കലണ്ടറിന്റെ
മാന്ത്രികക്കളത്തില്‍
ഏപ്രില്‍ 24
മഴ സൂചികള്‍
തുള വീഴ്ത്തിയ ശരീരം
പേ പിടിച്ച
രാത്രിപ്പേമാരികള്‍
എത്ര നനയണം
വിജനമാമി -
ത്തെരുവു താണ്ടുവാന്‍
ഓര്മത്തെരുവിന്റെ
തിരിവുകളൊക്കെ -
ത്തിരഞ്ഞിട്ടും
ഒരു തിരിവിനപ്പുറം
ഒരു ചുമരിന്റെ
നിഴല്‍പ്പാടിനപ്പുറം
മുഖം തിരിച്ചോടിയവളെ
കാണാതെ പോയത്
മിഴികളില്‍
ചോരച്ചാലുറവൂറിയിട്ടോ
വേദന തിങ്ങി
വിങ്ങിപ്പൊട്ടി
പൊളിഞ്ഞു പഴകി
ചവറു കൂനയില്‍ ചീഞ്ഞ
സ്വപ്നങ്ങള്‍ക്കൊപ്പം
പ്രണയം അഴുകി:
ഭ്രമിപ്പിക്കുന്ന
ദുര്‍ഗന്ധം ....
പക്ഷെ,
ചോരയിറ്റുന്ന
പനിനീര്‍ പൂവുകള്‍
രാത്രി സ്വപ്നങ്ങളിലേക്ക്
വിരുന്നെത്തില്ലെന്ന്;
രാത്രി വാനങ്ങളില്‍
ചോരത്തുള്ളികള്‍
തെളിയില്ലെന്ന്
നിലാ മഴ പെയ്യില്ലെന്ന്
പറയാതെ പറയുന്നു
ഈ പ്രേത രാത്രി,
പേടിപ്പിക്കുന്ന -
ഇപ്പേമാരിയും
ഏപ്രില്‍ 24 .
കലണ്ടറിന്റെ
ച്ചുടലക്കളത്തില്‍
തടവിലെങ്കിലും
കോമ്പല്ലുകളില്‍
ജീവന്‍ പിടക്കുന്ന
എന്റെ സ്വപ്‌നങ്ങള്‍ കോര്‍ക്കുന്നു.
മഴ സൂചികളാല്‍
ചോരയിറ്റുന്ന
ശരീരം, തെരുവില്‍
തെരച്ചില്‍ തുടരുന്നു;
I can hear your Foot steps; At the close of My ears Like a folk song Embedded with sad
Filled with The music of departure But, calm; Charming invitation. And I feel The cold touch Of your figures At my back neck. I am coming dear Without my corpus, even. Fill my soul, death; With your black rose..
The results of the Knowledge, Attitude and Practice study on Chikungunya are presenting in this chapter based on the analysis of the collected data. This includes the socio demographic profile, the age and gender, the educational base, religion, knowledge level, attitude and the practices related to the chikungunya epidemic etc. The suggestions based on the findings are incorporating in the last part of the chapter
Socio-demographic profile of the respondents revealed that:
· The age group of the respondents is 15-68. Mean age is 46.02 and median is 47 and mode is 42.
· 57.4 percentage of the respondents were male and 42.6% female.
· 42 percent Muslims, 40.4 percent Hindus and 17 percent Christians were participated in the survey
· majority of the respondents were engaged in agricultural field.
· The respondents represent the two type of socio economic conditions i.e, APL/BPL, in approximately equal proportions
· Majority of the respondents, educational qualification were below S.S.L.C
Objective 2
· 36 percent of the respondents’ knowledge level is in the interval of lower knowledge level and 64 percent are in medium level. No one found having a higher knowledge level.
· 30 percent of the respondents have poor level of basic knowledge 66percent have satisfactory. Only two percent have a higher level of basic knowledge.
