Health Literacy of prevention and control of rabies, community leaders in Srinarong district, Surin Province

Abstract

Rabies is a major problem in Health Region 9 because patients were found every year during 2017-2019. Health literacy is one of the effective measurements to prevent and control rabies. In March 2019, a cross-sectional survey was done. 310 community leaders in Sri Narong District Surin Province were selected by simple random sampling to study the relationship between health literacy and rabies control behaviors. Data were collected by using questionnaire which had 3 parts: general information, health literacy and self-protection behavior. Data was analyzed by descriptive statistics and Pearson's product moment correlation coefficient.
The results found that community leaders were female 65.2 percent and male 34.8 percent, aged between 44-53 years old 47.4 percent, were public health volunteers 72.3 percent. Most community leaders have a health literacy score in preventing rabies at moderate level (4.32, S.D. = 0.40) and having self-protection behavior from rabies at moderate level (2.55, S.D. = 0.31). Health literacy had a positive relationship with moderate level of self-protection behavior with statistical significance at 0.01 level (r = 0.419, p-value ≤0.001). So health literacy in rabies prevention and control should be improve in community leaders. Factors related to rabies self-protection behaviors should be studied.