ASSESMENT ON KNOWLEDGE WILLINGNESS TO DONATE EYE AND ASSOCIATED FACTORS AMONG MEDICAL STUDENTS.

Abstract

Abstract Background-Corneal diseases are second only to cataract as major causes of blindness worldwide. According to a national survey done in 2006, 1.6% of Ethiopians were found to have blindness and 3.7% had low vision. Trachomatous and other corneal opacities ranked as the second leading causes of blindness (19.3%) next to cataract (49.9%) and the third leading cause of low vision. Corneal transplantation is the major option for restoration of vision for these large numbers of corneal blind people. However, it is largely dependent on voluntary eye donation and attitude of medical professionals to eye donation is quite important because they are in close contact with the prospective donor and their relatives. Aim- to assess the knowledge and associated factors for willingness on corneal donation among medical students in SPHMMC. Methods- a student based analytic cross-sectional study was conducted and data collection was carried out with self-administered questionnaires and a total of 262 participants were selected by stratified sampling process and 245 participants have responded. A stratified sampling process with proportional allocation was used to select participants and data was fed using SPSS template and cross tabulation and odds ratios was done using SPSS 20.0 software. Results- A total of 245 students have participated and there were 23 non respondents. From the 245 students, 147 were male and 98 were females. The minimum age of participates is 18 and the maximum was 26 and the mean was 21.2 with standard deviation of 1.889 and the highest number of students with the same age is 22 years and have a 20.4% prevalence among participants. Most of the participants are Christian at a prevalence of 80.4% and Muslims comprise 15.1% and 4% have chosen other religions. Among the study participants’ students from Amhara have the highest quota at 28.6% and students from Oromia (15.9) and SNNPR (11.4) follow. 8% of the participants are married and 5.7% of the participants are in a relationship and the others are single.2006 intake students have the highest number of participants (51) and the lower number of participants was from the senior batch but the difference in part is attributable to the initial allocation of quotas to each batch. From the participants 94.7%of the participants was aware of eye donation and 57 of the participants had correctly answered all the three questions designed to assess their basic knowledge about corneal donation and 51.6% of the participants agreed to donate their corneas upon their unfortunate death. Intake year (P= 0.04) and awareness (P= 0.007) had significant associations with knowledge and intake year(P=0.012), awareness(P=0.016) and having knowledge(P=0.014) had significant associations with willingness to donate cornea. Conclusion- despite having good awareness, participants have less than satisfactory level of knowledge and willingness. And having awareness and intake year of students and knowledge were associated with willingness but only awareness was associated with willingness on multinomial regression.