Knowledge Attitude and Practices of Primary School Teachers Regarding Prevention from Water Borne Diseases: A Cross Sectional Study
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.52206/jsmc.2019.9.2.%25pKeywords:
Knowledge, Attitude, Practice, Water Borne Diseases, Primary school, teachersAbstract
Background: Water-borne diseases are a menace in developing countries and a large number of cases are reported each year. These
diseases can overburden health delivery systems in resource-poor countries like Pakistan. Environmental management approaches
along with personnel preventive techniques can effectively reduce the burden of these diseases. World Health Organization has
suggested the use of lay persons as health educators in order to fight common diseases at local level. Schools provide a good prospect to
children to learn about common health problems and endemic diseases and methods to prevent them. Teachers can act as admirable
educators by playing a key role of delivering important health education messages to children and targeting the health behavior.
Objective: To assess the knowledge, attitude and practices of primary school teachers regarding prevention from water borne
diseases in school settings in Peshawar.
Material and Method: This study was conducted in different primary schools of Peshawar district (both public & private). Sample size
taken was 200 school teachers from different schools of Peshawar district selection criteria being only those teachers who were not
busy in classes at the time of data collection were approached.
Results: the study conducted showed that more than 77% of teachers had knowledge about water borne diseases, and its cause. More
than 46.5% confirmed that water is free of germs and 47% were satisfied with the quality of water. 33% of the subjects use clean water
storage containers and 78.5% cover their water container. 65% educate their school children about water borne diseases. Among 200
subjects, only 12.5 % had awareness about campaigns educating people on water borne diseases.
Conclusion: Primary school teachers were found to have adequate knowledge about water borne diseases and their prevention, there
was a wide gap between this knowledge and actual practices. This huge knowledge practice gap was because of a lack of attitude towards
WBDs. It was found that knowledge about WBDs was not in proportion to formal education, however, attitudes and practices were. The
main obstacles in the way of adopting practices were found to be shortage of time.
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