RESEARCH ARTICLE
Health Information Literacy among Malaria Patients in Ghana: Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 3 in Focus
Dominic Agyei Dankwah1, *, George Clifford Yamson2
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2019Volume: 12
First Page: 100
Last Page: 105
Publisher ID: TOPHJ-12-100
DOI: 10.2174/1874944501912010100
Article History:
Received Date: 01/01/2019Revision Received Date: 15/02/2019
Acceptance Date: 10/03/2019
Electronic publication date: 28/03/2019
Collection year: 2019
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background:
This cross-sectional survey aimed to ascertain the knowledge of malaria patients in determining the nature and extent of health information needed; accessing the needed health information effectively and efficiently; evaluating such health information and its sources critically in order to use the information.
Methods/Results:
A self-reported questionnaire was given to 155 participants in selected “drug stores” in Ho in the Volta Region of Ghana. Positive relationships were found between respondents whose decision to purchase malaria drugs was based on laboratory tests and high health information literacy skills. Low knowledge of libraries among the respondents was recorded even though there was no significant difference between the health information literacy of those who see the library as a source of health information and those who do not.
Conclusion:
There is a need to involve libraries in the health delivery system in order to help extend literacy training/skills to the citizenry.