You are here

Article Text

Article menu

Download PDFPDF

Public health
Original research
People’s willingness to use COVID-19 self-testing in Nigeria: a cross-sectional survey
  1. Morenike Folayan1,
  2. Sonjelle Shilton2,
  3. Veronica Undelikwo3,
  4. Oluwatoyin Alaba4,
  5. Ranmilowo Amusan5,
  6. Mustapha Ibrahim6,
  7. Pamela Adaobi Ogbozor7,
  8. Oluyide Mojisola8,
  9. Deepshikha Batheja9,
  10. Abhik Banerji9,
  11. Elena Ivanova Reipold2,
  12. Guillermo Z Martínez-Pérez2
  1. 1Department of Child Dental Health, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State, Nigeria
  2. 2FIND, the global alliance for diagnostics, Geneva, Switzerland
  3. 3Department of Sociology, University of Calabar, Calabar, Nigeria
  4. 4Institute of Public Health, College of Health Sciences, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State, Nigeria
  5. 5Department of Community Health, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State, Nigeria
  6. 6SabonTrack Consultancy Company, Kaduna, Nigeria
  7. 7Department of Psychology, Enugu State University of Science and Technology, Enugu, Anambra State, Nigeria
  8. 8Department of Mental Health, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State, Nigeria
  9. 9Center for Disease Dynamics Economics & Policy, Delhi, India
  1. Correspondence to Sonjelle Shilton; sonjelle.shilton{at}finddx.org

Abstract

Objectives Nigeria has been badly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the poor testing coverage in the country may make controlling the spread of COVID-19 challenging. The aim of this study was to assess the general public’s acceptability of SARS-CoV-2 self-testing as an approach which could help to address this gap.

Setting A household-based survey was conducted in five urban and five rural local government areas in the states of Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Benue, Kaduna and Lagos, in mid-2021.

Participants 2126 respondents (969 were female) participated. A five-pronged, probabilistic sampling approach was used to recruit individuals older than 17 years and available to participate when randomly approached in their households by the surveyors. A 35-item questionnaire was used to collect data on their values towards SARS-CoV-2 self-testing. Primary outcomes were: likelihood to use a self-test; willingness to pay for a self-test; and likely actions following a reactive self-test result.

Results Of the total 2126 respondents, 14 (0.66%) were aware of COVID-19 self-testing, 1738 (81.80%) agreed with the idea of people being able to self-test for COVID-19, 1786 (84.05%) were likely/very likely to use self-tests if available, 1931 (90.87%) would report a positive result and 1875 (88.28%) would isolate if they self-tested positive. Factors significantly associated with the use of a self-test were having a college education or higher (adjusted Odds Ratio (AOR): 1.55; 95% CI: 1.03 to 2.33), full-time employment (AOR: 1.67; 95% CI: 1.06 to 2.63), feeling at moderate/high risk of COVID-19 (AOR: 2.43; 95% CI: 1.70 to 3.47) and presence of individuals at risk of COVID-19 within the household (AOR: 1.38; 95% CI: 1.06 to 1.78).

Conclusion A majority of Nigerians agree with the concept of COVID-19 self-testing and would act to protect public health on self-testing positive. Self-test implementation research is necessary to frame how acceptability impacts uptake of preventive behaviours following a positive and a negative self-test result.

  • Public health
  • Health policy
  • COVID-19

Data availability statement

Data are available upon reasonable request. Anonymised participant data will be available upon reasonable institutional request to FIND, via the corresponding author of this article.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2022-063323

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    Data availability statement

    Data are available upon reasonable request. Anonymised participant data will be available upon reasonable institutional request to FIND, via the corresponding author of this article.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Contributors SS, EIR and GZM-P developed the initial research project. MF adapted the research protocol and led the implementation of the study in Nigeria. MF, GZM-P and SS wrote the manuscript. GZM-P, DB and AB performed the data analyses. VU, OA, RA, MI, PAO and OM coordinated the state surveys. All authors have reviewed and approved the final version of the manuscript. SS is responsible, as the guarantor, for the overall content of the article.

    • Funding This study was funded by the German government, who played no role in the study design implementation, analysis or decision to publish.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.