LEVEL OF INTEGRATED DISEASE SURVEILLANCE RESPONSE PRACTICE AND ASSOCIATED FACTORS AMONG HEALTH PROFESSIONALS WORKING AT PUBLIC HOSPITALS IN WEST HARERGE ZONE, OROMIA, EASTERN ETHIOPIA

Abstract

Background: Disease surveillance plays a critical role in the early detection and mitigation of public health threats like emerging patterns and trends of diseases, and develops targeted interventions. The health workforces across all health system levels are instrumental in effectively implementing an integrated disease surveillance response system. However, there is limited study on the level of integrated disease surveillance response practice among health professionals in Ethiopia. Thus, this study was aimed to assess the level of integrated disease surveillance response practice among health professionals. Objective: To assess the level of integrated disease surveillance response practice and associated factors among health professionals atpublic hospitals in West Harerghe Zone, Oromia, Eastern Ethiopia from December 20, 2021, to January 10, 2022 Methodology: A facility-based cross-sectional study was conducted among 303 randomly selected health professionals working at public hospitals in West Harerghe Zone. Data were collected using pretested tool adapted from world health organization protocol for the assessment of national communicable disease surveillance systems used in different study. Tool had sociodemographic, organization support, knowledge, attitude, technical competency and complexity, perceived data quality factors and integrated disease surveillance response practice assessing questionaries. Data were entered into Epi-data version 3.1 and exported to STATA version 16.0 for cleaning and analysis. Binary logistic regression was conducted to identify factors associated with the integrated disease surveillance response practice. Odds ratio along with 95% confidence interval were used to present the finding and the level of statistical significance was declared at p-value < 0.05. Results: In the current study, practice of integrated disease surveillance response was good in 50.17 %( 95%CI: 45.17-55.17) of health professionals. Being married (AOR=1.76; 95% CI: 1.01, 3.06), perceived organizational support (AOR= 2.14, 95%CI: 1.16, 3.94), having good knowledge of IDSR (AOR=2.77, 95%CI: 1.61, 4.78), having a positive attitude towards IDSR (AOR=3.30, 95%CI:1.82,5.98)were positively andsignificantly associated with good practice of IDSR.Working at emergency (AOR=0.37, 95%CI: 0.14, 0.98) was negatively associated with good practice of integrated disease surveillance response among health professionals. Conclusion: The current study showed the practice of integrated disease surveillance response was good in half of the study particpants. Marital status, working department, perceived organizational support, knowledge and attitude on health professioals IDSR, were important factor associated with the practice. Thus, Organizational and provider targeted intervention xi should be considered to improve the knowledge and attitude of health professionals to improve itegrated disease surveillance practice.