Abstract:

This is a study carried out to gauge the perception of market men and women about Ebola virus disease and its transmission. It is a cross-sectional questionnaire based study, in which 126 market men and women were involved. This study became imperative going by the fact that Nigeria was just recently let off the hook of the ravages of the virus, and the government of Nigeria pellucid engagement in mass media campaign to enlighten the citizens about the symptoms and various modes of transmission of the disease, because the virus still causes serious devastation in nearby West African countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, and most recently Mali, and as not to make a ludicrous mistake of allowing another Ebola panic in the country.

The analysis of the data was done using IBM SPSS; descriptive statistics to get the general characteristics of the study participants. Chi-square test was used to determine the level of significance of groups of categorical variables. P values < 0.05 were considered significant.

The data analysis showed that 126 out of the 150 respondents returned the questionnaires completely filled, representing 84% of the respondents. The respondents showed a poor knowledge of animal to man mode of transmission, 20.7% of this mode chosen by the respondents is that EVD can be transmitted through the eating of well cooked meat of the known EVD infected animals. 72.3% of the respondent identified at least two man to man modes of transmission and 68.7% of the symptoms of Ebola identified include at least one of the early symptoms of EVD.

The study concluded that the knowledge shown by the respondents is mixed; there was a good knowledge of man to man mode of transmission while the knowledge of the animal to man mode of transmission is poor while that of the symptoms of the disease is average.

KEYWORDS

Ebola Viral Disease, Nigerian traders, Symptoms, Transmission.

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