KNOWLEDGE ATTITUDE AND PREVENTIVE BEHAVIORS TOWARDS HAND FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASE AMONG CAREGIVERS OF CHILDREN UNDER FIVE YEARS OLD IN BANGKOK, THAILAND

Hand foot and mouth disease (HFMD) is an emerging disease which has potential to become Thai public health problem in the future. There is no effective vaccine for the disease and the disease normally affects young children; therefore, the disease prevention and control mainly rely on HFMD preventive behaviors of their caregivers. The aims of this cross sectional study were to assess the level of knowledge, attitude and preventive behaviors practice towards HFMD and to determine factors associated with them among home caregivers of children under 5 years. Cluster sampling was used to select 9 nurseries from 9 districts in Bangkok and self administered questionnaire was used to collect data from 456 home caregivers. The results indicated that 50.4% of them had low knowledge and only of 3.7% had high overall knowledge about HFMD. Generally, they had moderate (68.2%) to good (31.8%) overall attitude towards HFMD; however, they seemed to perceive that HFMD was more severe than it actually is. In term of behavior, 60% of them performed preventive behavior at good level. Nevertheless, some preventive behaviors were still insufficiently performed. The statistically significant correlation between overall knowledge and attitude (p<0.001, r=0.193); knowledge and behavior (p<0.001, r=0.163); and attitude and behavior (p<0.001, r=0.371) were found in this study. In addition, many socio-demographic characteristics were found associated with HFMD knowledge, attitude and preventive behavior. Interestingly, family income and education were associated with all the KAP. In conclusions, findings from this study highlight the need to providing more information about HFMD to the home caregivers especially among those caregivers with low income and low education. Providing HFMD information via television should be considered since television was the main source of information of the home caregivers (97.6%).