knowledge towards school-based dengue prevention and control program between among students with and without illness and non-illness experience with of previous dengue infection form using school-based dengue prevention and control program in Nakhon Si Thammarat Province

Abstract

Dengue fever becomes increasing every year. Especially children aged 5 -14 years are more likely to have recurrent infections and severe symptoms resulting in death. The objective of this research was to compare the knowledge on prevention and control of dengue before and after receiving the school-based dengue prevention and control program, and to compare the knowledge between the group of students with experience of previous dengue infection and the group of students without experience of dengue infection, before and after receiving the program. The participatory action research was conducted through assessing the dengue situation at school, planning and developing the program, pretesting the program, assessing knowledge of students before and after implementation. The samples were 388 primary school grade six students in Nakhon Si Thammarat province, receiving the program of 5 activities for 12 weeks. We assessed the knowledge with questionnaire. We analyzed and compared the data before and after receiving the program using Wilcoxon signed-rank test. We compared knowledge between groups with the Mann-Whitney U test. Results showed that knowledge before and after receiving the program in each group is a significant different (p < 0.01). The knowledge between groups before and after receiving the program is no significant difference (p > 0.01). It showed that students' knowledge increased after receiving the program which was developed from the participation of students, caregivers, teachers, and health volunteers. However, the programs for each student group should be particularly developed especially in the students who have illness experienced by emphasizing the caretakers’ role and the students to apply knowledge from their own experience to prevent a recurrence infection.