Abstract

In many developing nations, communicable diseases like malaria, measles, cerebrospinal meningitis, along with numerous others, continue to cause major public health problems that culminate in grave illness, disability, and due to insufficient interventions. There is a need for more comprehensive integration of clinicians in the surveillance and notification system of notifiable diseases to ensure timely reporting to the relevant public health authorities for notification and timely public health action. This requires improving the responsive surveillance system for epidemic prone diseases. This study therefore examined Awareness and Attitude of Clinicians towards Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) in the Control of Communicable Diseases (CD) in Ondo State.  Cross-sectional survey design was used . The study population comprised of all clinicians in Ondo State which was 4113. A sample of 175 clinicians were selected from the study population using a multistage sampling procedure. The research instrument for this study was a self-constructed structured questionnaire which was validated by experts with a reliability coefficient of 0.81. Data were analysed using Pearson Product Moment Correlation and tested at 0.05 alpha level. The result showed that years of experience had no significant relationship with awareness level of clinicians on IDSR in the control of CD (r = -.114, p>0.05); there was no significant relationship between for formal training(r = .108, p>0.05) on core IDSR activities, involvement in core IDSR (r = -.008, p>0.05) and attitude towards IDSR activities in the CD. Also, the study showed that there was a significant relationship between having formal training (r = .211, p<0.05), involvement in core IDSR functions (r = .177, p<0.05) and level of awareness on IDSR activities in the control of CD. Based on the findings, it was concluded that clinicians formal training and involvement in core IDSR functions were positively correlated with clinicians’ awareness. One main takeaway from this study is that offering formal training for clinicians and getting them involved in key IDSR activities can greatly increase their understanding of surveillance and response systems for communicable diseases. It was recommended that clinicians should be trained on reporting formats used for routine reports of health-related data which may enable the creation of an opportunity to computerize all the available data at the central level. Additionally, there should be a provision for training and capacity building opportunities for health personnel to develop new skills which is important to encourage community participation to detect and respond to disease epidemics.