Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices of Mozambican Public Employees in relation to the Prevention of COVID-19

Abstract

In the middle of December 2019, COVID-19 appeared in the Chinese City of Wuhan. It is a pathology that quickly spread around the world, counting, until the completion of the present study, with more than 2 million infected and about 140 thousand dead. The aim of the present study was to analyze knowledge, attitudes and practices of public workers from Mozambique on the prevention of COVID-19. To this end, 126 public workers in Mozambique (79 men, 43 women and 4 who chose not to disclose their gender) answered a closed questionnaire applied to the Google Form online platform. The questionnaire was open for 5 days (two weekend days and three business days). The results revealed that most employees have basic knowledge and appropriate measures for the prevention of COVID-19, more than half adopt behaviors conducive to disease prevention and less than half effectively comply with preventive actions guided by governmental and the health sector. The results suggest that public officials are knowledgeable, however efforts should be made to carry out educational actions to improve attitudes and change practices related to the prevention of COVID-19.