Methods and tools employed to investigate the knowledge, experiences, and attitudes towards Covid-19 vaccine: The Case of Health Professionals in Leribe, Lesotho

Corona Virus Disease-19 (COVID-19) is regarded as one of the highly contagious diseases after Ebola. It affects the respiratory organs. Different strains of COVID-19 are transmitted from one person to the other if precautionary measures are not put in place. The rate at which people get sick depends on the immune system of individuals, some people can be moderately sick, others can be very sick while many can die. Several countries responded differently to COVID-19 pandemic; The response of the Lesotho government was proactive in which a state of emergency was declared before any positive case of COVID-19 was confirmed. Lesotho’s approach was two-pronged. Firstly, the government used section 23 of the Constitution to declare a state of emergency which became into effect from 18 March 2020. Secondly, sections 3 and 15 of the Disaster Management Act, 1997 was applied and became effective from 29April to 28 October 2020. While the government of Lesotho seem to have acted swiftly to protect the lives of its citizens and everyone who at that time was in Lesotho, there were few people who ignored the stipulated legal and institutional frameworks and violated such rules and principles. The article concludes by recommending that to avoid similar challenges in the future, the existing legal and institutional frameworks must be strengthened. The COVID-19 pandemic has been a worldwide public health challenge since 2019. The major recommended precautionary measure to prevent the spread of COVID-19 from one person to the other is taking the COVID-19 prioritising the health care professionals as the front-liners in the health sector. This is considered a priority by all health authorities globally to achieve herd immunity against COVID-19 pandemic. However, the health care professionals’ knowledge, experience, and attitude towards the vaccine is very important to promote its acceptance to the rest of the community members, and yet, COVID-19 vaccine acceptance among health workers has been low, due to misconceptions circulating on social media platforms and social gatherings about the COVID-19 vaccine. Therefore, most people including the healthcare workers have been reluctant to get vaccinated. The aim of this study was to determine the knowledge, experiences, and attitudes of the health professionals towards Covid-19 vaccines in Leribe district, Lesotho. This is an observational, cross-sectional quantitative study conducted using a non-probability convenience sampling technique. Self-administered questionnaire with closed-ended questions was used to collect data from the participants on their knowledge, experiences, and attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccine. There were 195 participants who were the staff members of the district’s hospital and four clinics in Leribe district in Lesotho. The collected quantitative data was recorded on a spread sheet and analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 29. Descriptive frequencies were run to quantify the knowledge, experience, and attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccine. Cross tabulation analysis was conducted to determine association between the variables, knowledge, experience, and attitudes. Chi-Square tests and P-values were conducted to draw conclusions about the significance of data.