Effectiveness of Systematic Educational Program on Knowledge regarding 5 F’s of Disease Transmission

Abstract

Background And Objective: Food, finger, fluid, fomite, and faeces are the 5 F's through which infectious diseases are spread from one person to another. Children are more susceptible to infectious disease, which is a huge public health issue. Therefore, it is essential to spread health information in order to raise awareness of health issues and change behaviour in a way that would promote good health and avoid sickness. Hence the focus of this study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of systematic educational program on5 F’s of disease transmission among school going children at Nagamangala(Tq), Mandya(Dist). Materials And Methods:  The study employed a pre-experimental one-group pre-test post-test design and evaluative approach. A total of 120 selected school going children at Nagamangala(Tq), Mandya(Dist) were selected for the study through simple random sampling technique. Data collection took place over a period of one month, from August 17th2022, to September 17st 2022. Data was collected using demographic Performa and structured knowledge questionnaire.  The structured knowledge questionnaire was validated by experts and its reliability was established. Results: The total analysis of schoolchildren's knowledge levels regarding5 F’s of disease transmission showed that mean knowledge scores of the subjects at pre-test were 9.8 ±3.244 However, after the intervention there was a significant increase in knowledge score with a post test mean score of 22.24 ±3.01 and computed t=2.86and p value was significant at 0.05 level of significance. The results of chi square analysis showed that there was significant association between knowledge scores with age, gender, education status, income status, type of diet and previous information at p<0.05 level of significance. Conclusion: The program impacted on enhancing knowledge, this leads to the conclusion that the systematic educational program is successful in raising students' level of knowledge. And there was a significant association between level of knowledge of school going children and selected demographic variables such as Age, gender, education status, religion, source of information, income, type of diet and previous information.