Assessment of the rabies education among middle secondary school students of southeastern Bhutan

Rabies is one of the most important zoonotic diseases that mostly affect children. We conducted a rabies education among 129 secondary school children (intervention group = 94 students, control group = 35 students) in two schools in southeast Bhutan and evaluated the effectiveness of the lesson by comparing the knowledge, perception and safety behaviour score about rabies before and after education. We also assessed the knowledge retention capacity of the students at three months post intervention. Our findings indicated that short rabies lesson significantly (P<0.001) improved the mean knowledge score from 19.98(+/- 2.72) to 26.96(+/- 2.24) in the intervention group. Similarly, mean scores for perception and safety behaviour improved significantly (P<0.001) from 10.77 (+/- 1.89) to 13.95 (+/- 1.36) and 9.809 (+/- 1.85) to 12.97 (+/- 1.54), respectively. Although the scores have reduced significantly (P<0.001) at three months post intervention, most of the rabies information was largely retained by the students. In control group, significant increase in mean scores were also observed for perception from 10.17 (+/- 2.38) to 11.2 (+/- 2.44) and safety behaviour from 9.14(+/- 1.44) to 10.74 (+/- 1.95) after 3 months of education. The finding demonstrate that a short rabies lesson is effective in improving knowledge, perceptions and understanding of dog bites safety behaviour among the school children. However, there is a need for a frequent awareness program, at least quarterly or half yearly. Rabies education should focus on critical points such as dog bites being the main source of rabies and the importance washing a dog/animal bite wound with soap and water, and visiting the hospital for medical advice following animal bites.