Studies on community knowledge and behavior following a dengue epidemic in Chennai city, Tamil Nadu, India

In 2001, a major dengue outbreak was recorded in Chennai city, with 737 cases (90%) out of a total of 861 cases recorded from Tamil Nadu state. A KAP survey was carried out to assess the community knowledge, attitude and practice on dengue fever (DF), following the major dengue outbreak in 2001. A pre- tested, structured questionnaire was used for data collection. The multistage cluster sampling method was employed and 640 households (HHs) were surveyed. Among the total HHs surveyed, 34.5% of HHs were aware of dengue and only 3.3% of HHs knew that virus is the causative agent for DF. Majority of the HHs (86.5%) practiced water storage and only 3% of them stored water more than 5 days. No control measures were followed to avoid mosquito breeding in the water holding containers by majority of HHs (65%). Sixty percent of HHs did not know the biting behaviour of dengue vector mosquitoes. The survey results indicate that the community knowledge was very poor on dengue, its transmission, vector breeding sources, biting behavior and preventive measures. The lack of basic knowledge of the community on dengue epidemiology and vector bionomics would be also a major cause of increasing trend of dengue in this highly populated urban environment. There is an inevitable need to organize health education programmes about dengue disease to increase community knowledge and also to sensitize the community to participate in integrated vector control programme to resolve the dengue problem.