Knowledge, awareness, practice and preventive measures regarding swine flu among community people: a cross sectional study from Pokhara, Nepal
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Abstract
Background
Swine flu is an acute respiratory disease, which is caused by a strain of the influenza type A virus known as H1N1, officially referred as novel A /H1N1. There is no doubt that this deadly disease causing a massive havoc, different places in the world and has created fear in the society. The aim of this study was to determine the knowledge, awareness practice toward the pandemic H1N1 and their predictor factors, preventive measures among the community people of selected slum areas at Pokhara.
Methods
This cross-sectional study was done in between 08-03-2015 to 16-04-2015. A total number of 424 participants’ were participated in this study. Descriptive statistics was used and associations between different study variables were tested by chi square test by using SPSS 16.
Results
Majority of respondents had heard about Swine flu from mass media (64.65%) followed by family/relatives (25.7%). A relatively less proportion (23.1%) knew about the cause of swine flu. Half of the participants were aware about major sign and symptoms like fever, cough, sneezing and running nose of swine flu. 60.6% of the subjects did not know about diagnostic tests.
Conclusion
Low level of awareness and practice was observed in this study. These findings can offer pragmatic contributions to policy makers and academic community with regard to formulating good strategies and measures to ensure effective messages about ways to handle potential influenza spread in the community context will be processed effectively by the rural communities.
Article Details
References
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