Disease Notification Among Physicians in a Nigerian Tertiary Health Institution

The objective of this study was to assess the physicians' knowledge, attitudes, and practice as related to disease notification. A random sample of 125 physicians was initially recruited for the study but only 120 returned the questionnaires completed, giving a response rate of 96%. Knowledge about disease notification was generally low (14.2%) and among physicians with good knowledge, those in public health specialty had the highest percentage (52.3%) while those in pathology specialty had no knowledge at all (0%). A positive attitude was reported by a large majority (94.2%), who believed that disease notification is beneficial to Nigeria's health care delivery system because it aids-prevention and control of disease outbreak. This attitude was significantly more common in those with few years of professional activity. Even though most of the diseases for routine and immediate notification were diagnosed and treated almost on daily basis by the physicians, yet only 5.8% of them had reported these diseases to the appropriate health authority in the last six months. This study showed that there is a great need for efforts to improve physicians' knowledge on disease notification. Nigerian Medical Practitioner Vol. 45 No 6, 2004 (111-115