Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices on Antibiotics Use among Cattle Keepers in Nyagatare District, Rwanda

Abstract

The dairy subsector in Rwanda is the most important portion of the livestock sector and antibiotics are frequently used in veterinary aspects to treat zoonotic agents. The present study aimed to determine knowledge, attitudes, and practices on antibiotics use among cattle keepers in Nyagatare District. The target population was 384 cattle keepers and cross sectional study design was conducted. A structured questionnaire was used by researcher to collect the data and SPSS version 21 has been analyzed used to analyze the data. The study findings show that 86.7% were male, 76.0% were married, 85.9% had more than 5 years in keeping cattle, 39.3% had between 11-20 cows in their farms while 34.1% had to make between 1 and 3 kilometers to reach a veterinary pharmacy from their firms. The present study revealed that 64.3% of respondents had a low level of knowledge towards antibiotic use in cattle and 73.7% of the respondents had positive attitude towards antibiotic use in cattle. Cattle keepers who required to walk less than one km from farm to veterinary pharmacy were less likely (AOR=0.06; 95% CI: (0.01-0.30); p=001) to have poor practice on antibiotic use in cattle than those living far from the vet pharmacy. In conclusion, cattle keepers from Nyagatare district demonstrated poor knowledge, positive attitude and poor practices towards antibiotic use. Therefore, educational programs are urgently needed to train to raise famer’s awareness about proper antibiotics use with particular attention to public health problems that may rise due to poor use of antibiotics in cattle.