Knowledge and Awareness towards Nipah Virus A...

Knowledge and Awareness towards Nipah Virus Among Undergraduate Dental Students

Author Name : Dr. B. Raviteja, Dr. K.N.V.R. Pratap, Dr. T. Madhavi Padma, Dr. Siva Kalyan, Dr. V. Srujan Kumar

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND:

Nipah virus is a zoonotic agent. It was first known and confirmed in asian country in 1999. It causes disease with high mortality rate. Repeated outbreaks are seen in bangladesh since 2001-2007. The virus itself was named once a city in asian country.

Between 1998-2008,477 individuals are infected and 252 were killed.In bangladesh nipah virus infection was related to contact with sick cow, consumption of feather palm sap, person to person transmission. Malaysian occurrence was related to one strain.

 AIM:  To assess the Knowledge and awareness towards nipah virus among undergraduate dental students.

METHOD:

A cross- sectional study was conducted among the undergraduate dental students[III,IV and Interns] in a tertiary care teaching hospital,  Khammam, using a web based tool called Google forms, a semi-structural online questionnaire was designed and distributed to the students in order to fill. Descriptive statistics and chi-square test were calculated using spss version -23, Ap- value <0.05 was used to evaluate statistical significance.

RESULT:

A total of 260 students took part with females [81.9%] and males [18.1%]. Age of the participants ranges from 18-25 years. In this study female students have more knowledge and awareness regarding nipah virus compared to males. III BDS, followed by Interns, followed by IV BDS.

CONCLUSION:

The study results suggest that nipah virus knowledge and awareness level is quite adequate among students.

Key Words:  Nipah virus, Knowledge, Awareness, Dental students.