Knowledge and Consciousness Level of Bangladeshi People about the Infectious Diseases

Abstract

Transmission of an infectious disease may occur through one or more diverse pathways including physical contact with infected individuals. These infected agents may also be transmitted through liquids, foods, body fluids, contaminated objects, airborne inhalation, or through vector borne spread. The term infectivity describes the ability of an organism to enter, survive and multiply in the host, while the infectiousness of a disease indicates the comparative ease with which the disease is transmitted to other hosts. Tweaking the lifestyle could be a big step for the people suffering from different infectious diseases toward the prevention of different infectious diseases- and it's never too late to start. To do so, as initial step, it is more than indispensable for everyone to get closer to all the factors involving in the prevalence of these pandemics in the proximity of time to get ready for fighting in the war with the pande mic. This study has done to investigate the differential levels and risky factors of socio-demographic and health related concerned affecting the vulnerability of the people to the infectious diseases. Different statistical analysis named logistic regression, linear probability mode (LPM) has been employed to investigate the differential patterns of the selected infectious diseases (i.e., Hepatitis B and Hl V / AIDS), to identify the interaction effects of the factors which influence knowledge and. consciousness of the studied population. For this purpose, data had been collected from Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (BDHS), 2007. The present study utilizes the BDHS with having a sample of 3151. From the study it has been found that in the case of hepatitis B the majority of middle-aged people (41-50 years of age group) have the habit of taking the vaccination regarding HB, on the other hand for HIV/ AIDS the majority of the respondents of age group 21 -30 used to use the condom as their security measure. Educational attainment and access to multimedia have the significant contribution to explore the knowledge and consciousness~ regarding these pandemics. It can be mentioned that with 10% enhancement in the respondent's educational attainment and l 0% enhancement in the habit of watching TV make the consciousness level higher by 1.26%. With the ~1abit of taking -protected drinking water and with the higher educational enrollment the consciousness level about ~ and HIV/AIDS is enhanced respectively. It can be mentioned that with 10 percent enhancement in the respondent's habit of taking protected water, the habit of taking HB vaccine is also increased by 1.36 percent. It has also been found that respondent's income, habit of watching TV and educational attainment play vital role in explaining the habit of taking the protected drinking water as with IO percent enhancement of respondent's income the probability of taking protected drinking water and the habit of using condom is increased by 1.17 percent and 1.89 percent respectively. From the above discussion it can be concluded that the respondents of our study who have the sound educational enrollment as well as who have the higher economic status are more informative as they have the access to different print media, electronic media, internet and some other sources of information through which they can be more informative. So, it can be stated that the GOs' and NGOs' implacable contribution in exploring varieties of information to the grassroots people is indispensable to make our large rural based population more aware about the knowledge and consciousness about these two diseases to get rid of the prevalence of these diseases. It is essential to have some data from the aforesaid diseases affected people directly to have the cavernous idea about the reasons of the prevalence so that the replication of the diseases could be prevented.