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

A Talip, Balkis

Babaji Sanusi, Shuaibu

Mohamed, Maryati

English

Journals of Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM)

Journal of Science and Technology, Vol. 9 No. 1 (2017) p. 15-19  *Corresponding author: balkis@uthm.edu.my 2017 UTHM Publisher. All right reserved. penerbit.uthm.edu.my/ojs/index.php/jst  The Descriptive Study of Knowledge and Awareness of Tuberculosis Among Students in Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia S. B. Sanusi1, B. A. Talip1*, M. Mohamed1 1Faculty of Science, Technology and Human Development, Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, Johor, Malaysia.                  1. Introduction  Tuberculosis (TB) is still a public health problem in many developing countries including Malaysia [1]. There were 8.8 million incident cases of TB in 2010 globally.With the rising number of HIV/AIDS cases there is a threat of a resurgence of TB as this is the most common opportunistic infection in them [2]. WHO in 1993 declared that TB as a global public health emergency [3, 4], and it is the only disease ever declared as a global emergency by WHO [5]. It has been identified as one of the six infectious diseases that pose a threat to the global population  [6]. The worldwide burden of TB mainly lies in the 22 high burden countries and about 50% of prevalence occur infive countries of South East Asia [7], namely; India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Thailand and Myanmar [2]. It causes more adult deaths in the world than any other communicable diseases in developing countries where 95% of all TB cases occur [8]. It was the second most common notifiable communicable diseases in Malaysia in 2001 [9]. Apart from being a deadly disease, TB is also an expensive disease which can give a great economic problem to the country [10]. The trend of TB in the year 2010 in Malaysia showed a total of 18,517 people have been infected, which is an increase of 6% when compared to the previous year (17,341 cases in year 2009). The highest cases were found in that same year were in Sabah, 3278 cases, followed by Selangor (2829 cases), Johor (2058 cases), Sarawak (1991 cases) and Kuala Lumpur (1455 cases) [6]. The re-emergence of this predicament can be attributed to the high influx of foreign workers from high TB burden neighboring countries such as India and China into the community [1] and this became one of the reasons why TB could be called “a disease without borders” in Malaysia [11]. Awareness of TB is a significant impact on TB control [12].Owing to the ease of infection, anybody can contract TB. Unfortunately, people are not aware of TB. This lack of knowledge and awareness is a global problem. Therefore, the study attempts to examine the level of student’s awareness concerning this disease by investigating the the levels of awareness of TB knowledge on risk factors, clinical symptoms and treatment.    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.   Keywords: Tuberculosis, Awareness, knowledge, Students Journal of Science and Technology, Vol. 9 No. 1 (2017) p. 15-19  16  2. Methods  This study employs a quantitative research approach. The data were collected using closed ended questionnaires which have close ended questions. The questionnaires were developed based on the previous studies [13, 14].The questionnaire form was divided into two parts which were part A (profile of respondents) and part B (Awareness of TB on clinical symptoms, risk factors and treatments). This method is suitable for answering research questions of this study. Previous researches used the similar method to measure the level of public awareness on TB disease [15, 16, 17]. About 300 questionnaires were randomly distributed amongst students at Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia  and  270 questionnaires were returned. The data obtained were analyzed using SPSS 20.0.  3. Results and Discussions  A total of 270 out 300 students were responded to the study. Table 1 shows the data of socio-demographic profile that consisted of 59.3% male and 40.7% female respondents. Likewise, Malays represented the majority of the respondents (55.9%) followed by Chinese (20.7%), Indian (15.9%) and others which includes Nigerians, Yemenis, Iranians, Pakistanis and Somalian (7.4%). In addition, 62.6% of the respondents were first year students, then followed by 25.2% in the second year, 8.1%  and  4.1% were third and fourth year students respectively. The study also found that 72% of all the respondents were single while 27.4% are married. The results of TB awareness on clinical symptoms and risk factors shown in Table 2 demonstrated that more than half  (78.1%) of the respondents were aware of haemoptysis as a clinical symptom of TB, followed by chest pain (78.1%), coughing for over 2 weeks (77.8%), difficult breathing (67.4%), weight loss (55.6%) and loss of appetite (41.5%). On the other hand, HIV/AIDS (71.1%) was recognized by majority of the respondents as one of the risk factors of TB, this is followed by living with individual having chronic cough (70.7%), people exposed to TB in their working places (69.3%), smoking cigarette (69.3%) and low income groups (57.4%). However, diabetes mellitus which is second to HIV/AIDS as the risk factor of TB was known by less than half of the respondents (37.8%) as the risk factors of TB.  