Perception and attitude of herb sellers towards Covid -19 Pandemic – a pilot study of FCT and its environs

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic came along with a lot of challenges including the absence of precautionary measures towards the prevention of the disease observed in market places around FCT. Also, herbal medicine practitioners became first point of call by locals even in advent of the disease. The perception regarding COVID-19 among herbal medicine sellers in different parts of the F.C.T was studied. A cross-sectional study using semi-structured questionnaire; descriptive and inferential statistics was done. Association between variables using chi square test (x2) and logistic regression analysis was done (p-value ≤0.05). Respondents (87%) were aware of COVID-19. 41% thought the pandemic was an inflated event strengthened by symptoms of seasonal diseases. Respondents (70%) had no herbal drugs to manage COVID-19, 30% had herbs to manage the disease while 41% stated an increase in sales of herbs used to manage symptoms. Precautions were taken by 72% while 44% and 26% practiced handwashing and social distancing respectively. The contribution of wrong belief towards COVID-19 risk precaution measures has been reported. A significant relationship (x2 = 9.7) was observed between awareness of COVID-19 and the belief that it existed (p˂0.05). There is need to educate the people, especially the herb-sellers on COVID-19 and to also integrate them into public health related programs as they may be the only alternative to locals in advent of disease.