Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever (DHF): A Comparative Study on Prevention Behaviors Between People Residing in Areas of Repeated and Non-Repeated Outbreaks

Abstract

This analytic cross-sectional study aimed to compare the preventing dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) between people residing in a repeated outbreak area and a repeated outbreak area of DHF. The repeated outbreak area was purposely selected, while the non-outbreak areas were simple randomly selected, with a 5-year median criteria for morbidity from DHF. In total, 272 samples, aged 20–60 years, were randomly selected from 2 villages (136 samples in each village). All participants were residing in their village for at least one year. The data were gathered between January and March 2020, using a questionnaire validated by three experts with 0.67-1.00 of content validity. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and mann whitney u test for comparison of the preventing DHF between people residing in the repeated outbreak area and the non-outbreak area, respectively. Results showed that people residing in repeated outbreak and non-outbreak of DHF had significant differences in attitude (p-value=0.001), behaviors (p-value<0.001), and participation (p-value<0.001) in preventing DHF. However, people had no difference in knowledge (p-value=0.468) and perception (p-value=0.268) in preventing DHF.

This study therefore suggests that public health personnel should organize activities that emphasize community participation in order to raise awareness and attitude, and to prevent DHF. Participation, in particular, should focus on eliminating mosquito larvae breeding sites and in areas where there are repeated outbreaks.