Smoking cessation therapy in Ethiopia: responsiveness and the predictors

Abstract

Background: Tobacco is one of the leading public health burdens globally. The health system and healthcare providers can play a major role in promoting smoking cessation to their patients. However, the Ethiopian health system's responsiveness towards smoking cessation therapy is not well understood. Therefore study was conducted to assess the health care delivery system's responsiveness to smoking cessation services and its associated factors among health care providers in Ethiopia. Method(s): A cross sectional study employing both quantitative and qualitative methods was conducted to determine the health worker's knowledge, attitude, and practice towards smoking cessation therapy. For these, 323 participants were selected from five health professional groups: medical doctors, dentists, health officers, nurses, and midwives. A two-stage stratified sampling technique was employed to select the districts and the health workers. Data was collected by using self-administered questionnaires and descriptive statistics, bivarate and multivariate analysis were done. Result(s): Majority of the health care providers had poor knowledge (70.4%) and had negative attitude (86%) towards smoking cessation intervention. Moreover, almost all of the health care providers 306(97.5%) had below average level of practicing smoking cessation intervention. In the multivariate analysis; being female, receiving training, having good knowledge score, having positive attitude were associated with the above average practice level of smoking cessation intervention. Conclusion(s): The Ethiopian health delivery system's responsiveness for the provision smoking cessation therapy is premature. The health care providers (HCPs) were with poor knowledge, negative attitude and below average practice level. The HCPs had no access to training and organizational supports. Therefore, the ministry of health should give due emphasis to smoking cessation intervention particularly the tobacco dependence treatments (pharmacological therapy) should be introduced to the health care system and the existing behavioral intervention should be strengthened by providing training for the health care providers.