· 45percent of the respondents are unaware about the transmission of the epidemic and 74percent didn’t know how to prevent the spreading of chikungunya from a patient to others.
· Majority of the respondents (79 percent) are unaware about the treatment of the disease.
· 64 percent of the respondents gave correct answer about the agent vector of chikungunya.
Objective 3
· 75 percent of the respondents having a positive attitude, but not highly positive.
· The attitudes of 25 percent were neutral which has the same effect as negative attitude.
· 28 percent of the respondents believe that the chikungunya may cause death
· Majority of the respondents realize the importance of the clean environmental preservation to prevent chikungunya.
· A significant number of populations are not interested to receive medical treatment when they affected with diseases.
· 40 percent of the respondents assume their diseases from the symptoms without seek the help of a doctor.
Objective 4
38 percent of the respondents’ practices of storing water are vulnerable to be as the potential sources of mosquitoes breeding.
95 percent of the respondents use fogging method to destroy adult mosquitoes
Electric bat mosquito repellents are unfamiliar to the majority.
Objective 5
There is a statistically significant relationship between the educational qualification and knowledge of the respondents, but there is no statistically significant relationship between educational qualification and the basic knowledge.
The relationship of educational qualification is not statistically significant with the attitude.
There is a positive correlation (.016) between knowledge and attitude. This means that knowledge of the respondents can influence peoples' attitudes.
Suggestions
Following suggestions can be made based on the finding of the study
l The effective awareness generation progammes are needed to the prevention and control of epidemics like chikungunya
l All the programmes can be planed, implemnted or performed and evaluated in a participatory way.
l The attitude is an out come of socio demographic, cultural and educational situations but knowledge can significantly influence the attitude.
l The design of awareness program in accordance with the cultural and social situation will help to make effective result.
l The mass media and folk media can be used for the awareness programmes.
l Symptoms, transmission, treatment, the preventive mechanisms, vector control and larvea control are the key areas needed the focus in the awareness intervention programmes.
l More community based study is needed to explore the social, cultural and other factors which lead to the epidemic out breaks and spreading.
Conclusion
Based on the findings and suggestions, social workers have got significant role in the participatory planning, implementation and evaluation programmes in the community level health activities. Social work intervention will help in the participatory awareness programmes which will lead to a health conscious community. The social worker can play his role as a researcher to evaluate the community level health programmes and to explore the social, cultural and other factors which lead to the epidemic out breaks and spreading.
A Knowledge, Attitude and Practice (KAP) Study on Chikungunya Epidemic in Chittar Grama Panchayath.
STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
Communicable diseases always hit the society severely. Each outbreak of epidemics results in loss of human life, huge financial burden for the treatment and hospital maintenance and the loss in the man hours in production of goods and services. The Central and State Governmentshave to spent unlimited amount of money for the curative and remedial efforts when a communicable disease out breaks.
During the period of epidemics, number of unscientific beliefs and myths spread among the community and which some times affect the epidemic control measures. These type of unscientific beliefs influence the people because they have not scientific knowledge over the diseases. The poor knowledge level causes in the framing of negative attitude and with which people adapt wrong practices.
This study is to assess the knowledge level of people about Chikungunya, their attitude towards it and their practices related to the promotive, preventive and curative aspects of Chikungunya.
GENERAL OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
ØTo study the knowledge, attitude and practice of people in the Chikungunya affected areas regarding the epidemic and its management.
SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES
Ø To study the socio-economic profile of the respondents
Ø To study the knowledge of respondents about Chikungunya epidemic
ØTo Study the attitude of respondents about the prevention and treatment
ØTo study the practices of respondents on Chikungunya in respect of prevention and curation.
ØTo study the significance of the relationship between education and knowledge and education and attitude.
SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The people living in Kerala are very conscious about the personal hygiene. They are known for their bathing two times per day, washing cloths and keeping their immediate premises of their living atmosphere. But, the repeated outbreak of epidemics like Chikungunya, Dengue, Japanese encephalitis etc. show the loop holes in the argument of personal and environmental hygiene, because these communicable diseases are rooted to the same.
