Badissa more than 10 years ago by our team of neurologists from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Yaounde I [12]. We hypothesized that attitudes and practices with respect to epilepsy in this area in which there is a pilot epilepsy education and treatment program would be much better than those in other regions of the country without such a program [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [13], [14]. Therefore, the main aim of this study was to assess knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) with respect to epilepsy, as well as determinants of poor attitudes and practices with respect to epilepsy, in a sample of village inhabitants.

Section snippets

Place of study

Cameroon is a country in Central Africa with an estimated population of about 18 million inhabitants from more than 250 ethnic groups [15]. Badissa is a small village with 1054 inhabitants, mostly of the Sanaga ethnic group, living in 179 households or families. The village is located in the equatorial rain forest of Cameroon. The population depends economically mainly on agriculture and peasant fishing in the River Sanaga. Badissa Village is part of the Nyamanga II Health Area (with 11,592

Results

A total of 164 participants, 70 women and 94 men (F/M sex-ratio = 1/1.34), were interviewed. The sample was made up mainly of farmers (96.3%), and the mean age was 48.1 ± 15 years with an interquartile range of 24 years (Q1 = 36 years, Q3 = 60 years).

Discussion

The aim of this study was to assess knowledge, attitudes, and practices with respect to epilepsy in Badissa Village. The data shows that familiarity with epilepsy is higher in Badissa than in other communities studied in Cameroon [6], [7], [8], [9], [10]. This high familiarity corresponds to the reported high prevalence rates of epilepsy in this area [11].

Our data further indicate that the inhabitants of Badissa have the best attitudes toward epilepsy among people from all the study areas:

Conclusion

Our study demonstrates a high level of awareness and a fairly good knowledge of epilepsy. These data further confirm our hypothesis of a regional variation in knowledge, attitudes, and practices with respect to epilepsy in Cameroon. The attitudes and practices observed are better than those reported elsewhere in Cameroon and this can be related to the existing epilepsy education and treatment program in Badissa. If this program is extended and scaled up to other areas of Cameroon with high

Author contributions

A.K.N. conceived the study; A.K.N., P.J., and W.F.M. designed the study; D.F. collected the data; E.N.T., D.F., and AK.N. analyzed the data and drafted the article. All authors contributed significantly to improve the scientific content of the article and approved the final version.

Acknowledgments

The authors express their thanks to all the study participants for their collaboration and to Reverend Sister Franca de Simone of the Nyamanga II Catholic Health Centre and her entire team for assistance during the study.

References (17)

There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

Cited by (25)

  • Marriage in epilepsy: The impact of the question in knowledge, attitude, and practice surveys

    2018, Epilepsy and Behavior
    Citation Excerpt :

    Thus, the final listing included 114 analyzable sampling units with 99,394 subject responses. Generic questions were featured in 41 (36%) studies [15, 22–35, 38–55, 107, 108] and personal questions in 73 (64%) [14, 18, 20–22, 24, 34, 36, 37, 41, 49, 52, 56–83, 85–101]. Samples in 82 reports (79.6%) were population-based, and those in 22 (20.4%) were hospital-based.

View all citing articles on Scopus
View full text