INFORMATION NEEDS ON LASSA FEVER SAFETY PRACTICES AMONG GARRI CONSUMERS IN EDO STATE, NIGERIA.

One of the media through which Lassa fever spread or contracted in recent time is rats through Garri consumption. Garri is an household staple food in Nigeria that is consumed by all. There documenting the information needs of Garri consumers in a State like Edo in Nigeria will help in identifying the pattern of spread of this disease and how it could be curbed. Therefore, this study was conducted to assessed the safety practices information needs among Garri Consumers in Edo State, Nigeria. The study specifically described the socioeconomic characteristics of the respondents, identify the information sources available to the respondents and their preference for the sources, examined safety practices carried out by gari consumers, document safety practice information needs of gari consumers, and analysed constraints faced by gari consumers. Multi-stage sampling technique was used to sample 150 r spondents in Edo state. However, 148 of them eventually formed the valid sample size for the study. Data were obtained through structured and validated questionnaire and interview schedule and analysed with frequency counts, percentages and Binary Logistic Regression Model and Pearson’s Product Moment Correction. Some of the results of the descriptive statistics showed that 37.2% of the respondents were within the age of 40-49, majority (73.6%) were married, most (46.6%) had a household size of less than 5, 34.5% acquired secondary education, and 36.5% had a monthly income between ₦60000 - ₦89000. Results further showed that almost all the viii consumers got their information friends and family (95.3%), while the most preferred source of information was from fellow consumers. The most imbibed safety practice by the consumers was to cover their gari properly to prevent contamination from rats, while the highest information need of the consumers was on orthodox or herbal treatments for lassa fever. In addition, it was observed that selected socioeconomic characteristics regressed on information needs, sex (wald =2.134), and age (wald =3.968), were statistically significant at p≤0.05 while household size (5.044) was statistically significant at p≤0.01, while a positive, medium correlation (r =0.519) was observed between the lassa fever safety practices and the information need of the consumers. It was concluded that respondents had high information needs for Lassa fever but the available information sources available to them may present unverified information which is not healthy to the society.