Knowledge Attitude and Practice (KAP) study on Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) among youths in Kano State, North-West Nigeria

Abstract

Background:  Sexually Transmitted Infections are known to be one of the notorious infections that are caused by bacteria or virus organisms, and contracted via unprotected intercourse such as anal, oral, and vaginal sex from one partner to the other. About 376 million new cases of STIs are reported annually across the globe with the African region being a huge contributor to this burden (WHO, 2021). Adolescents and young adults aged 15–24 years were noted to constitute almost half of the reported cases (CDC, 2017). In northern Nigeria, an alarming rate of STIs practice has been recorded without proper documentation on the knowledge, attitude, and practice among the youths. The objectives of this study are to examine the knowledge, attitude, and practice of youths in Kano state, in addition to examining the relationship between their knowledge of STI risk behaviour and their attitude/practice towards STI treatment.

Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out in Kano state using an online self-administrated questionnaire which was distributed to non-adolescent youths aged 20–24 years. An online survey was created using the JISC platform to collect quantitative data from 300 young people, with each section of the questionnaire made up of validated questions that included mostly closed-ended questions to assess young people’s knowledge of STIs, their attitudes towards STIs, and common practices around STIs. SPSS version 20 was used to analyse the data collection.

Results:  Among the 300 participants in Kano state who are between the age of 20-24 years, 45% of them were female and 55% of them were male. The majority of them had higher educational qualifications (80%) and marital status as single (86%). Their major source of information on STIs varies from television (48%), family members (45.3%), hospital/health workers (42%), and radio (36%), while the most known STIs are HIV/AIDs (86%), gonorrhoea (75.7%), hepatitis B (70.7%), syphilis (59%). The overall knowledge of the youth was categorized into three, which are: poor knowledge (40.3%), fair knowledge (41.7%), and good knowledge (18%). The relationship between knowledge and attitude toward not telling someone about their condition was found to be non-significant at p-value = 0.352, and the relationship between the level of knowledge and the attitude toward going to the hospital was not significant each other at p-value = 0.425. The practices noticed to be prevalent among youths were found to be unprotected sex (92%) and having multiple sex partners (84%). The practice was checked to see if there was a relationship with the knowledge of youths. The relationship between the two variables (practice and knowledge level) revealed that it was statistically significant for both unprotected sex and having multiple partners at p=0.02 and p < 0.001 respectively.  

Conclusion: Educational qualification was seen to be one of the key predictors of knowledge on STIs among youths in Kano using binary logistic regression. Other demographic characteristics like age, marital status, and gender were shown not to have an effect on the level of knowledge of STIs among youths in Kano. This implies that if the educational sector is improved, especially in the school curriculum by incorporating STIs topics in some of their courses, there is a high tendency for youth to know about STIs and the necessary preventive measures.