Perceptions of Population on COVID-19 in Lisala City (Mongala Province) and Perspective of Valorising Alternative Therapy in Democratic Republic of the Congo

Aim: To assess the population's knowledge of COVID-19 in order to guide future scientific research on the alternative management of this pandemic by Traditional Pharmacopoeia.

Place and Duration of Study: The study was undertaken in Lisala city (province of Mongala, Democratic Republic of the Congo), from 26 July to 10 August 2020.

Methodology: The surveys consisted in drafting a questionnaire beforehand to apprehend the knowledge of COVID-19among the surrounding population. The interview was conducted in Lingala language using stratified proportional random sampling method.

Results: A total of 200 people were interviewed in Lisala city. The majority were men (63.0% vs. 37.0%). The majority of the respondents were aged between 26-45 years (51.5%). The majority of the respondents were Ngombe people (43.5%), followed by Budja (21.5%), Mongo (13.0%) and Lokele (7.0%) respectively. The best source of information on the pandemic in Lisala city was the radio (72.5%), followed by the multisectoral committee for the response to COVID-19 (17.5%), television (9.0%) and newspapers (1.5%). In the event of contamination, the therapeutic approach recommended by the population is modern medicine (76.5%) as opposed to 23.5% of respondents who prefer to resort to traditional medicine. The majority of respondents prefer health products other than vaccines (71.0% vs. 20.0%). The results of the present survey showed statistically significant difference (at the probability threshold of 0.05: χ2≥9.345 and p-value≤0.05) and relationship (Cramer Pearson V value≥0.216) between educational status of the respondents and variables like knowledge on the disease consequences, knowledge on the COVID-19 agent; remarks concerning communication strategy; the risk of infection from living with a COVID-19 infected people; the fear to be infected; the existence of COVID-19 support structures and the knowledge on barrier.

Conclusion and Suggestions: The population's dependence on Traditional Medicine is postulated as one of the protective factors for the population of sub-Saharan Africa against COVID-19. It is therefore desirable to develop a phytochemicals library and its virtual screening in order to partially validate the anti-corona-viral properties of medicinal plants. Computational chemistry and structural biology will thus help to develop sustainable alternative medicine using molecular modelling and dynamics as strategy for predicting bioactivity, pharmacokinetic and toxicological properties of natural products isolated from medicinal plants.