The knowledge level of people about the epidemics plays important role in the preventive mechanisms and in the promotion of a healthy living standards. And the curative aspects also influenced by the knowledge level. The increase in the knowledge level will influence in the framing of attitudes and which reflects in the preventive, promotive and remedial efforts.
The present educational system has only limited provisions for providing promotive health orientation. The findings of the McKinsey situation analysis study commissioned by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare that there was a paucity of public health specialists in the country is hardly a revelation. And the suggested solution to that problem expanding public health education is not a spectacular new idea. For over 60 years half a dozen different committees and reports have devoted pages upon pages to the 'urgent' need for public health education for doctors and for establishing institutions offering training in public health. The Bhore committee talked of evolving a 'social physician', and the Mudaliar committee made a whole range impressive recommendations on diplomas and degrees of every sub area in public health that were largely un-implementable because of the inherent infrastructure and financial requirements.
But the government has to spent large amount of money to conscientious people against the epidemics when it hits the society and cause massacre of hundreds. And there is no cost-benefit evaluative system to to assess the effectiveness of the conscientious programmes. During the last epidemic outbreak period also different departments of the state and central government has spent hundreds of thousands of money for the awareness and remedial programmes, but no report published about the outcome of these programmes.
The community level study will help to understand the limitations in the knowledge level of people and shows the areas which need to give more focus in the awareness creation programmes. KAP model study is very effective to realise the situation of the community in the knowledge, attitude and practice areas.
UNIVERSE OF STUDY
The universe of the study is all the families at the Chittar Grama Panchayath in the .
Pathanamthitta district.
SAMPLING PROCEDURE
The technique adopted for sampling is cluster sampling. Convenient sampling was used for data collection. The size of sample is 47.
TOOL OF DATA COLLECTION
The researcher used Self made questionnaire for collecting data from the respondents. The questionnaire includes socio-economic profile, questions to assess the knowledge level, attitude, and practices related to Chikungunya, and the other information like their expenses for treatment and losses.
Pre-test
The researcher did pre-test among seven respondents from a different community. It was done to check the effectiveness of the questionnaire for the required information. After the test the researcher made adequate changes in the questionnaire.
DATA ANALYSIS
The analysis of date was done using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The statistical measures like mean, median, mode, frequency, etc. were used to analyse the collected data. Interpretations are given based on the previous studies and the review of literature.
THEORETICAL DEFINITION OF KEY CONCEPTS
Attitude : An enduring, learned predisposition to behave in a consistent way toward a given class of objects, or a persistent mental and/or neural state of readiness to react to a certain class of object as not as they are but they conceived to be.
Chikungunya :Chkungunya is a relatively rare form of viral fever caused by an alpha virus that is spread by mosquito bites.
Epidemic: Spreading rapidly and extensively by infection and affecting many individual in an area or a population at a same time.
Knowledge :(i) Expertise, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject, (ii) what is known in a particular field or in total; facts and information or (iii) awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation.
Practice: A habitual behaviour or performance of knowledge.
OPERATIONAL DEFINITIONS
Attitude: An enduring, learned predisposition to behave in a consistent way toward the Chikungunya epidemic and nutral state of readiness to react to the epidemic as not as it is but as it is conceived to be.
Chikungunya:Chkungunya is a relatively rare form of viral fever caused by an alpha virus that is spread by mosquito bites.
Epidemic: The Chkungunya fever spread in the target area of the study.
Knowledge: The total information gained by an individual about Chkungunya epidemic, in its promotive, preventive and curative aspects.
Practice: The activities taken by an individual related to the promotive, preventive and curative aspects of Chkungunya.
LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY
ØAs an academic activity, the scope and range of study is very limited. And the time limit also has affected the effectiveness of the study.
ØThe questionnaire is self made one and it may not be attain the high research quality. It may reflect in the data.
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