Abstract:

Background: hepatitis B is a life threatening viral infection that attacks the liver and can cause acute chronic disease. The virus is transmitted through contact with the blood or other body fluid of an affected person. Hepatitis B is an important occupational hazard for health care workers, however it can be prevented by available safe and effective vaccine. The main objective of this study was to identify knowledge based on HBV Prevention among health care workers in Mwanza particularly at BMC and Sekou Toure regional hospital so as to enhance measures of Precautions among them.

Methods: this was a cross sectional study involved a total of 400 health care workers at BMC and Sekou Toure regional referral hospital from February to April 2019. Social demographic and other relevant information were collected using semi- structured questionnaires. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 20.0 software as per objectives.

Results: this study revealed that 58 %( 234/400) heath care workers had good knowledge, 36 %( 145/400) had intermediate knowledge and 5.3 %( 21/400) had poor knowledge. Occupation was highly associated with knowledge as majority of doctors had good knowledge compared to nurses and laboratory technician. Only 82.0%have actually ever received hepatitis B vaccine, out of which only 55.3% completed the vaccination schedule.

Conclusion: more than half of health care workers involved in this study had good knowledge on prevention of hepatitis B infection. However, the study has shown that majority of health care workers had ever received hepatitis B vaccine and half of them completed the recommended dose. Availability of hepatitis B vaccine is recommended.