The Descriptive Study of Knowledge and Awareness of Tuberculosis Among Students in Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia

Abstract

Despite the disease management and controls introduced by Ministry of Health Malaysia, tuberculosis remains the major public threats among Malaysian. Enhancing the awareness among community is one of the strategy outlined by WHO in the Global Plan to Stop TB 2006-2015 program. Due to this, many programs have been introduced to increase awareness among the community. Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia is situated in the industrial radius area. The rate of migration is higher from neighboring countries such as Indonesia, Myammar, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Filipina and India which known to have high burden tuberculosis cases. Therefore, the anxious of the disease to spread is significant. This study employs a quantitative research approach by using semi structured questionnaires which have close ended questions. The questionnaire focused on tuberculosis knowledge on risk factors, clinical symptoms and treatments. About 270 questionnaires were randomly distributed amongst students at Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia and the results were analyzed using the Statistical Package of Social Sciences (SPSS) 20.0.The results demonstrated that, the majority of the respondents were aware of the infection, symptoms and curability of the disease. However, almost 90% of the respondents did not know the duration of treatments. The lack of awareness is associated with delays in seeking professional treatment. The study shows that awareness among students about TB is fairly good, but extensive survey is required especially on the risk factors.