Improving Primary Health Care Workers’ Knowledge to Strengthen Leptospirosis Surveillance in Demak District, Indonesia

Abstract

Leptospirosis has become an important public health problem in Demak District, Central Java, Indonesia. Early diagnosis and appropriate treatments have been carried out to prevent an increase of leptospirosis cases in this region. However, these efforts are still hampered due to the lack of knowledge of leptospirosis, especially in the primary health care level. It is necessary to take effective clinical Leptospirosis training approaches to improve primary health care workers' competency on leptospirosis surveillance. The aim of this study was to strengthen the capacity of the primary health care workers to improve their knowledge on clinical leptospirosis. The quasi-experimental study (one group pre-post test without control) was conducted among 34 participants from all subdistrict health offices in Demak District, Central Java. The training was administered for one day with assessment at the baseline and the post-training. The four training outcomes were score changes in workers' knowledge of the clinical manifestations of leptospirosis suspected cases, probable cases; the appropriate time of using Rapid diagnostic tests for diagnosing leptospirosis suspects; and the implementation of active and passive case detection. The result showed a statistically significant difference in knowledge achievement between pre-training (66.46±2.16) and post-training (80.78±1.82). The percentage of the total knowledge between the baseline and the post-training increased significantly by 22.39%. These findings are expected to give a contribution to workers' knowledge to improve the competency of public health care workers on clinical leptospirosis and recommended to be disseminated in similar settings to strengthen leptospirosis surveillance.