Table 1  Socio-demographic profile of the respondents Characteristics Numbers Percentages Gender   Male 160 59.3 Female 110 40.7 Race   Malays 151 55.9 Chinese 56 20.7 Indians 43 15.9 Others 20 7.4 Year of education   Year 1 169 62.6 Year 2 68 25.2 Year 3 22 8.1 Year 4 11 4.1 Marital status   Single 196 72.6 Married 74 27.4   Table 2  Respondents awareness about symptoms and risk factors of TB Characteristics Numbers Percentages Symptoms   Difficult breathing 182 67.4 Coughing for over 2 weeks 210 77.8 Haemoptysis 211 78.1 Loss of appetite 112 41.5 Chest pain 211 78.1 Loss of weight 150 55.6 Risk factors   HIV/AIDS 192 71.1 Diabetes mellitus 102 37.8 Smoking cigarette 187 69.3 Low income group 155 57.4 Living with individuals with chronic cough 191 70.7 Exposed to TB from place of work 187 69.3  Journal of Science and Technology, Vol. 9 No. 1 (2017) p. 15-19  17  The awareness of the respondents was analyzed and presented in Table 3. It has shown that the majority (82.2%) of respondents were aware that TB is curable and only 67.8% knows that there are drugs for treating TB. However, majority (88.9%) does not aware that the actual duration of treatment is within 6 to 9 months.   Table 3  Awareness of TB treatment and attitude of the respondents Characteristics Numbers Percentages Curability of TB 222 82.2 Availability of TB drugs 183 67.8 Treatment duration Till recovery 68 25.2 1-3 months  68 25.2 3-6 months  24 8.9 6-9 months 30 11.1 Do not know  80 29.6  An individual's response to TB is affected by his/her previous knowledge of the disease, better knowledge of TB is related to better health-seeking behavior of an individual. The demographic study has shown the higher participation of unmarried males compared to female respondents at 48%. A similar pattern of gender observed from many studies in Malaysia [6, 11]. However a study by Mokhtar et al.(2012) had shown the majority of the respondents are female (54.8%) which contraty the finding by this study [6]. In addition a study by Hagag et al,(2012) has shown the interest of married respondent to participate in a survey to develop an educational program for TB awareness in Egypt [17]. Due to the population of Malay students is higher in UTHM it was expected to have higher percentage of respondent among them compared to other races. In addition, the Year 1 student most likely interested to answer the questionaire compared to their seniors. Interestingly, majority of the respondents show prior knowledge about the TB disease and this has been proven by only 10.4% respondents had never heard about the disease. The knowledge of the disease can be a key factor for prevention. Despite the knowledge of the disease in general, the key information which is symptoms of TB are more crucial [18]. In this present study, the respondents mostly recognized the typical symptoms of TB including haemoptysis followed by chest pain, coughing for over 2 weeks, difficulty in breathing and a significant weight loss. This finding was analogous to the findings by Koay (2004) that has been performed in Malaysia [20]. The finding indicated that in general, people with cough might not aware of the likelihood that they might have severe disease unless their cough was accompanied by other symptoms, especially haemoptysis.  This study also revealed that approximately 71.1% of respondent were aware of typical factors on how the TB can be transmitted from person to person. This data could be indicated that the UTHM students may have prior knowledge about the disease transmission. It is inevitable that by knowing the nature of the disease, may lead to the logical ideas of disease transmission. This can be observed when only 37.8% of the respondents were answered “yes” to the questions of diabetes as a common disease transmission factor. This study also indicated that the most known risk factors were including factors of immunocompromised person with HIV/AIDS (71.7%) and living with individuals with chronic cough (70.7%). However, only 37.8% were unaware of diabetes as one of risk factor. This similar to the finding in Nigeria by Desalu et al.(2013) which indicates respondent as aware the factors that may increase the risk of infection [14].   4. Conclusion   Lack of awareness of TB symptoms is associated with delays in seeking professional treatment. The study shows that awareness among University students in Malaysia about TB is fairly good. However, the awareness regarding the risk factors should be elevated by designing appropriate programs in order to educate people regarding the condition of persistent cough either accompanied by blood (haemoptysis) or not.   Acknowledgement  The authors would like to thank Office for Research, Innovation, Commercialization and Management Consultancy (ORICC), Journal of Science and Technology, Vol. 9 No. 1 (2017) p. 15-19  18  UniversitiTun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM) for providing Postgraduate Incentive Research Grant (GIPS)Vot 1386 to fund the research.  References  [1].  Rafiza, S., Rampal, K. G., & Tahir, A. (2011). “Prevalence and risk factors of latent tuberculosis infection among health care workers in Malaysia”. BMC infectious diseases. 11(1):1. [2].  Tasnim, S., Rahman, A., & Hoque, F. M. (2012). “Patient’s knowledge and attitude towards tuberculosis in an urban setting”. Pulmonary medicine. 2012. [3]. Rennie, C. E., Pai, I., & Selvadurai, D. (2011). “Tuberculosis presenting as bilateral vocal fold palsy: case report and review of Otolaryngological manifestations of tuberculosis”. The Journal of Laryngology and Otology.125(10):1079–82. [4]. Abdallah, T., & Ali, A. 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The Descriptive Study of Knowledge and Awareness of Tuberculosis Among Students in Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia

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

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