Knowledge and practice on Toxoplasma infection in pregnant women from Malaysia, Philippines, and Thailand

Abstract

Toxoplasma gondii, is one of the infectious agents of congenital TORCH infections, causes severe clinical outcomes in fetus and newborns. Nevertheless this life-threatening parasitic disease is preventable by simple preventive measures related to lifestyle during pregnancy. We aim to study on the knowledge about toxoplasmosis and practices that prevents this infection among the pregnant women. Total of 2598 pregnant women from Malaysia, Philippines, and Thailand were randomly surveyed to determine the knowledge and their practices on Toxoplasma infection. The questionnaire covered respondents' general information and knowledge on plausible risks factors, symptoms, timing of infection, prevention knowledge, and preventive behavior regarding Toxoplasma infection. Majority of these pregnant women were in their age group of 20–29 years (50.9%), completed secondary level of education (51.7%), in their second trimester of pregnancies (38.1%), non-parous (36.6%), and had no history of abortion (90.4%). Based on this survey, only 11% of these pregnant women had read, heard, or seen information regarding toxoplasmosis and 3.5% of them were aware of being tested for the infection. A small percentage of these pregnant women knew that T. gondii were shed in the feces of infected cats (19.4%) and sometimes found in the raw or undercooked meat (11.0%). There was 16.1% of responding women knew that toxoplasmosis is caused by an infection. Demographic profiles such as age group, level of education, pregnancy term, and number of children of the pregnant women showed significant association with their responses toward prevention knowledge and preventive behavior related questions (P < 0.05). Thus, it is suggested that health education on toxoplasmosis and primary behavioral practices should be consistently offered to reproductive age women in general and pregnant women in particular. This information could help to reduce vertical transmission of Toxoplasma infection during pregnancy.

Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Community Towards Zoonotic Importance of &lt;i&gt;Toxoplasma&lt;/i&gt; Infection in Central Afar Region, North East Ethiopia

“…This finding is in line with Andiappan and other colleagues in 2014 [19] who reported about 11% of the interviewed pregnant women in Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand had knowledge about the disease in which both findings are by far lower than expected. Since majority of the community in this study area is leading pastoral life, the reason for this low awareness about the disease is illiteracy, no access to medias and no attention is given to the disease in the health centers due to lack of awareness and diagnostic facilities.…”

“…This finding indicates the importance of educating the pregnant women with the specific preventive measures of the disease which have been discussed in previous studies [20][21][22]19].…”

“…In pregnant women, infection during early pregnancy is more serious compared to infection in late gestation, but the likelihood of disease transmission increases during the progression of pregnancy. Toxoplasma infection in the first trimester often causes abortion and late infection causes premature birth, or may lead to adverse complications and even death in babies [6,19].…”

“…The PAs are stratified in to urban and rural areas based on the settlement, accordingly, two PAs from urban and the other two from rural areas were included in the study. There is no previous year's report on the knowledge and practice of the community towards the infection in the study area but there is a report of 11 % in Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand [19]. Therefore, the average expected response distribution is assumed to be 11 % within 95 % Confidence Interval (CI) at 5 % desired accuracy.…”

Toxoplasmosis among Saudi Female Students in Al-Ahssa, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: Awareness and Risk Factors

“…Another study that was done in Netherlands to evaluate the awareness among the pregnant women had revealed that about 76% of the women had read, seen or heard information about this infection [18]. However, among the pregnant women from Malaysia, Philippines, and Thailand, many women had no information concerning toxoplasmosis and how to avoid it during the pregnancy [19]. Likewise, the awareness level of toxoplasmosis was 4.4% among the pregnant women in Sri Lanka [20].…”