Collect information about various diseases and public awareness and vaccination
Answers
Answer:
This study aimed to investigate the level of awareness of and factors associated with major infectious diseases in rural China and to provide the most recent baseline data for the prevention and control of these diseases.
Methods
This cross-sectional study was carried out in Zhejiang province between December 2010 and April 2011. Participants were recruited from 36 villages and interviewed by doctors from the community health service using a structured questionnaire.
Results
The study sample consisted of 36,377 subjects aged 15 to 80 years old. Study results showed that knowledge of HIV was adequate in 44.21% of rural residents; knowledge of TB was adequate in 52.66% of respondents; and knowledge of HBV was adequate in 60.18% of respondents. People in older age groups and with lower education levels were more likely to have low levels of awareness of these three infectious diseases. Participants in the farming industry had poorer awareness of HIV and HBV, while students and factory workers knew little of TB. The proportions of people reporting being fully satisfied with the control policies for HIV, TB and HBV were 37.70%, 34.25% and 36.12%, respectively.
Conclusions
The level of awareness of HIV, TB and HBV is still low among rural residents. Further national disease control plans for major infectious diseases should emphasise effective and comprehensive health education campaigns to increase public awareness of these diseases in rural areas of China.
Keywords: Awareness, Prevention, Infectious disease, Rural residents
Background
Infectious with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), tuberculosis (TB) and hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection are major public health problems in many parts of the world. In China, approximately 780,000 people live with HIV; 26,000 died from Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in 2009 [1], while 4.5 million Chinese have been infected with active pulmonary TB, 1.5 million of whom are smear-positive [2]; meanwhile 120 million people have been chronically infected with HBV [3], and more than 300,000 people die from HBV-related diseases every year [4]. According to the 6th national population census, over 0.67 billion people live in rural areas and account for 50.32% of the entire population. Rural residents differ from urban residents in terms of socioeconomic status, which can lead to heightened infectious diseases risks [2,5].
Public awareness of infectious diseases plays an important role in disease control; a lack of reasonable knowledge of infectious diseases leads to low detection rates, the interruption of treatment, discrimination and stigma. Therefore, to stop the spread of HIV, TB and HBV in China, the Chinese ministry of health launched specific national disease control plans [6-8], using posters, advertisements on television and printed media and other methods to improve the awareness of these diseases in the general population. The assessment of the awareness levels in rural residents is very important because it helps determine the impact of previous prevention efforts made by the government and gauge the need for interventions.