Dengue: awareness, preventive practices and water storage behaviour in an urban community of Delhi

Abstract

Background: Dengue, an arboviral disease transmitted by Aedes egypti mosquito, has become an important public health problem, with almost half the population of the world being at risk. Community awareness and involvement for vector control is an important aspect of disease prevention and control. The aims and objective was to assess awareness and preventive practices used for dengue and related water storage behaviour in an urban area of Delhi. Methods: Observational, descriptive, cross sectional study. Results: Awareness about dengue fever and its mode of spread is quite high but the participants are not aware about the practices that are putting their surroundings at risk of vector breeding; especially when it comes to water storage behaviour. Conclusions: Behaviour change at individual and community level is essential for vector and hence dengue control, adoption of proper preventive practices and water storage behaviour needs to be emphasized at the community level.

Knowledge, awareness and preventive practices of dengue outbreak in Bangladesh: a countrywide study

“…Many of the research participants stated the dirty and unclean water such as sewage drains are the most common breeding sites for dengue mosquitoes. The knowledge level on DF found in our study is comparable to similar KAP study ndings previously conducted in the Dhaka city of Bangladesh [21], India [22], Pakistan [23], Malaysia [5], Thailand [24], Brazil [25] and Jamaica [26]. In this study, some of the participants were able to correctly identify all of the symptoms of DF apart from many respondents who identi ed fever as an obvious symptom.…”

“…The mostly favored preventive measures used by the respondents reported in this study was using of mosquito coils (38.5%). Using bed nets would be ineffective in preventing Aedes mosquito bites as most of them were used only at night [22]. Only a few of the research participants (13%) responded that cleaning the surroundings can be preventive measures.…”

Assessing level of pre and post interventional knowledge and attitude for dengue awareness among selected government school student of Bhopal, India

“…Similarly, another study from Delhi has shown a high awareness of dengue (98.8%). 21 and Valantine et al study has shown 4% of the participants have never heard about dengue. 22 Newspaper (43%) emerged as the major source of information on dengue in the present study.…”

“…Similar finding Arora et al Delhi study. 21 In this study, 50% of study population considered dengue as a serious illness and felt need of treatment and hospitalization is necessary for adequate cure. In another study done in Maharashtra by Taksande, it was found that 94% of study participants felt the need for hospitalization for dengue treatment.…”

“…whereas a study from Delhi (61.1%), Puducherry (64.5%) Television emerged as the major source of information on dengue. 21,22 In the study from Chandigarh, health professionals were identified as a major source of information (44.87%). 23 Dengue fever as a viral disease was known to 55% of School students in pretest, 91% of school students after posttest.…”