A study of the knowledge, attitude and practice regarding H1N1 among the residents of Surendranagar city

Abstract

Background: H1N1 virus has caused a major pandemic worldwide creating a global havoc. The Infection till now has claimed over 14,000 lives. Even after the declaration of the end of pandemic there are still epidemics & sporadic cases reported from many parts of India, which shows that the lacunae left in the awareness among the people. Aims & Objective: (1) To find out the awareness regarding H1N1 influenza among urban population of Surendranagar. (2) To elucidate the correlation of the awareness with the socio demographic characteristics. Material and Methods: Sample selection was by simple random technique & size of the sample was 742. A cross sectional house to house survey was carried out. The obtained data was analyzed using SPSS for windows. Results: Out of the 742 subjects, 272 were males and 470 females with mean age of 37.31 ± 17.58. Out of the total no. of subjects, only 430 (57.95%) had heard of swine flu. Majority of the families (70.88%) were from Social Class 1 (Modified Prasad's Classification). Out of those who had heard of swine flu, 43.48% of the individuals knew that the disease transmission was through Coughing, sneezing and airborne. About 42.99% of subjects knew about the major symptoms like fever, coryza and dyspnoea. Conclusion: There was a large no. of individuals in the population who had not heard of swine flu, indicating that in spite of the health education; there has been some loophole in conveying the knowledge regarding the disease to the people, showing an urgent need of more large scale IEC activities.

Awareness and Practices Regarding Swine Flu among Individuals Attending Urban Health Centre in Medchal-Malkajgiri District, Telangana State

“…Only 6.7% of the study subjects had the knowledge of the availability of swine flu vaccine and were willing to take it in contrast to 54.8% in the study by Naik et al very similar to previous study by Singh S et al in which availability of medicine and vaccine against swine flu were known to 74% and 60.5%, respectively, Nagar S et al (44%) 13 . Joseph TF et al 14 found that 63% were not aware, regarding vaccine availability.…”